Great pics! Love the scenery and the Pikeville looks like a decent small city. The pic with the SAAB is crazy!
Pikeville, Kentucky
Nestled in the far Eastern highlands of Kentucky is my hometown. Pikeville. A small city with a population of 6,903 within the city limits and a population of about 23,000 within the 41501 zip code which covers the city and a few miles beyond. It's home to The University of Pikeville and the Pikeville Cut-Through project which I got to see happen growing up in the late 80's/ early 90's.
The city basically flooded often through the years and was also running out of room to build. So with planning done locally and by the Army Corp of Engineers they soon began to blast through an entire mountain, reroute a river, CSX train tracks, US routes 460, 23, 119 and ky 80 though this new mountain cut. They then took the rock and material from the mountain and filled in a large portion of the old river which gave the city new room to build on and relief from decades of flooding. Portions of the old river were left behind as lakes to serve as parkland.
I go back a few times a year to visit and rarely have time to take actual pictures of the city.
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This is one of the new buildings for University of Pikeville. I didn't have time to go up on campus but the campus extends up on the mountain with more buildings.
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New Court House
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The existing Pikeville Medical Center with the new tower currently U/C
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Some of the residential areas downtown
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The outlaying area I grew up in to the south of Pikeville:
The new US 460 expressway U/C
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View from Breaks Interstate Park
Sorry road geeks! No actual interstate anywhere nearby. It's Interstate because it's shared between KY and VA
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and finally the ever shrinking community I grew up in Lookout, Ky population 300+ where the kudzu will overtake a SAAB and anything else that sits still:
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Now abandoned Post Office. Closed in recent years.
The mercantile is my best friends Grandpa's it closed in the late 80's
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My elementary school (abandoned now)
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Rural Pike County population is shrinking as more people migrate out of county or out of state as I did, because I no way in hell did want to become a coal miner.
The city basically flooded often through the years and was also running out of room to build. So with planning done locally and by the Army Corp of Engineers they soon began to blast through an entire mountain, reroute a river, CSX train tracks, US routes 460, 23, 119 and ky 80 though this new mountain cut. They then took the rock and material from the mountain and filled in a large portion of the old river which gave the city new room to build on and relief from decades of flooding. Portions of the old river were left behind as lakes to serve as parkland.
I go back a few times a year to visit and rarely have time to take actual pictures of the city.
This is one of the new buildings for University of Pikeville. I didn't have time to go up on campus but the campus extends up on the mountain with more buildings.
New Court House
The existing Pikeville Medical Center with the new tower currently U/C
Some of the residential areas downtown
The outlaying area I grew up in to the south of Pikeville:
The new US 460 expressway U/C
View from Breaks Interstate Park
Sorry road geeks! No actual interstate anywhere nearby. It's Interstate because it's shared between KY and VA
and finally the ever shrinking community I grew up in Lookout, Ky population 300+ where the kudzu will overtake a SAAB and anything else that sits still:
Now abandoned Post Office. Closed in recent years.
The mercantile is my best friends Grandpa's it closed in the late 80's
My elementary school (abandoned now)
Rural Pike County population is shrinking as more people migrate out of county or out of state as I did, because I no way in hell did want to become a coal miner.
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Amazing pics! 
Must be tough seeing childhood places of interests disappear and go into disrepair. I've seen it as well, but not to that level.
You go visiting due to family?
Must be tough seeing childhood places of interests disappear and go into disrepair. I've seen it as well, but not to that level.You go visiting due to family?
Thanks! It is a bit tough to see things fall apart and my old community turn into a ghost town almost. I was the last generation of teenagers in that community of Lookout. I'm 34 now. Most people left are elderly. There are some young people who stayed behind after high school and they have had children. So I think in the 2020s they will be the next generation of teenagers there. I kinda know how people in Detroit feel in a sense, when the neighborhood you grew up in virtually disappearsAmazing pics!
You go visiting due to family?
Amazingly enough though I was lucky to grow up with people who did actually relocate from the outside world to my area. One of my best friends was from Iceland. She had a Fillipino father, American mother who was from my area and when her parents divorced they left Reykjavik to move to my neighborhood. She still lives there and has children. Another neighbor was Hungarian married to American man. I had Puerto Rican neighbors too. Also there were Koren Americans nearby(white men who brought women they fell in love with from Korean war) their Koren relatives followed as well. When Yugoslavia dissolvd in the early 90's we had a Serbian family move to a nearby community. I don't know how or why they ended up in East KY. Maybe it looks like Serbia?? I don't know.
Unlike cities where thousands of immigrants reside, in my little community their small numbers were significant to us. The few immigrants we had were welcomed and integrated in our daily lives.
I do go back to visit family and to kind of keep in touch with my cultural roots. Appalachia.
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