Built by Coal: The Rise and Reckoning of Jenkins, Kentucky

Tonight on Appalachian Shine, we travel into the mountains of Letcher County to explore the story of Jenkins, Kentucky—a town that didn’t grow slowly over generations, but appeared almost overnight with the coming of coal and the railroad.

We begin long before Jenkins had a name, when this land was shaped by Native movement, dense forest, and the quiet rhythm of Appalachian life. Then, almost all at once, everything changed. A powerful coal company arrived, the railroad carved its way through the hills, and a fully formed company town rose from the valley—bringing jobs, opportunity, control, and contradiction.

But this isn’t just a story about industry.

It’s about the people who built lives inside a system they didn’t create…
The families who found community on front porches and along creek banks…
The stories that still echo—from the biggest fish ever caught in a local pond, to the quiet mysteries

whispered in the mountains after dark.

We’ll talk about the boom years, the decline of coal, and what remains today in a town still holding onto its identity while searching for what comes next.

And by the end, we’ll leave you with a few questions worth carrying:

What happens to a town when the reason it was built begins to fade?
Can a place shaped by industry ever truly become its own?

And how many stories like this are still waiting—just beyond the next ridge?

This is more than history.
It’s memory. It’s identity. It’s Appalachia.

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