The Ghost Towns of 174

People from Appalachia have often been culturally stereotyped as backward hicks, rednecks, and hillbillies that can’t read or talk right, don’t use soap or wear shoes. Blame Lil Abner and the Beverly Hillbillies for part of this perception. The purpose of the book is not to untangle mountain folk prejudices but hopefully show the individualism, self-reliance, pride, family, humor, and patriotism I knew as a child growing up in Carter County, Kentucky. My family was among the 400,000 Kentucky sons and daughters who migrated to the industrial north in the 40s and 50s to find work. Many of the native communities they left never economically recovered. The Ghost Towns of 174 is a four-generation family memoir woven through six such small communities located on a winding 11 mile stretch of road between Olive Hill and Morehead, Kentucky. The book focuses on the Davis/Hall families but is written in context of history’s repeating cycles and generational change. Chapters are devoted to Kentucky’s out-migration, Carter County’s service to the country, Olive Hill and Morehead history, and a driving tour of the six ghost town communities in the late 1950s. “People from Appalachia never forget “back home,” says Davis. “But, to me, “back home” isn’t Lil Abner, but a place where proud people made this nation proud.”