This museum is a local history museum located across from Jenkins High School in the mountains of…read moreKentucky. If you are looking for something to do indoors, this place beautifully show the history of Letcher County this is the place. The Museum was dedicate din May 1998. It has been authentically restored 1911 era train station. It has many displays of photographs of historical and modern coal mining, actual mining tools along with many mining and railroad accruements. Truly a unquie experience and a unique destination

This is a very hard working and professional group of men and women. They generally have a very…read morefast response time regardless of the time of day or night that they are paged. This is not often the case with many volunteer fire and rescue departments. They stay up to date on training and maintain state of the art equipment. Their volunteers are very knowledgeable in their field. They also do a lot of public relations work in their area. This group is a real asset to their community.

This marker by the side of the road recalls a critical business from the 1800s that is since gone…read more It reads, "Here in 1835, the Brashears' well produced salt from a fine brine. For half century it supplied area with that commodity so necessary to their livelihood. These wells were drilled by hand. Salt was sold both here and in Virginia, transported for $1.00 a bushel over treacherous mountain trails by mule and oxen. The wells were destroyed by flood in 1892." Salt played a major role during the Civil War. Salt not only preserved food in the days before refrigeration, but was also essential in the curing of leather and dyeing of uniforms. Prior to the war, large quantities of salt were imported from England, Portugal and the British West Indies, but a significant amount was also produced domestically. During the Civil War, salt production facilities in Saltville, Va., Virginia's Kanawha Valley and Avery Island, Louisiana, were crucial to the Confederate war effort, especially after the Union blockaded delivery of salt to the Confederate states. Union general William Tecumseh Sherman once said that "salt is eminently contraband", as an army that has salt can adequately feed its men. [Review 13461 overall, 780 of 2020.]

A beautiful view and then a sober reminder of another dark time in America's past…read more The marker has the same text on both sides. It reads, "Leonard Woods, a black coal miner from Jenkins, KY, was lynched near here on the night of 29-30 Nov. 1927. Officers had arrested Woods for allegedly killing Herschel Deaton, a white man from Coeburn, VA, and had taken him to the Whitesburg, KY jail. On the day of Deaton's funeral, a white mob numbering in the hundreds broke into the jail and brought Woods close to this spot, where they hanged, shot, and burned him. No one was ever arrested. In the aftermath, at the urging of Norfolk editor Louis Jaffé, Norton's Bruce Crawford, and other journalists, VA Gov. Harry F. Byrd worked with the General Assembly early in 1928 to pass the nation's first law defining lynching as a state crime." In the months that followed, Virginia's newspapers debated not only the brutality of the killing but also the complicity of silence in both states, making the Woods case one of the rare Appalachian lynchings that forced a sustained, public reckoning with racial violence in the mountain South. It is marker number XB-27 and it was erected in 2021 by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. There is plenty of room to stop here, read the marker and think about those events. [Review 76 of 2026 - 1522 in Virginia - 25266 overall]

Just across the border from Kentucky into Virginia, this marker points out the importance of the…read morearea here in reference to the Civil War. The marker reads, "Pound Gap probably was named for nearby grain pounding mill. Christopher Gist, returning from the Ohio River where he surveyed land for the Ohio Company, crossed the gap in 1751. During the Civil War, Pound Gap gained strategic importance as a gateway between Virginia and Kentucky. Union Col. James A. Garfield (later president) and his brigade forced the gap from the Kentucky side on 16 March 1862 after a skirmish with Confederate forces under Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall. Confederate Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan forced it from the Virginia side, capturing and destroying property in Kentucky." Long before the Civil War made it a military chokepoint, Pound Gap served as one of the few practical crossings through the tangled high ridges of Pine Mountain, guiding traders, drovers, and families moving between the upper Kentucky River valley and the Clinch River country. The route hardened into a wagon road in the nineteenth century, and its steep approach on the Kentucky side became notorious for mud, washouts, and the slow, echoing climb of freight teams. After the war, the gap's importance shifted to resource extraction, with timber crews and early coal operators using it as a corridor to reach remote hollows on both sides of the state line. In the early twentieth century, the arrival of automobiles forced state engineers to carve a more reliable roadway across the crest, replacing the old rutted track with a graded highway that finally made year‑round travel possible. Today the overlook near the gap offers a sweeping view into Virginia, a reminder that this narrow pass has always been less a boundary than a hinge between two mountain worlds. It is marker number XB-7 and it was erected in 1999 by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. [Review 75 of 2026 - 1521 in Virginia - 25265 overall]

This marker stands on Main Street to the side of a tall brick building that used to be the local…read morehigh school. The marker is on two sides and reads, "his brick facility was built in 1923 by the United States Coal and Coke Co., then leased to Lynch Colored Common Graded School District. Students from Benham and Lynch enrolled in the high school. The first four graduates received their diplomas in 1928." "W.L. Shobe was principal, 1939-56, and was an outstanding and progressive administrator. After Professor Shobe's retirement, Coach John V. Coleman promoted to principal; school name changed to West Main High. School had many notable students and athletes." Online, there is more information... When the coal boom hit eastern Kentucky in the early-twentieth century, mining companies primarily recruited their workers from three population segments. First were local residents, who were traditionally farmers. Second were immigrants, including natives of Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy. Third were African Americans from the Southern states. Like the native mountaineers, they were typically farmers or had worked in the iron foundries of cities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama. Many African Americans who tired of a sharecropping existence welcomed a new change of scenery and opportunity for wage labor. [Review 13459 overall, 778 of 2020.]

Lynch is worth the drive off the beaten path!! So much history! There are several plaques giving…read morehistory and its like stepping back in time.