Appalachian Community Histories – Riverside, Breathitt County: The School Beside Troublesome Creek
In Breathitt County, the name Riverside does not first appear as the story of a courthouse town, a railroad city, or a marked settlement with hard borders. It appears most clearly along Troublesome Creek at Lost Creek, where a school, a chapel, a bridge, and a mission grew into one of the longest remembered institutions in the county.
Lost Creek lies on Troublesome Creek, about eight miles southeast of Jackson, in the hill country of eastern Kentucky. The country around it was shaped by creek roads, footbridges, church houses, one room schools, post offices, and family names carried from hollow to hollow. It was never a place where history stood in one neat row. It was a place where a school could become a landmark, where a church could become a community center, and where the word Riverside could mean more than a spot on a map.
The historical Riverside of Breathitt County is best understood through Riverside Institute, later known as Riverside Christian Training School and Riverside Christian School. Its story begins in 1905, when George E. Drushal and Ada Garber Drushal came to Lost Creek as young Brethren mission workers. From that arrival came a school that would survive public school expansion, financial hardship, fire, flood, and changing times.
George and Ada Drushal Come to Lost Creek
George and Ada Drushal arrived in Lost Creek in 1905 under the direction of Dr. E. O. Guerrant and the Soul Winners’ Society, an organization that sent teachers and church workers into mountain communities. Their first work was simple and local. They held Sunday services in the small Lost Creek schoolhouse, and George was asked to become the regular teacher there.
In the spring of 1906, the Home Mission Board of the Brethren Church bought three acres on the west side of Troublesome Creek. On that land a parsonage and school building were constructed. The upper floor of the school building included a large room used for church services and chapel. The school was given the name Riverside Institute.
The name fit the place. Troublesome Creek ran beside the work. The school stood close to water, road, and community life. The Drushals were not only trying to build classrooms. They were trying to build a center of worship, schooling, service, and connection in a part of Breathitt County where access mattered as much as ambition.
A School, a Chapel, and a Bridge
Riverside Institute soon became more than a school. The Drushals entered the ordinary needs of Lost Creek life. George helped design and build a suspension bridge across Troublesome Creek, a practical improvement that helped students and families move more safely across the water. He also worked with others to form a telephone company and run a line from Jackson to Lost Creek. The school’s own history also remembers his efforts to persuade the railroad to extend service from Jackson toward Hazard.
Ada Drushal’s work reached into homes as well as classrooms and church services. She was remembered as someone called on to help deliver babies. Later Brethren memory described her service in the Kentucky mountains as ministry that included teaching, bookkeeping, midwifery, healing work, and practical care. In that sense, Riverside was never only a schoolhouse story. It was part of the older Appalachian pattern where religion, education, health, and neighborly labor often met in the same few buildings and the same few people.
On Sunday afternoons, George and Ada traveled by horse to nearby communities for Sunday School work. The horse was named Kentucky Belle, a small detail that helps bring the story back from institution history into mountain life. Before the large campus, before the later floods, before the athletic records and accreditation lists, there was a couple on horseback moving from Lost Creek into surrounding communities.
Riverside Institute Grows
As the church and school grew, more land was purchased, dormitories were built, and additional teachers joined the work. A work program helped students who could not pay room and board. By the late 1920s, enrollment had reached 135, and the high school had received accreditation.
That accreditation matters because it shows Riverside was not only a local mission effort. It had become part of Kentucky’s recognized educational landscape. A federal list of accredited secondary schools from the late 1920s included Riverside Institute at Lost Creek. Newspaper and school references from the period show students moving from Riverside to colleges and other opportunities.
The Federal Writers’ Project later described Riverside Institute as a “small Berea,” a phrase that placed the school in the tradition of Appalachian mission and settlement education. Like Berea College and other mountain schools, Riverside combined faith, labor, schooling, and vocational training. The comparison was not perfect, but it shows how outside observers understood the school’s role in the 1930s. Riverside was small, rural, and denominational, but it belonged to a larger story of mountain education.
The Threat of Closing and the Miracle Log Building
By the 1930s, public education had become more accessible in the region. The Mission Board of the Brethren Church decided to close the school. For many institutions, that would have been the end. At Riverside, it became another beginning.
George and Ada Drushal believed the school still had a place in their ministry. Teachers and community members supported them. Land next to the original property was donated, and a log school building was constructed. The school’s history later remembered this structure as the Miracle Log Building. A new corporation formed under the name Riverside Christian Training School.
For several years, the school continued in that log building. In 1940, an agreement with the Mission Board allowed Riverside to return to its original location and operate under an independent board. The Drushals’ daughter, Adah Irene Drushal, returned from college and joined the work. The family story and the institutional story were still closely tied.
This part of the story is important because it shows that Riverside did not simply survive because of a church board or outside funding. It survived because people in and around Lost Creek believed it still mattered. The school’s continuation depended on local support, donated land, teaching labor, and the conviction that a small school beside Troublesome Creek still had work to do.
A Settlement School in Appalachia
In 1969, Loren W. Kramer’s survey of settlement institutions in Southern Appalachia listed Riverside Christian Training School, Inc., at Lost Creek. The survey placed Riverside among private nonprofit Appalachian institutions that combined education, community service, religious work, and local development.
By that time, Riverside served grades K through 12, offered a standard curriculum with Bible instruction, and provided boarding for some older students. The survey listed about 125 students, with most of them local day students, and described a campus that included a school building, two dormitories, a parsonage, a faculty house, a church, a small farm, and wooded acreage. It also listed baseball, basketball, a health fair, a clothing room, church work, Sunday Schools, and July 4 homecomings among the school’s programs and activities.
Those details show how broad Riverside’s role had become. It was still a school, but it was also a place of worship, a boarding institution, a gathering place, and a service center. In rural Appalachia, this kind of institution often stood in the gap between what people needed and what formal systems could easily provide.
The People Who Carried the Work Forward
George Drushal died in 1958. After his death, Dr. Harold Barnett came to Riverside to serve as president of the school and pastor of the church. Harold and Doris Barnett moved there in 1959, joined by Doran and Nancy Hostetler. These names became part of the next long chapter of Riverside’s life.
Harold Barnett taught in the high school, served as pastor, and continued mission work in nearby communities. Doris Barnett taught, worked in the cafeteria, and served as treasurer. Doran Hostetler taught, coached, and served as principal. Nancy Hostetler taught English, French, and physical education and served as dorm matron.
Adah Irene Drushal also continued the family’s work. She taught in the high school, held Sunday School at Fugate’s Fork, gave piano lessons, and cared for her mother Ada, who died in December 1975. When Riverside prepared to celebrate its centennial in 2005, the school could still look back on a century deeply marked by the Drushal family.
This continuity gave Riverside a rare kind of memory. Students did not pass through an institution that changed hands every few years without a story. They entered a place where names, buildings, churches, and family labor carried decades of meaning.
Fire, Flood, and Survival
Riverside’s history was also marked by repeated loss. Fire damaged the campus more than once. Local history accounts note dormitory fires and other building losses. But water became the greater recurring threat because Riverside stood beside Troublesome Creek.
In May 1984, The Brethren Evangelist reported that the worst flood in memory had struck Riverside Christian Training School. Nearly every home and building on campus was flooded, though no loss of life or personal injury was reported. Later reporting from the same year described water in the gym, church basement, staff homes, and classrooms. Books, doors, walls, insulation, furniture, and campus housing all required repair or replacement.
Even then, the school continued. Students returned. Temporary classrooms were arranged. Brethren supporters and local people helped repair the damage. The 1984 flood became part of the Riverside pattern: damage, cleanup, prayer, labor, return.
That pattern repeated in the twenty first century. Riverside faced severe flooding in 2021 and again in 2022. The July 2022 flood devastated eastern Kentucky, and Riverside Christian School was hit hard. Reports described water reaching into the school buildings, classrooms destroyed, staff members and volunteers needing rescue, and families connected to the school suffering major losses. The old campus beside Troublesome Creek had carried more than a century of memory, but the danger of the floodplain could no longer be ignored.
Riverside eventually moved into the former Marie Roberts Caney School building, a higher and drier place nearby. The move was not just a change of address. It was a painful crossing from the historic campus into a new chapter. Yet the school’s own story had always been one of rebuilding. Riverside had survived because each generation found a way to carry the work forward.
Riverside and the Memory of Breathitt County
Riverside’s history tells a larger Breathitt County story. It is about the effort to educate children in isolated places. It is about denominational mission work in the mountains. It is about women such as Ada Drushal, Doris Barnett, Nancy Hostetler, and Adah Irene Drushal whose labor often held schools and churches together. It is about the relationship between creek geography and community life, where a school could be both blessed by its location and endangered by it.
It also reminds us to be careful with place names. Riverside in Breathitt County is not best understood as a separate incorporated town with a neat municipal history. The records point instead to the Riverside school community at Lost Creek, beside Troublesome Creek. Federal census geography, school records, postcards, oral history leads, denominational publications, and local memory all point in that direction.
The name Riverside endured because the institution endured. It appeared on postcards. It appeared in school directories. It appeared in athletic records. It appeared in denominational reports and flood accounts. It appeared in the memories of students, teachers, ministers, and families who passed through Lost Creek.
A Light in the Hills
The school’s modern motto, “a light in the hills,” fits the long story better than almost any outside description. Riverside began with Sunday services in a small schoolhouse and grew into a school, chapel, bridge, dormitory campus, community center, and Christian institution. It was tested by changing education systems, lack of money, fire, flood, and relocation. Still, the work continued.
There are many Appalachian places where history is not preserved by monuments but by institutions that kept serving. Riverside is one of those places. Its story is written in the creek, in the old campus, in the bridge work, in the classrooms, in the names of teachers, in the boarding students, in the church services, and in the flood mud that had to be cleaned away more than once.
To tell the history of Riverside, Breathitt County, Kentucky, is to tell the story of a school beside Troublesome Creek that became a community landmark. It is the story of George and Ada Drushal and those who followed them. It is the story of Lost Creek families who believed education and faith still mattered in the mountains. It is the story of a place that had to rebuild again and again, and still found a way to keep its light burning.
Sources & Further Reading
Riverside Christian School. “Our History.” Riverside Christian School. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.riversidechristian.org/blank-1
Kentucky Historical Society. “Riverside Institute, Lost Creek, KY.” Ronald Morgan Postcard Collection. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Morgan/id/7428/
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Kentucky, Breathitt County, ED 13-9, ED 13-10, ED 13-11, ED 13-12.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Kentucky_-_Breathitt_County_-_ED_13-9,_ED_13-10,_ED_13-11,_ED_13-12_-_NARA_-_5862317.jpg
Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. “Oral History with 18 Year Old White Female, Breathitt County, Kentucky.” American Folklife Center. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/afc/afc1986022/afc1986022_ms2808/afc1986022_ms2808.pdf
Kramer, Loren W. Settlement Institutions in Southern Appalachia. Atlanta: Southern Regional Education Board, 1971. ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED051924.pdf
Federal Writers’ Project. Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. https://archive.org/details/kentuckyguidetob00federich
Kentucky High School Athletic Association. “Riverside Christian.” School Directory. Accessed June 9, 2026. https://khsaa.org/school-directory/pdf.php?school_id=232
Kentucky High School Athletic Association. “Directory of Member Schools of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.” 2021–2022 KHSAA Handbook Member School Directory. https://khsaa.org/common_documents/handbook/directory.pdf
Kentucky High School Athletic Association. “The Kentucky High School Athlete, January 1949.” Encompass, Eastern Kentucky University. https://encompass.eku.edu/context/athlete/article/1500/viewcontent/athlete_1949_01.pdf
The Ashland Collegian. “Published Weekly by the Students of Ashland College.” April 11, 1924. https://ppolinks.com/ashland/COLLEGIANApril111924page1A.pdf
The Indianapolis News. “Page 15.” January 4, 1916. Hoosier State Chronicles. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=INN19160104-01.1.15
Philbrick, Francis S., comp. Accredited Secondary Schools in the United States. Bulletin 1928, no. 26. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1929. https://archive.org/details/accreditedsecond00phil_1
The Brethren Evangelist. “Training School and Church at Lost Creek.” January 21, 1956. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli78150bens/brethrenevangeli78150bens_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Troublesome Creek Visits Riverside.” 1975. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli97bret/brethrenevangeli97bret_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Worst Flood in Memory Strikes Riverside Christian School.” 1984. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli10618winf/brethrenevangeli10618winf_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Brethren Women in Ministry.” 1995. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangel117111winf/brethrenevangel117111winf_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Riverside Christian Training School.” 1959. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli81150bens/brethrenevangeli81150bens_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Riverside Christian School in Lost Creek.” 1972. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli94125schu/brethrenevangeli94125schu_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “New Staff Members at Riverside Christian Training School.” 1974. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangeli96bret/brethrenevangeli96bret_djvu.txt
The Brethren Evangelist. “Spring a Time of Special Events at Riverside Christian School.” 1982. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/brethrenevangel104112winf/brethrenevangel104112winf_djvu.txt
Flora, Jerry R. “Brethren Women in Ministry: Century One.” Ashland Theological Journal 15, no. 1. https://gospelstudies.org.uk/biblicalstudies/pdf/ashland_theological_journal/15-1_18.pdf
Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. “Periodical Source Index: Kentucky Location Search.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.genealogycenter.info/results_persilocation_detail.php?cosearch=USA&loc=KY&rectype=SC&sort=title&subloc=
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Contract ID 113259, Breathitt County, Riverside School Road CR 1109.” 2011. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction-Procurement/Proposals/419-BREATHITT-11-3259.pdf
Kentucky Department of Education. “Non-Public Schools.” Updated August 2, 2024. https://education.ky.gov/federal/fed/Pages/Non-Public-Schools.aspx
Brethren Church. “Riverside Community Suffers Tragic Flooding.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://brethrenchurch.org/riverside-community-suffers-tragic-flooding/
Brown, Ashley N. “Breathitt County School Hit Two Years in a Row by Flooding.” Spectrum News 1, August 12, 2022. https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2022/08/12/breathitt-county-school-hit-two-years-in-a-row-by-flooding
WYMT. “Riverside Christian School Recovering from Flooding for Second Time in Two Years.” August 25, 2022. https://www.wymt.com/2022/08/25/riverside-christian-school-recovering-flooding-second-time-two-years/
LEX 18. “Breathing New Life in Riverside Christian School.” July 27, 2023. https://www.lex18.com/news/covering-kentucky/breathing-new-life-in-riverside-christian-school
WKYT. “Principal of School Damaged in EKY Flooding Says Faith Is What Held Them Together.” July 27, 2023. https://www.wkyt.com/2023/07/27/principal-school-damaged-eky-flooding-says-faith-is-what-held-them-together/
Mountain Association. “Riverside Christian School Standing Through the Storms.” April 15, 2026. https://mtassociation.org/energy/riverside-christian-school-standing-through-the-storms/
Bowling, Stephen D. “Fire Destroys Riverside Dorm.” Bookhiker, December 26, 2025. https://bookhiker.com/2025/12/26/fire-destroys-riverside-dorm/
Cause IQ. “Riverside Christian Training School, Lost Creek, KY.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/riverside-christian-training-school%2C610621761/
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “Lost Creek, Kentucky.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-lost-creek.html
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Accessed June 9, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: This article follows Riverside as a school community at Lost Creek rather than as a separate incorporated town. The surviving records point most strongly to Riverside Institute, Riverside Christian Training School, and Riverside Christian School as the heart of the Riverside name in Breathitt County.