Appalachian Community Histories – Sublimity City, Laurel County: The New Deal Forest Community South of London
South of London in Laurel County, Kentucky, the name Sublimity City still lingers on maps, roads, school records, and local memory. At first glance it may seem like one more small Appalachian place-name, the kind passed down through churchyards, schoolhouses, and family directions. Yet Sublimity City has a larger story behind it. It was once the Sublimity Forest Community, a planned New Deal settlement built as an experiment in rural rehabilitation, forest work, and subsistence farming.
The project belonged to a moment when the federal government was trying to answer one of the hardest questions of the Great Depression. What could be done for rural families living on worn-out farms, cutover land, and uncertain wages? In Laurel County, the answer became a model community south of London, tied to the Cumberland National Forest and managed through a complicated partnership between the United States Forest Service, the Resettlement Administration, and later the Farm Security Administration. Robert F. Collins’ history of the Daniel Boone National Forest identifies Sublimity Forest Community as a New Deal social project located directly adjacent to London, Kentucky, and notes that his chapter relied heavily on W. E. Hedges’ 1947 report, “History of the Sublimity Forest Community Situated in Laurel County, Kentucky.”
Why Laurel County Was Chosen
The idea behind Sublimity did not begin with romance about mountain life. It began with hard conditions on the land. Many eastern Kentucky families had come through the Depression with little margin. Farms were often small, steep, and exhausted. Timber work was irregular. Cash was scarce. The Forest Service saw the larger Cumberland National Forest area as a place where poor land use, poverty, and forest management all met in the same landscape.
Collins’ account says the Sublimity project was developed under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. That law was approved on April 8, 1935, and became one of the major funding tools of the New Deal work-relief system. The official statute itself called it the “Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.” According to Collins, Forest Service development and management of Sublimity came under Administration Order No. 171, dated May 27, 1936, while the Resettlement Administration later became the Farm Security Administration in the Department of Agriculture on September 1, 1937.
The early vision was ambitious. S. H. Marsh of the Forest Service Regional Office prepared a preliminary report in the spring of 1935 and submitted it to the Chief of the Forest Service on June 3, 1935. Collins states that this plan called for buying 80 submarginal farms totaling 6,320 acres at a projected land cost of $50,560, then resettling 80 families on three-acre subsistence farms at a projected development cost of $416,240. The plan placed the community about two miles south of London and connected subsistence farming with timber sale work and other employment on the nearby national forest.
The Plan For Sublimity Forest Community
Sublimity was not meant to be a simple subdivision. It was supposed to combine a home, a small farm, and access to wage work. The general New Deal homestead idea was that families could grow some of their own food while also earning cash income from nearby labor. A 1935 federal description of subsistence homesteads explained that such a homestead included an inexpensive modern house and outbuildings on land where a family could produce a large share of its food. It also stated that the family still needed some cash income, often from part-time or seasonal work.
That national idea took a Laurel County form at Sublimity. The Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer summarizes the local project as 66 farmsteads south of London, each with a wood-frame house, a barn, other outbuildings, and tracts ranging from two to 26 acres. It also notes that the project included several community buildings and that qualifying area families could lease the farmsteads.
A federal Farm Security Administration homestead list revised June 1, 1941, confirms Sublimity Forest Community as a Kentucky project at London in Laurel County. It lists it as an RA project and notes that it was “Managed and Operated by Forest Service for FSA.” The same table records 66 units and 583 acres for Sublimity Forest Community.
Choosing The Families
One of the most revealing parts of the Sublimity story is the way families were chosen. The project was built to help people, but deciding who qualified was never simple. Collins’ account says the selection of settlers became one of the most controversial issues in the project. Officials debated whether families should be judged by a numerical scale, by local knowledge, or by distant administrators who would not have to face rejected applicants in person.
The numbers show both the need and the limits of the project. Collins records that 691 applications were received. Of those, 227 were accepted as settlers, 293 were rejected, 92 withdrew before action, 61 were disqualified because of age, residence, or similar reasons, and 18 were still pending when settler selection ended on January 15, 1943.
Behind those figures were real Laurel County families trying to survive the Depression. Some hoped for a better house. Some hoped for land. Some hoped for steadier work. Some probably saw Sublimity as a chance to stay near home rather than leave the mountains in search of wages somewhere else. But the application process also shows the paternalism built into many New Deal rural programs. Officials were not only asking whether families needed help. They were judging whether families were considered suitable for the government’s experiment.
Houses, Farms, And Forest Work
The Sublimity farmsteads were designed around a practical idea. A family would live in a better house, raise food on a small tract, keep livestock or a garden, and supplement that living through nearby work. The Forest Service connection mattered because the community was not imagined apart from the forest. It was planned beside a federal forest landscape where timber, conservation, road work, and other labor could provide employment.
The Kentucky Atlas states that construction and related functions at Sublimity involved several New Deal agencies, including the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Youth Administration, and the Farm Security Administration. That mix of agencies reflects the complexity of the New Deal in Appalachia. A road, a barn, a school building, a bridge, a forest stand, and a family garden could all be part of the same larger federal effort to stabilize rural life.
Sublimity also belonged to a broader Forest Service world in Laurel County. The Daniel Boone National Forest area still preserves traces of Depression-era public works. The Forest Service’s Bee Rock Campground page identifies Old Sublimity Bridge as a historic Civilian Conservation Corps-built structure restored for foot travel. While that bridge is not the whole story of Sublimity Forest Community, it helps place the name within the wider New Deal and Forest Service landscape of Laurel County.
An Experiment With Real Gains And Real Problems
The word experiment appears again and again in the Sublimity story. Collins writes that by January 1936, officials had concluded the only honest economic justification for the project was as an experiment. The question was not simply whether the government would make money back. The larger question was whether a forest-based rural community could improve family life, land use, and local opportunity in a place where older patterns had failed many residents.
The project had problems from the beginning. Two agencies shared responsibility, but neither always had full command. Decisions about families, management, reporting, and finances produced friction. Collins’ chapter makes clear that the Forest Service saw divided authority as one of the project’s weaknesses.
Yet the project was not simply a failure. The Hedges report, as summarized by Collins, concluded that progress appeared in many parts of community life. Occupancy became more stable over time. Rental payments improved. A cooperative spirit grew. Community meetings, which had once been marked by bickering, became more useful and enjoyable. Heads of families developed a stronger sense of responsibility, and children came to see school as an opportunity. Collins also records the report’s striking conclusion that although the balance sheet showed a government loss of $73,780, many people believed the country had gained more than that in human value.
That is the heart of Sublimity’s history. On paper, it was a federal project. On the ground, it was an attempt to change the future of families.
The End Of The Project
The same federal power that created Sublimity eventually ended it. By the 1940s, Congress and the Department of Agriculture were moving away from many resettlement projects. Collins notes that the Agricultural Appropriations Act of 1943 and later years showed congressional intent to liquidate such projects. A memorandum of understanding dated June 30, 1945, transferred the Sublimity Community Project, except for certain lands, from the Forest Service to the Farm Security Administration, effective July 1, 1945.
The Kentucky Atlas states plainly that the project ended in 1945 and that the farmsteads were sold. It also notes that some original Sublimity houses are still in use and that part of Sublimity is now within London’s city limits.
In other words, the federal experiment ended, but the place did not disappear. The name remained. Families remained. Houses remained. The roads, memories, and local identity continued after the paperwork moved from active project to history.
Sublimity City On The Map
Maps help show how the project became a community name. The 1961 USGS Lily, Kentucky, 7.5-minute quadrangle places Sublimity City south of London in Laurel County. TopoZone, using USGS data, lists Sublimity City on the Lily USGS topographic map at approximately 37.0945327 north latitude and 84.0835423 west longitude, with an elevation of about 1,214 feet.
Robert M. Rennick’s Laurel County place-name work, published through Morehead State University, identifies Sublimity City as a residential community on KY 1006 and describes it as a New Deal experiment called Sublimity Forest Community. That matters because Rennick’s work helps bridge the official federal record and the local place-name tradition. The government called it a project. The people and maps remembered it as a community.
What The Records Still Hold
The best primary source trail for Sublimity begins with W. E. Hedges’ 1947 report, “History of the Sublimity Forest Community Situated in Laurel County, Kentucky.” Eastern Kentucky University’s digital collection identifies that report as part of the Robert F. Collins Papers and dates it to 1947. Collins’ later Daniel Boone National Forest history says his chapter on Sublimity was based on that Hedges report.
Other records likely remain scattered across archives. The National Archives identifies Record Group 95 as the Records of the Forest Service, covering Forest Service records from 1870 to 1998, including administrative files, correspondence, field records, reports, directives, and related material. The National Archives also identifies Record Group 35 as the Records of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which would be relevant for CCC work connected to the larger Sublimity and Daniel Boone National Forest landscape.
For local researchers, Laurel County deeds, tax records, school records, newspaper files, church records, and cemetery surveys may tell the human story more fully than federal reports alone. The official documents explain why Sublimity was planned. Local records can show who lived there, who stayed after 1945, which houses survived, and how the community remembered itself once the project was gone.
Why Sublimity City Matters
Sublimity City matters because it tells a different kind of Appalachian history. It is not only a story of settlement, war, coal, timber, or migration. It is a story of a federal experiment placed directly into a mountain county during the Depression. It shows how national policy reached a small place south of London and tried to reshape land, labor, housing, family life, and the future.
The project was imperfect. Its administrators argued over authority. Its family selection system carried the biases of its time. Its finances did not satisfy every official. It did not last as a government-run community.
Still, the record suggests that Sublimity gave some families better houses, more stable surroundings, community institutions, and a chance to imagine something beyond the hardest years of the Depression. That is why the name deserves to be remembered. Sublimity City was not just a label on a map. It was one of Laurel County’s clearest windows into the New Deal in Appalachia, where federal plans met mountain land and where an experiment became a community.
Sources & Further Reading
Hedges, W. E. “History of the Sublimity Forest Community Situated in Laurel County, Kentucky.” 1947. Robert F. Collins Papers. Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections. https://digitalcollections.eku.edu/items/show/102734
Collins, Robert F. A History of the Daniel Boone National Forest, 1770–1970. Edited by Betty B. Ellison. Winchester, KY: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Region, 1975. https://npshistory.com/publications/usfs/region/8/daniel-boone/history/index.htm
Collins, Robert F. “Chapter XXX: The Sublimity Project.” In A History of the Daniel Boone National Forest, 1770–1970. Winchester, KY: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Region, 1975. https://npshistory.com/publications/usfs/region/8/daniel-boone/history/chap30.htm
United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Security Administration. Farm Security Administration Homesteads. Revised June 1, 1941. Washington, DC: Farm Security Administration, 1941. https://archive.org/details/farmsecurityadmi1940unit
United States Congress. Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. 49 Stat. 115. Approved April 8, 1935. https://www.govinfo.gov/link/statute/49/115
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “London, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-london.html
Rennick, Robert M. Laurel County. Morehead, KY: Morehead State University, 2000. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=kentucky_county_histories
Mastran, Shelley Smith, and Nan Lowerre. Mountaineers and Rangers: A History of Federal Forest Management in the Southern Appalachians, 1900–81. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1983. https://npshistory.com/publications/usfs/region/8/history/index.htm
Kentucky Heritage Council. The New Deal Builds: A Historic Context of the New Deal in East Kentucky, 1933 to 1943. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Heritage Council. https://heritage.ky.gov/Documents/NewDealBuilds.pdf
Blakey, George T. Hard Times and New Deal in Kentucky, 1929–1939. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/49/
United States Geological Survey. Lily, Kentucky, 7.5 Minute Topographic Quadrangle. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1961. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Lily_709120_1961_24000_geo.pdf
TopoZone. “Sublimity City Topo Map in Laurel County, Kentucky.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.topozone.com/kentucky/laurel-ky/city/sublimity-city/
National Archives. “Records of the Forest Service.” Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States, Record Group 95. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/095.html
National Archives. “Records of the Farmers Home Administration.” Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the United States, Record Group 96. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/096.html
National Archives at Atlanta. “RG 96: Farmers Home Administration, Inventory of Records.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/finding-aids/rg96_recordsinventory.html
National Archives. “Record Group 35: Records of the Civilian Conservation Corps.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/findingaid/stat/discovery/35
Library of Congress. “Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives: About This Collection.” Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/fsa-owi-black-and-white-negatives/about-this-collection/
United States Forest Service. “Bee Rock Campground.” Daniel Boone National Forest. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.fs.usda.gov/r08/danielboone/recreation/bee-rock-campground
National Park Service. “C. A. Baldwin Farmstead, Christian County, Kentucky.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2012. https://heritage.ky.gov/historic-places/national-register/Property%20Listings/Christian_CABaldwinFarmstead.pdf
Yarnell, Susan L. The Southern Appalachians: A History of the Landscape. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station, 1998. https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/331.pdf
Author Note: Sublimity City is one of those Appalachian places where the name on a map hides a much larger story. This article follows the federal records, local place-name trail, and New Deal history behind Laurel County’s planned forest community.