Editor’s note: Perry County has numerous individual communities, all with their own stories and folklore. They have interesting names, formation stories, and histories, all of which make up the history of Perry County. The Hazard Herald is celebrating this with a recurring feature profiling the communities of our county.
DWARF – Located roughly 10 miles from Hazard, tucked between Bulan and Ary along the winding trail of Highway 476, the community of Dwarf once played a pivotal role in commerce and transportation for the people of northeastern Perry County and parts of Knott County.
Only a few miles away from the Knott/Perry line, Dwarf was once a thriving community with a high school, mill, bus station, multiple stores and even a dairy farm. While all of that may now be gone, what Dwarf still has, and a select few are trying to maintain, is a rich history that few local communities can rival.
Dwarf and its post office were originally known as Tunnel Mill, named for the mill that was once in high demand on Troublesome Creek. The Tunnel Mill post office was established in 1878, and closed three years later. It was re-established in 1883 and named Dwarf, after local resident Jeremiah Combs, known locally as “Short Jerry.”
The mill at Dwarf was constructed over a four-year period in the 1870s by brothers Sam and Felix Combs (who were, according to local histories, Jeremiah’s brothers as well), and its tunnel was a marvel of engineering skill.
Cut through solid rock, reportedly using only gun powder and a few hand tools, the tunnel began at a small dam on Troublesome Creek alongside what is now Highway 550. The tunnel was carved roughly four feet high and 172 feet long, with water from the mill exiting back into the waters of Troublesome Creek on the other side of a horseshoe bend. The skill it took to engineer such a tunnel, to maintain a grade that would ensure the water would not back feed, is a testament to the ingenuity of the people who built it.
The mill, which was rebuilt at least once, was said to have made the Combs brothers a small fortune, and it provided a valuable service to local residents.
“This was right about the time of the Civil War,” noted Dwarf resident Dennis Miller. “They done everything. They sawed wood, carted wool, ground corn, whatever.”
The mill was in operation until just after World War II, and what made it unique was the way it used water from the dam to turn the mill wheel from underneath.
“It was one of only two or three undershot mills in the country,” Miller noted. “Most of the mills, water pours over the wheels. This went under it.”
Today, and some would say sadly, the mill’s former location can only be discerned by those who know where to look. A few feet of silt deposited along the creek bed over the years now covers most signs that the mill even existed at all. Only the imprint of what once was a road leading to the site betrays its otherwise inconspicuous location.
Though the last remnant of the mill was likely washed downstream in the Troublesome, Miller noted that the grinding stones are still there, though they are now buried underneath the silt.
Joyce Smith was raised in Dwarf, and along with fellow community members David and Danny Lovins, helped lead an effort to revive the community in 2009, which included a mural and a history stand across from the post office. She said they had hoped to find a way to retrieve those heavy stones from underneath the creek bed and display them in the community, but those efforts thus far have been fruitless.
“We’d like to get them out, but we don’t know how to go about it,” she said.
Dwarf’s importance to the county during the 20th century went beyond the mill. Physically located at a crossroads of sorts, prior to the construction of the new Highway 80 Dwarf served as a transportation hub. A bus station provided many in Perry and neighboring Knott County with transportation outside of the rugged and remote mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and its location along the old Highway 15 was the route to take to head north to Jackson, Campton or Lexington.
“That’s the reason we called it the center of the universe,” Miller said. “Everything came through Dwarf.”
During the 1960s and 70s the community remained a busy one, at one time boasting three stores within a short distance of one another. And there was also a draw for local athletes, with what Miller described as a full length dirt basketball court, something today’s younger generations may not know so much about.
“There would be 200 people over on a Saturday playing basketball, coming from everywhere,” Miller said.
“You wouldn’t believe what a booming community it was,” he added.
But like many of the outlying communities of Perry County, progress elsewhere meant a local decline.
David Lovins noted that the construction of the new Highways 15 and 80, which now intersect in Hazard, allowed for the county seat to continue to develop, essentially stalling any further development for Dwarf.
What remained of Dwarf’s businesses closed in the 1980s and 90s, and all that remains now is the local post office, and even that may not survive impending cuts from a struggling federal postal service.
Miller, Smith and David and Danny Lovins are part of a handful of people in the community who are trying to revive Dwarf’s history for future generations. The old tunnel mill, David Lovins noted, could serve as a tourist attraction if it were rebuilt and the tunnel cleared of the silt that has undoubtedly filled it in the past few decades. And if the grinding stones could be retrieved as well, an important part of the community’s history of which younger generations are unaware could be brought back to light.
But that’s a big undertaking in an uncertain economy, and along with money, it’s an effort that would also need to get some traction outside of the community of Dwarf.
Post a Comment
