Appalachian Community Histories – Smith, Harlan County: Martins Fork, the Post Office, and the Lake That Changed the Valley
Smith, in Harlan County, is one of those Appalachian communities whose history is easiest to understand by following its road and river together. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s current state road list still defines KY 987 as the route running from the Bell County line by way of Smith and Cawood to US 421 east of Cawood, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers places Martins Fork Lake and dam at river mile 15.6 on Martins Fork, about thirteen miles southeast of Harlan. Taken together, those records show Smith as a small but durable settlement point in the Martins Fork corridor rather than a name invented by the lake era.
That older geography can still be glimpsed in the federal mapping record. On the 1954 USGS Harlan quadrangle, Smith appears as a directional reference from the mapped roadway, and the 1954 Evarts quadrangle likewise uses Smith as a distance marker. Even where the community sat near the edge of adjoining map sheets, the name was already established enough to orient travelers and map readers before the reservoir transformed the valley.
Name, Post Office, and Early Local Identity
The strongest clue to Smith’s early identity is its postal history. Robert M. Rennick’s survey of Harlan County post offices notes that Hugh Smith opened a Smithville post office, which closed after only two years. A compiled postal-history listing for Harlan County places Smithville in the nineteenth century and the later Smith post office from 1897 to 1993. Read together, those records suggest that the community’s public identity developed first around the Smith family name and then stabilized under the shorter form, Smith, by the late nineteenth century.
That pattern matters because many Harlan County communities took shape through kinship networks, creek-bottom settlement, and service points like stores, schools, churches, and post offices rather than through incorporation. Smith fits that older mountain pattern. Its long presence on road lists, maps, and postal records indicates a place that functioned as a local center for the upper Martins Fork neighborhood even when it remained small by county standards.
Before the Lake, a Valley Community
Federal planning records from the Martins Fork project preserve an unusually clear snapshot of what stood in the valley before impoundment. The 1971 environmental statement for Martins Fork Reservoir described a settled landscape that would have to be physically rearranged. It stated that 5.2 miles of state and county highways, several cemeteries, and electric and telephone lines would require relocation, and that 5.9 miles of free flowing stream and valley would be converted into a lake. That language makes plain that Smith was not an empty hollow waiting for development. It was a lived-in place whose roads, burial grounds, and utilities had to be moved for the project to proceed.
The federal authorization behind that change came with the Flood Control Act of October 1965. Public Law 89-298 authorized the Martins Fork Reservoir project in the Upper Cumberland River Basin, and Corps records later described its purposes as flood control, recreation, and water quality control. In other words, the reshaping of Smith was part of a much larger mid twentieth century program to manage flooding and water resources across the Cumberland basin.
The Martins Fork Project and the Remaking of Smith
The Corps reports that construction began in December 1973 and that the lake was impounded in December 1978. Its present figures describe a normal pool of 340 acres and a full flood control pool of 578 acres. Those numbers help explain why the coming of Martins Fork Lake became the defining event in modern Smith history. A narrow mountain valley community was not merely improved or bypassed. Part of its older landscape was submerged and reorganized into a federal reservoir and recreation complex.
That transformation also helps explain why Smith survives in memory so strongly. Communities altered by dam building often retain their names even when their earlier physical layout disappears. Smith followed that pattern. The valley changed, but the place name endured, carrying forward the history of the pre-lake community into a new landscape of water, shoreline roads, and public recreation.
Smith in the Present Landscape
Today the official federal address for Martins Fork Lake is 5965 Highway 987, Smith, Kentucky, and the Corps Lakes Gateway identifies the Smith Recreation Area as a local recreation site operated with county participation. That means Smith remains a living civic and geographic label, not merely a vanished community name. Federal and state agencies still use it to identify the place.
At the same time, the upper river preserves another layer of the older landscape. Kentucky’s Martin’s Fork Wild River designation begins at the KY 987 bridge and extends upstream toward Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. That protected stretch, paired with the reservoir below, captures the unusual dual history of Smith. It is both a community reshaped by twentieth century flood-control policy and a gateway to one of the more rugged and ecologically significant river corridors in southeastern Kentucky.
Legacy
Smith’s history is therefore larger than a single crossroads or mailing address. It tells a familiar Appalachian story in concentrated form. A family-named mountain settlement took root along an important creek valley, gained recognition through post office and road networks, and then was fundamentally altered by a federal reservoir project intended to serve regional needs. Yet the name survived, and with it a local sense of place. In Smith, the old Martins Fork community and the modern lake landscape are not separate stories. They are the same story told across different eras of Harlan County’s history.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Geological Survey. “USGS 1:24,000-Scale Quadrangle for Harlan, KY, 1954.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Harlan_803596_1954_24000_geo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “USGS 1:24,000-Scale Quadrangle for Evarts, KY, 1954.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Evarts_803502_1954_24000_geo.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Harlan County State Primary Road System. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, current as of January 2, 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Harlan.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. State Primary Road System: Harlan County, Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, revised December 2024. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/SPRS%20Maps/Harlan.pdf
Harlan County Clerk’s Office. “Records.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://harlan.countyclerk.us/records/
Harlan County Property Valuation Administrator. “Property Record Search.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://www.qpublic.net/ky/harlan/search.html
Kentucky Court of Justice. “Harlan.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://kycourts.gov/Courts/County-Information/Pages/Harlan.aspx
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
Library of Congress. “The Harlan Daily Enterprise (Harlan, Ky.) 1928–2018.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn87060051/
OldNews.com. “Harlan Daily Enterprise Historical Archive.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://www.oldnews.com/en/newspapers/united-states/kentucky/harlan/harlan-daily-enterprise
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Nashville District. Martins Fork Lake, Cumberland River Basin, Kentucky. Environmental Statement. June 1971. https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16021coll7/id/10843/
United States Congress. Public Law 89-298, Rivers and Harbors Act of 1965. October 27, 1965. https://planning.erdc.dren.mil/toolbox/library/PL/RHA1965.pdf
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Martins Fork Dam.” Great Lakes and Ohio River Division. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects/Display/Article/3642630/martins-fork-dam/
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Martins Fork Lake.” Great Lakes and Ohio River Division. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://www.lrd.usace.army.mil/Mission/Projects/Article/3640720/martins-fork-lake/
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Water Control Manual: Martins Fork Dam and Reservoir. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://water.usace.army.mil/cda/documents/wc/3190/MAR_Updated_Redacted.pdf
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. Kentucky Wild Rivers: Martins Fork Management Plan. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://eec.ky.gov/Environmental-Protection/Water/Reports/Reports/1980-KWR-MartinsFork.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. Geologic Map of the Harlan Quadrangle, Harlan County, Kentucky. 1972. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq1015
U.S. Geological Survey. Geologic Map of Part of the Rose Hill Quadrangle, Harlan County, Kentucky. 1973. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_10662.htm
Harlan Daily Enterprise. Harlan County: Heritage Edition. February 28, 1984. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/101/
Kentucky Oral History Commission. “Harlan Couny Oral History Project.” Accessed March 14, 2026. https://passtheword.ky.gov/collections/harlan-couny-oral-history-project
Author Note: This piece reconstructs Smith through maps, road records, postal history, and federal lake-project documents because small mountain communities often survive in scattered fragments. If you have family photographs, school memories, cemetery information, or deed references tied to Smith before Martins Fork Lake, I would love to see them added to the record.