Harlan County with communities of Benham and Lynch

Up Looney Creek in 1917. Although the companies built two complete towns in remote, sparsely populated, frontier-like locations adjacent to each other, within five years they housed several thousand people and provided residents with a quality of life, and restrictions on their daily lives, matched by few other places in the country. 

The opening of the Harlan County coalfield in Kentucky came when the L N Railroad completed the Wasiota and Black Mountain Branch spur into the county in the early 1900 s. By 1921 Harlan had become the top coal-producing county in Kentucky, and the coal operations established at Benham and Lynch ultimately became the largest in the county. The two towns also became thriving communities that fluctuated in size as the demand for coal, and therefore labor, rose and fell (Benham, Kentucky 2009). 

---

Fig. 106.2 Harlan County with communities of Benham and Lynch. (Cartography by Dick...

---