Qualla: Catlettsburg, Kentucky

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between roughly 1890 and 1920, Catlettsburg, Kentucky, was the largest hardwood timber market in the world. Logs floated down the Big Sandy River from the deep eastern Kentucky forests, accumulated at the mouth where the Big Sandy meets the Ohio, and were sold by the millions of board feet to buyers from across the country. Virgin oak, walnut, hemlock, hickory - the great trees of the Appalachian forest came through Catlettsburg on their way to becoming furniture, flooring, ship timbers, and gun stocks. By the 1920s the boom was over because the trees were gone. Catlettsburg today is a town of 1,780 people, the Boyd County seat, the kind of small American river city whose past dwarfs its present by an order of magnitude.

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: The Catletts and Their Inn

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Alexander Catlett arrived at this bend of the Ohio River in 1798. Before his arrival, the spot was known as the Mouth of Sandy. His son Horatio opened a post office on December 5, 1810, the first official use of the Catlett family name as the community's identity. Around 1811, th...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: Hardwood King

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wvfunnyman, CC BY-SA 3.0. Catlettsburg's hardwood market peaked in the decades around 1900. The Big Sandy River drained an enormous watershed of mature Appalachian forest, and the easiest way to get timber to market was to float it. Logs were branded by individual loggers, floated downstream, and sorted a...

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Image: Wvfunnyman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: The Railroad Bridge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Collis P. Huntington built the city of Huntington across the river specifically to be a railroad town for his Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. In 1885 the C&O began constructing the railroad bridge that crosses the Big Sandy at Catlettsburg, linking the Kentucky side to Kenova, West ...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: Beechmoor and Mary Elliott Flanery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Beechmoor Place on Walnut Street incorporates the original Catlett House as its eastern wing - the building now used as the servants' quarters of the larger Georgian home built next to it. Colonel Laban T. Moore, a former U.S. House member, bought the estate in 1868 for $10,000 (...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Catlettsburg, Kentucky: The Town from Above

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air, Catlettsburg sits at the confluence of the Big Sandy and Ohio rivers, with the railroad bridge a thin straight line crossing the smaller Big Sandy and the Marathon Petroleum Catlettsburg Refinery looming as the largest industrial complex in the area. The downtown gr...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0