Horse Creek is a
tributary of
Goose Creek river in
Clay County Clay County is the name of 18 counties in the United States. Most are named for Henry Clay, U.S. Senator and statesman:
* Clay County, Alabama
* Clay County, Arkansas (named for John Clayton, and originally named Clayton County)
* Clay County, Flor ...
in the
U.S. state of
Kentucky.
The
Cumberland and Manchester Railway
Cumberland ( ) is a historic county in the far North West England. It covers part of the Lake District as well as the north Pennines and Solway Firth coast. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. From 1974 ...
built a spur line up the creek, and it has been the site of operations of at least eight coal mining companies.
The name comes, according to local tradition, from the proliferation of "
horseweed" in the creek valley.
Tributaries and post offices
One of the creek's own tributaries is the Paw Paw Branch, location of
Siebert town, railroad depot, and erstwhile postoffice.
The mouth of the Crawfish Branch tributary to the creek is the location of the Crawfish pos toffice, established on March 29, 1907, by postmaster Hugh Gregory.
It is south of
Manchester and the creek that it serves is long.
However, the station on the spur line, a loading depot for the coal mining operations, was named Hima.
On May 4, 1920, then postmaster David Gregory renamed the post office to the name of the railway stop.
The mouth of the long Pigeon Roost Branch tributary to the creek was the original location of the Pigeon Roost postoffice, established on 1888-05-11 by storekeeper and postmaster Jefferson D. Rowland.
Local oral history is that they were named after a large flock of pigeons roosting on timber.
The postoffice moved around to several locations along Horse Creek and Kentucky Route 80 over the years, its name becoming Pigeonroost in 1894, until it closed in 1974, its final location being two miles downstream of Pigeon Roost Creek and south-west of Manchester.
Coal
The coal beneath the creek is part of Kentucky's
Breathitt Formation
The Breathitt Formation is a geologic formation in Kentucky which preserves fossils dating back to the Pennsylvanian period.Chesnut, D.R., Jr., 1992, Stratigraphic and structural framework of the Carboniferous rocks of the central Appalachian bas ...
.
Pollution caused by the mining operations was measured in 1969.
The
pH of the river water was 4.2 in Horse Creek itself, and 5.8 in Goose Creek.
Fish kills were reported for Goose Creek, and both Goose Creek and downstream South Fork of Kentucky River were occasionally acidic.
The problems of acidic outflow and sediment affecting the downstream waters of Goose continued to be reported in 1979.
The Cumberland and Manchester Railway railway spur was built in 1918, contracted to L.L. Richardson for building the road and John C. White for supplying of timber for
trestle
ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), better known as Trestle, was a unique electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation and testing apparatus built between 1972 and 1980 during the Cold War at Sandia National Laborato ...
s.
See also
*
List of rivers of Kentucky
List of rivers in Kentucky (U.S. state).
By drainage basin
This list is arranged by drainage basin, with respective tributaries indented under each larger stream's name. All rivers in Kentucky flow to the Mississippi River, nearly all by virtue o ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
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Rivers of Kentucky
Rivers of Clay County, Kentucky
{{Kentucky-river-stub