Appalachian Community Histories – Yerkes, Perry County: Mail, Mines, Maps, and a Coalfield Community on KY 451
Yerkes is one of those Perry County places whose history does not sit in one neat town book. Its story has to be pieced together from maps, mine reports, post office records, road indexes, census geography, newspapers, cemeteries, and family records. That kind of record is common in the eastern Kentucky coalfield, where many communities grew along railroad lines, creek valleys, mine works, and small post offices rather than around incorporated town governments.
Perry County itself was formed in 1821 from Clay and Floyd counties, with Hazard as the county seat, according to the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives county formation chart. Perry County’s own history pages also tie the county’s development to the North Fork of the Kentucky River, the early county seat at Perry Court House, and the coal and lumber industries that shaped the local economy. Yerkes belongs to that same landscape of river corridors, coal seams, and road communities.
Modern Perry County still recognizes Yerkes among its named communities. That matters because Yerkes was never simply a dot on a map. It was a working place, tied to mail service, railroad geography, local roads, schools, churches, cemeteries, and nearby coal operations. The county’s official community listing places Yerkes alongside places such as Krypton, Typo, Busy, Chavies, Dunraven, Napfor, Viper, Wentz, and Tribbey, all names that help define the Perry County coalfield north and northeast of Hazard.
Yerkes on the Map
The strongest starting point for Yerkes is the map record. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System, or GNIS, is the federal repository for domestic place names, while GNIS feature classes help explain how places such as Yerkes are treated as populated places, post offices, tunnels, or other mapped features. The USGS notes that populated places are areas with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population, often without legal boundaries. That definition fits many unincorporated Appalachian communities, including Yerkes.
The Krypton topographic quadrangle is especially important for understanding Yerkes. YellowMaps’ USGS-derived Krypton map page identifies the map as the Krypton 1:24,000 topographic quadrangle and notes that its source map images come from the United States Geological Survey. It also lists several map versions, including 1954, 1961, 1972, 2011, 2013, and 2016, which makes the quadrangle useful for tracking how the local geography appeared across time.
On that Krypton map record, Yerkes appears among the populated places of the quadrangle, near Busy, Butterfly, Campbell, Chavies, Dunraven, Krypton, Lamont, Napfor, Olivers, Red Hill, and Typo. The same gazetteer section also lists Yerkes Post Office as a historical post office feature and Yerkes Tunnel among the tunnels of the quadrangle. In other words, the map record preserves three related versions of the place: the community, the mail point, and the railroad tunnel.
The old post office record gives Yerkes another anchor. YellowMaps lists Yerkes Post Office as a historical post office feature in Perry County, Kentucky, on the Krypton USGS quadrangle, with coordinates and elevation. Today, the United States Postal Service still lists a Yerkes Post Office at 8550 KY Highway 451, Yerkes, Kentucky 41778. That continuity is important. Even when mines close, schools consolidate, and railroad traffic changes, a post office can keep a community name alive in daily use.
Coal, Rock, and the Krypton Quadrangle
Yerkes sits in a part of Perry County where geology and settlement are almost impossible to separate. Robert B. Mixon’s 1965 U.S. Geological Survey map, Geology of the Krypton Quadrangle, Kentucky, is one of the key official sources for the area. The USGS identifies it as Geologic Quadrangle 389, a 1:24,000 scale map prepared by Mixon and published in 1965. For a place like Yerkes, that map matters because it places the community within the same bedrock world that shaped coal mining, railroad engineering, road grades, drainage, and hillside settlement.
The Kentucky Geological Survey’s Perry County mined-out-area map gives the broader coalfield picture. On that map, Yerkes appears among Perry County places such as Busy, Typo, Krypton, Napfor, Chavies, Dunraven, Bulan, Hardburly, Viper, Tilford, and others. The map identifies mined-out areas in relation to the county’s Breathitt Group geology and cites the Coal Atlas of Kentucky as its source. That does not make every house or hollow at Yerkes a mine site, but it shows that the community sits in the mined coalfield belt that shaped Perry County’s twentieth-century growth.
The Kentucky Department of Mines annual reports help narrow the story further. Searchable 1920s mine reports place Yerkes in Perry County’s coal record, and coal-camp compilations based on mine records associate Yerkes with operations such as Solar Coal Company in the 1919 to 1928 period and with Yerkes as a coal-camp location in the early 1920s. Those compilations should be checked against the original annual reports when writing a final scholarly footnote, but together they point to Yerkes as part of the working coal landscape rather than just a residential name on KY 451.
The Railroad and Yerkes Tunnel
The railroad record gives Yerkes one of its clearest historical identities. The Krypton quadrangle lists Yerkes Tunnel as one of the tunnels in the area, along with Campbell Tunnel, Line Tunnel, and Typo Tunnel. That cluster of tunnel names shows how steep, narrow, and engineered this section of Perry County became once the railroad followed the North Fork country through bends, ridges, and coal settlements.
A January 27, 1921 issue of The Hazard Herald, available through the Library of Congress, gives a vivid primary-source glimpse of that railroad landscape. The article “Falling Timbers In Tunnel Delay Trains” reported that falling timbers in Campbell’s Tunnel, just north of Yerkes and eight miles from Hazard, delayed trains. That small notice places Yerkes in an active railroad corridor where tunnel maintenance, timbering, and train delays were part of the everyday coalfield infrastructure.
The tunnel record also helps explain why Yerkes was never isolated from the larger county story. The community sat near a line that carried coal, people, mail, supplies, and news through the mountains. In a valley where the river, road, railroad, and hillside all crowded together, the tunnel was not just an engineering feature. It was part of how Yerkes connected to Hazard, Krypton, Typo, Busy, and the rest of the North Fork coalfield.
Roads, School Roads, and KY 451
Yerkes is also a road community. Perry County’s road index repeatedly places Yerkes School Road off KY Highway 451. Entries for Early Bird Lane, Hilltop Drive, and Peach Tree Drive all describe routes from North KY 15, the Daniel Boone Parkway, West KY 80, and KY 451 before turning onto Yerkes School Road. That road record preserves a local geography of homes, school memory, and side roads branching from the main highway.
Perry County’s Trail Town materials also put Yerkes on a larger travel route. The county describes the TransAmerica Trail as passing through the northern portion of Perry County, moving from KY 28 toward KY 451 and then through Krypton, Yerkes, and Busy before intersecting old KY 80 near Exit 56 of the Hal Rogers Parkway. That modern recreational description is not the same as early coalfield history, but it shows how the same road corridor remains useful for understanding movement through the county.
This road identity matters because small Appalachian communities often survive in the language of directions. A school road, a post office, a church, a cemetery, a bridge, or a bend in the highway can preserve a name long after the original industry has faded. In Yerkes, KY 451 and Yerkes School Road keep the place tied to everyday travel.
Mail, Fire, and Community Continuity
The Yerkes Post Office is one of the strongest signs of the community’s continued identity. USPS lists the current post office in Yerkes, while older map records preserve Yerkes Post Office as a historical feature. Together, they show that the name existed both as a mapped historical location and as a modern postal address.
Modern local news shows how central that post office remained to residents. In 2016, WYMT reported that a fire damaged the building that held the Yerkes post office and a convenience store on Highway 451. The report said the post office had to close temporarily, that more than 100 people had post office boxes there, and that customers were directed to Avawam while service was being restored. That story is recent, but it captures something old: the post office was still a practical center of community life.
Water has also remained part of the local road story. In February 2019, WYMT reported road closings across the mountains and noted that KY 451 was closed near the Yerkes Post Office because water was over the roadway. That kind of report fits the geography of Yerkes, where roads, streams, rail lines, and settlement share tight valley space.
Schools, Census Geography, and Local People
Yerkes appears in records not only as a place but as a home community. The 1940 census enumeration district descriptions for Perry County include Yerkes and Yerkes part in the federal census geography. That is useful for family historians because it helps place households within a government record system, especially when families are otherwise listed only by magisterial district, road, creek, or voting precinct.
Pine Mountain Settlement School records give one of the most meaningful person-level links to Yerkes. The school’s archival biography of Nan Louise Milan states that she was born in Yerkes, Kentucky, on November 26, 1917, and attended Pine Mountain Settlement School from 1935 to 1937. Her record connects Yerkes to the wider educational reform and settlement-school network of eastern Kentucky, including Pine Mountain’s student records, community work, and pack horse library activity.
Newspaper records also preserve smaller traces of community life. Hazard Herald clippings from the 1930s name Yerkes residents such as Viola Campbell and Sarah Jane Campbell, while later digitized issues include Yerkes as a local voting or community reference. These are the kinds of scattered sources that matter for a place without a single written town history. They put names back into the landscape and show Yerkes as a lived community, not only a map label.
Why Yerkes Matters
Yerkes matters because it shows how many eastern Kentucky communities have to be read. The official record begins with maps, names, roads, geology, and post offices. The human record comes through mine reports, census descriptions, school records, cemeteries, church histories, and newspapers. None of those sources alone tells the full story, but together they show a Perry County place formed by coal, mail, railroad work, road travel, family networks, and local memory.
The most important thing about Yerkes may be its persistence. It survived in the USGS map record. It survived in the post office record. It survived in the road index, the census geography, the mine reports, the tunnel record, the Trail Town route, and the memories of families who called it home. In that way, Yerkes is not just a small place near Krypton, Busy, and Typo. It is a good example of how Appalachian history often remains scattered across ordinary records, waiting to be gathered back into a community story.
Sources & Further Reading
Allord, Gregory J., Jennifer L. Walter, Kristin A. Fishburn, and Gale A. Shea. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Perry, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/states_counties/perry/
Chenault, Samuel Morse. “Hazard, Heart of the Coal Fields.” Lexington Herald, December 21, 1919. Transcribed by Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/scrapbooks-albums-gathered-notes/scrapbooks-guide/local-history-scrapbook-guide-1920-1980/hazard-heart-of-the-coal-fields/
FamilySearch. “Perry County, Kentucky Genealogy.” FamilySearch Research Wiki. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Perry_County,_Kentucky_Genealogy
Find a Grave. “Cemeteries in Yerkes, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery-browse/USA/Kentucky/Perry-County/Yerkes?id=city_54093
Find a Grave. “Yerkes Baptist Church Cemetery.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2322462/yerkes-baptist-church-cemetery
Fishburn, Kristin A. Historical Topographic Map Collection. U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 179. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2017. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/0179/gip179_bookmark1.pdf
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Kentucky Mine Mapping Information System.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://minemaps.ky.gov/
Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. “Mine Mapping.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Pages/mine-mapping.aspx
Kentucky Geological Survey. “KGSGeoPortal: Links to Maps and Databases.” University of Kentucky. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsmap/KGSGeoPortal/KGSPortalLink.asp
Kentucky Geological Survey. Perry County, Kentucky. University of Kentucky. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc164_12.pdf
Kentucky Geological Survey. Perry County Mined-Out Areas. University of Kentucky. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/download/gwatlas/gwcounty/perry/PERRYMO.pdf
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Item List 052066.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction/Contract%20Items/052066items01591.html
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Item List 082319.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Construction/Contract%20Items/082319items02595.html
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Perry County State Primary Road System.” July 1, 2025. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://transportation.ky.gov/Planning/State%20Primary%20Road%20System%20Lists/Perry.pdf
KYGenWeb. “Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://kygenweb.net/perry/
KY Landforms. “Yerkes Tunnel.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.kylandforms.com/index.php/railroad/188-yerkes-tunnel
LDSGenealogy.com. “Perry County, Kentucky Cemetery Records.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/Perry-County-Cemetery-Records.htm
LDSGenealogy.com. “Yerkes Genealogy, in Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://ldsgenealogy.com/KY/Yerkes.htm
Library of Congress. “The Hazard Herald, Hazard, Ky., January 27, 1921.” Chronicling America. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85052003/1921-01-27/ed-1/?st=text
Mixon, Robert B. Geology of the Krypton Quadrangle, Kentucky. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-389. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1965. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gq389
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Records.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Geographic Finding Aids.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids
Perry County Fiscal Court. “About Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycountyky.gov/about-perry-county/
Perry County Fiscal Court. “Communities.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycounty.ky.gov/things-to-do/Pages/Communities.aspx
Perry County Fiscal Court. “Kentucky Trail Town.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycountyky.gov/kentucky-trail-town/
Perry County Fiscal Court. “Road Index.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://perrycounty.ky.gov/Pages/Road-Index.aspx
Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections. “Nan Milan.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://pinemountainsettlement.net/biography-a-z/nan-milan/
Randolph, Helen F. “Perry County: General History.” County Histories of Kentucky 59. Morehead State University ScholarWorks. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/kentucky_county_histories/59/
Three Forks Association. “A Brief History of Three Forks Association, KY.” Baptist History Homepage. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.three.forks.assoc.html
United States Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “GNIS Domestic Names Feature Classes.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/gnis-domestic-names-feature-classes
United States Geological Survey. Krypton, Kentucky, 1:24,000-Scale Topographic Quadrangle. 1954. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Krypton_709036_1954_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Krypton, Kentucky, 1:24,000-Scale Topographic Quadrangle. 1961. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/KY/24000/KY_Krypton_709037_1961_24000_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. Krypton, Kentucky, US Topo. 2016. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/KY/KY_Krypton_20160425_TM_geo.pdf
United States Postal Service. “Yerkes Post Office.” USPS Locations. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://tools.usps.com/locations/home.htm?location=1388465
University of Texas Libraries. “Kentucky Historical Topographic Maps.” Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/kentucky/
Wikimedia Commons. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Kentucky, Perry County, ED 97-31, ED 97-32, NARA 5863024.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Kentucky_-_Perry_County_-_ED_97-31,_ED_97-32_-_NARA_-_5863024.jpg
WYMT. “Police Are Investigating Post Office Fire in Yerkes.” October 3, 2016. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Police-are-investigating-Post-Office-fire-in-Yerkes-395570471.html
WYMT. “Roads Close Due to Flooding across Eastern Kentucky.” February 25, 2019. Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Roads-close-due-to-flooding-across-Eastern-Kentucky–506279601.html
YellowMaps. “Krypton Topo Map, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.yellowmaps.com/usgs/quad/37083c3.htm
YellowMaps. “Yerkes Post Office, Historical, Map, Perry County, Kentucky.” Accessed May 18, 2026. https://www.yellowmaps.com/usgs/topo.cfm?map=ky-2557214-yerkes-post-office-%28historical%29
Author Note: Yerkes is the kind of Perry County place that reminds me how much Appalachian history survives in maps, post offices, road names, cemeteries, and scattered records. I hope this article helps bring that paper trail together so the community feels less like a dot on a map and more like part of the county’s lived memory.