Royalton is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in Magoffin County,

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

, United States. It lies along Route 7 southeast of the city of Salyersville, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...

of Magoffin County. Its elevation is 879 feet (268 m). Although it is unincorporated it had a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional ser ...

, with the ZIP code 41464.

History

Royalton was established as a company town by the Dawkins Lumber Company of Ashland Kentucky who opened a mill there on August 1, 1920. They were financed by the Royal Bank of Canada for which the town is named. The lumber company established a railroad, the Dawkins Line, in order to transport lumber. After the lumber industry left the coal industry became big in Royalton. A coal

tipple A tipple is a structure used at a mine to load the extracted product (e.g., coal, ores) for transport, typically into railroad hopper cars. In the United States, tipples have been frequently associated with coal mines, but they have also been use ...

was built and the railroad was put to use by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1930 and later by

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

. The coal industry has since moved on and the Dawkins Line was sold to R.J. Corman in 2002 and abandoned in 2004. After the rail corridor was abandoned, the former railroad

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

was converted to the Dawkins Line Rail Trail, which opened in 2013.Gov. Beshear and First Lady Open Dawkins Line Rail Trail
Governor Steve Beshear's Communications Office. Retrieved 2013-06-21. The Royalton post office was established on September 20, 1920.Robert M. Rennick ''Kentucky Place Names'', 1988, p. 257. In 2011 the post office was closed, one of several thousand being eliminated by the

US Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...

across the country in an effort to save revenue.

References

Unincorporated communities in Magoffin County, Kentucky Unincorporated communities in Kentucky {{MagoffinCountyKY-geo-stub