Kingdom Come Settlement School — Letcher County, Kentucky

Kingdom Come Elementary School is located in Letcher County along state route 160.  This is the school that you can see the roof of off in the valley from the overlooks in Kingdom Come State Park in Cumberland. The school’s roots can be traced back to 1924 when the Kingdom Come Settlement School was founded.

Until the mid 1960s Kingdom Come Settlement School would act as a combined school serving students from Elementary all the way through high school.

In the mid 1960s the Letcher County Board of Education decided to start building newer, modern, larger schools.  It was suggested that high school students at Kingdom Come be transferred to Whitesburg High School and Kingdom Come become a K-8 facility.

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In this plan neighboring schools of Bear Branch, Coyes Gap and Hurricane Gap would close and students would be absorbed into the new Kingdom Come Elementary.

After several delays, in the fall of 1971 construction began.

A new school was built at Kingdom Come where it remained in operation until 2007 when faced with budget issues the school of 85 students was closed.

From research I have done, this building was part of the original Kingdom Come School and remained in use as the new school was being constructed.

The school now serves as a multi purpose community center.

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Bear Branch One Room School — Letcher County, Kentucky

Since I’ve been roaming the area for old abandoned schools one thing that I havent come across much of is a one room school.  The Bear Branch School is probably one of the most intact and newest constructed one room schools in this part of the country.

Located along state highway 510 in a part of Letcher County almost disected from the rest of the county by mountains and rivers is the community of  Gilly and Gordon near the Harlan and Letcher County Line.   Along the highway when driving through Gordon you will notice a few interesting buildings.  The most interesting and probably historic of these buildings is the old Bear Branch School.

I first came across this old school thanks to someone geotagging it on google maps.  So when you pull up a map of the area and type in ‘school’   several dozen schools pop up.  90% of those are long gone, but once I cruised in on google earth and streetview I realized that this school was still standing and largely in tact.

I had to sort through some confusion when researching this school in large part thanks to my predetermined bias that one room schools were largely built way before when this one was actually constructed.  This was actually the second Bear Branch School.  There had been a school at Bear Branch as early as 1915.  At that time the school had around 60 students.

This Bear Branch School was constructed around 1948 replacing the older Bear Branch School that was a wooden structure.  I had to sort through some confusion when researching this school in large part thanks to my predetermined bias that one room schools were largely built way before when this one was actually constructed.  This was actually the second Bear Branch School.  There had been a school at Bear Branch as early as 1915.  At that time the school had around 60 students ranging in ages from 18 to 6.

While researching for this entry I found several references to this older building, leading me to believe that this building was much older than it actually is.  In a 1949 edition of the Mountain Eagle, a newspaper from the county (Letcher) seat of Whitesburg there is an advertisement for bids on the old school.    Those interested contact Superintendent Martha J Potter.  a pdf image of that newspaper clipping can be viewed here:  Mountain Eagle Article

How progressive, strange and admireable it was to find a woman named as a Superintendent as a school system in rural eastern Kentucky in the 1940s.    In fact, the early 1940s.  Martha Potter was named superintendent of Letcher County Schools in 1943.

In 1963 Letcher County began building new, larger  school centers replacing the old one and two room schools like the one at Bear Branch.  It was recommended that as soon as roads are fixed and transportation was arranged that the 15 students enrolled at Bear Branch be transfered to Kingdom Come Settlement School about 10 miles away in Linefork.