Appalachian Community Histories – Sixteen, Perry County: A Historical Community on Sixteen Mile Creek
Some Appalachian places survive first as names on maps, in road records, in school memories, and in the small notices that local newspapers once printed without explanation. Sixteen, Perry County, Kentucky, belongs to that kind of history. It does not appear as a large incorporated town with a formal founding story, but the paper trail is not empty. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System identifies “Sixteen (historical)” as a populated place in Perry County, and the Hazard North topographic map family places it among names such as Sixteen School, Sixteenmile Creek, Dice, Lost Creek, Rock Fork, Trace Branch, and Trace Fork. The best way to read Sixteen’s history is not as a town separate from the land around it, but as a small community identity rooted in the Sixteen Mile Creek and Lost Creek landscape.
Perry County itself was formed in 1821 from parts of Floyd and Clay Counties and named for Oliver Hazard Perry, the War of 1812 naval hero whose name was also given to the county seat of Hazard. The county’s official community listings still preserve nearby names that matter to this story, including Dice, Lost Creek, Sixteen Mile, and Sixteen Mountain. That modern listing is important because it shows that even when older local communities changed, faded, or shifted into road and creek names, the Sixteen Mile name remained part of Perry County’s recognized geography.
Sixteen Mile Creek and the Lost Creek Setting
Sixteen’s strongest early record is geological and topographical. In 1918, James M. Hodge published Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties, a Kentucky Geological Survey report that treated the North Fork country as a working coal landscape. In the table of contents, Hodge moved through the Lost Creek drainage by names that still help locate the older community world: Lost Creek, Ten Mile Creek, Fifteen Mile Creek, Sixteen Mile Creek, Strong Branch, Hiram Branch, Low Gap, Will Branch, Camp Branch, Bowman Branch, Rock Fork, and Laurel Fork.
Hodge’s section on Sixteen Mile Creek is one of the clearest early descriptions of the area. He gave the altitude of the creek mouth as 925 feet and recorded coal exposures and prospects along the creek and its branches. A half mile up the creek, he described coal and shale exposed at water level near the base of a shale cliff. Farther upstream, on a left branch, he recorded an old entry and connected the coal there with the Flag coal. These details were written for geology and industry rather than local memory, but they preserve the terrain of Sixteen with unusual precision.
The report also makes clear that Sixteen was not just a dot on a map. It was part of a lived branch-and-creek neighborhood where land, family names, and coal prospects overlapped. Hodge recorded Strong Branch on the right of Sixteen Mile Creek, Hiram Branch two miles up the creek, and Low Gap Branch nearby on Lost Creek. He mentioned coal openings and land connected with local names such as Wilson Campbell, Mahlon Jones, and J. E. Campbell. For a place like Sixteen, those names are not minor details. They are clues for deeds, tax books, school records, cemetery records, and family histories that may fill out the community story beyond the coal report.
Sixteen School and the Community Name
Small communities in the mountains were often held together by a school, a church, a cemetery, a post office, a store, or a road more than by town limits. Sixteen appears to fit that pattern. Topographic and GNIS-derived listings preserve both Sixteen and Sixteen School as historical features in the same local setting. That matters because a school name can preserve a community identity even when the community never developed into an incorporated place.
The presence of Sixteen School suggests that the community name was familiar enough to organize local education around it. Historical school records, school board minutes, teacher lists, older yearbooks, and county educational reports would be among the most valuable next sources for Sixteen. The school reference also helps separate Sixteen from a purely industrial record. Hodge’s coal survey described the creek and its mineral prospects, but the school name points toward families, children, teachers, and the daily life of a neighborhood.
Sixteen in the Local Newspaper Record
The Hazard Herald gives one of the clearest midcentury signs that Sixteen was more than a map label. On January 27, 1958, the newspaper carried a short report on the Sixteen 4-H Club. The notice described a club meeting, named local young people, and mentioned projects such as sewing and woodworking. The scanned text is rough in places, but the evidence is still plain. In the late 1950s, Sixteen was a community name used in ordinary Perry County life.
That small 4-H notice is valuable because it captures Sixteen in a way the geological reports could not. Coal surveys recorded beds, entries, branches, and elevations. Road indexes preserved the later travel routes. A 4-H club notice shows a different side of the place: children learning projects, adults helping with instruction, and a community identity strong enough to appear in the county newspaper. For Appalachian local history, that kind of source often carries more weight than its size suggests.
Roads, Dice, and the Modern Landscape
Modern road records also preserve the Sixteen Mile name. The Perry County Road Index describes Sixteenmile Creek Road as reached from Kentucky Highway 15 by way of Harveyton Road, ending at mile 5.78 on Lost Creek Road. The same index records Sixteenmile Trace Branch Road and other roads that depend on Sixteenmile Creek Road and Trace Branch for their descriptions. These entries show how an older creek and community name continued into modern public infrastructure.
This road evidence helps connect Sixteen with Dice, Lost Creek, and the larger Hazard area. A researcher trying to understand Sixteen should not look only for one town center. The better approach is to follow the creek, the school, the road names, the branches, the coal report, and the family surnames. Sixteen appears in the record as a neighborhood of movement and memory, a place known through where people lived, learned, farmed, mined, visited, and traveled.
How Sixteen Can Be Researched Further
Because Sixteen’s history is scattered, the strongest next sources are likely county-level records. The Perry County Clerk’s office states that it indexes and houses legal land records, marriage licenses, notary bonds, and other records, with some older materials reaching far back in the county record system. Its online land records system may help identify deeds, easements, and property transactions connected with Sixteenmile Creek, Lost Creek, Trace Branch, Dice, and surrounding family names.
FamilySearch’s catalog also points to Perry County land records from 1821 to 1964, filmed from original records at the county courthouse. For Sixteen, those deed books may be especially important. The land names in Hodge’s coal report, the road names in the county index, and the family names in newspaper notices can be tested against deeds, tax records, probate records, marriage records, and cemetery records.
Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky place-name work is another important guide. His Perry County post office and place-name files, along with his writing on Kentucky number place names, are useful because Sixteen belongs to a wider naming pattern in which numbers, miles, creeks, and local travel routes became community names. Rennick’s collections do not replace primary sources, but they help researchers know where to look and what older local names may have meant.
Why Sixteen Matters
Sixteen’s history is not the story of a courthouse town, a county seat, or a large coal camp with a single company narrative. It is the story of a smaller kind of Appalachian place. It appears in the record through a creek, a school, a coal survey, a 4-H club, a road index, and the memory of surrounding names such as Dice and Lost Creek.
That kind of place can be easy to overlook. Yet communities like Sixteen made up much of the lived map of eastern Kentucky. They were the places where children went to school, where roads took their names from water, where families appeared in scattered records, and where a newspaper notice could assume readers already knew what “Sixteen” meant.
The surviving sources suggest that Sixteen should be remembered as a historical Perry County community tied to Sixteen Mile Creek and the Lost Creek country. Its record is thin in the way many mountain community records are thin, but it is not silent. It waits in maps, roads, school references, coal reports, newspaper columns, and family papers. To recover Sixteen fully, the next step is not to look for a grand founding story. It is to follow the creek.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Geological Survey. Geographic Names Information System. “Sixteen (Historical), Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/2557346
U.S. Geological Survey. Hazard North Quadrangle, Kentucky, 7.5 Minute Series. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
MyTopo. “Hazard North, Kentucky, Historic 7.5×7.5 Topographic Map.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://mapstore.mytopo.com/products/historic_7-5×7-5_hazard-north_kentucky
Hodge, James M. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. Frankfort, KY: State Journal Company, 1918. https://archive.org/details/coalsofnorthfork00hodgrich
Hodge, James M. Coals of the North Fork of Kentucky River in Perry and Portions of Breathitt and Knott Counties. HathiTrust Digital Library. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001659084
Hodge, James M. Report on the Coals of the Three Forks of the Kentucky River, Beginning at Troublesome Creek on North Fork; at Beginning Branch on Middle Fork; at Sexton Creek on South Fork; and Extending to the Heads of the Respective Forks. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Geological Survey, 1910. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001659084
Perry County, Kentucky. “About Perry County.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycountyky.gov/about-perry-county/
Perry County, Kentucky. “Road Index.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycounty.ky.gov/Pages/Road-Index.aspx
Perry County Clerk. “Records Center.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perry.countyclerk.us/records-center/
Perry County Clerk. “Online Land Records.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perry.countyclerk.us/records-center/online-land-records/
eCCLIX. “County Clerk’s Office, Land Records Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://ecclix.com/
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Perry County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, revised February 2025. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Perry.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System Lists: Perry County. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Perry.pdf
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Requesting Records from the Archives.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Records-Requests.aspx
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Guides.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Research-Guides.aspx
Library of Congress. “The Hazard Herald, Hazard, Kentucky.” Chronicling America. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85052003/
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1958-01-27.” Hazard, KY, January 27, 1958. Internet Archive, Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. https://archive.org/download/kd9rr1pg1x5k/kd9rr1pg1x5k_text.pdf
The Hazard Herald. “The Hazard Herald: 1958-04-14.” Hazard, KY, April 14, 1958. Internet Archive, Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. https://archive.org/stream/kd9s17sn0f1s/kd9s17sn0f1s_djvu.txt
Perry County Public Library. “Databases.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.perrycountylibrary.org/home/databases/
Newspapers.com. “The Hazard Herald Archive.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-hazard-herald/39867/
FamilySearch. “Perry County, Kentucky Genealogy.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Perry_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
FamilySearch Catalog. “Perry County, Kentucky Land Records, 1821 to 1964.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/190103
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County, Post Offices.” Morehead State University, Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/273/
Rennick, Robert M. “Perry County, Place Names.” Morehead State University, Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/121/
Rennick, Robert M. “Kentucky ‘Number’ Place Names.” Morehead State University, Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/155/
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Manuscript Collection.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_ms_collection/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/kentucky/
Author Note: Sixteen is one of those Perry County places whose history survives through creeks, roads, school references, coal reports, and local memory rather than one single founding story. If your family has photographs, school memories, church records, cemetery notes, or stories tied to Sixteen, Sixteen Mile, Dice, Lost Creek, or Trace Branch, those pieces may help complete the record.