There is a good chance we would never have heard of Olive Hill, Kentucky if it hadn’t been for the wartime factory boom of the 1940s. Mansfield industry had weathered the insecurity of America’s Great Depression in the ’30s with a remarkable degree of stability, and so when the incredible escalation of war production revved up the economy in the ’40s, the mechanisms were already in place for an astonishing rush of employment. In the space of five years, jobs nearly tripled in the Flats. Correspondingly, during these same years there were fewer and fewer jobs in Carter County, Kentucky.
Factories in Mansfield needed hands, men in Olive Hill needed jobs. The genesis of Little Kentucky is quite simply supply and demand.
Across The River
Olive Hill is just a small town lost out in the hills of northern Kentucky, like a thousand other little Appalachian crossroads communities that were just as happy to be off the beaten path because they were largely self-sufficient and proud in the integrity of their hometown values: work, church, and family.
Olive Hill got on the map, though, when the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad wanted to stop there because the hills surrounding the town were rich in natural resources. In other generations those resources were timber and iron ore, but in the second half of the 1800s and the early decades of the 1900s the nation was interested in Carter County’s clay.
During that early era of US steel production, the mills of America needed to line their blast furnaces with heat resistant fire bricks that required a special kind of clay. This clay was found in deep seams in the mountains around Olive Hill. There was plenty of factory work in Olive Hill making fire bricks during the early decades of the 1900s, and there was no reason in that generation for any of those Kentucky folks to go wandering across the Ohio River except to fish.
The methods of steel production changed in the 1940s, though, and the new procedure no longer required fire bricks. With each passing year demand for bricks waned and there were more men in Kentucky looking for work.
Unfortunately the railroad industry switched to diesel engines about the same time the steel industry stopped needing firebricks, so the market for Carter County’s clay vanished.
Route 23
The Great Migration from the Appalachian South to the industrial North is well documented in American history. Major manufacturing cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh were eager for more working laborers, and all those hard working, hungry blue collars down south left their roots to make the move to where they could earn a living.
The men who found their way to Mansfield from Olive Hill had it easier than most who traveled north, because Richland County is only a 4-hour drive from Carter County, and they could go home on the weekends. Most preferred to think they lived there, and worked here. Eventually their families moved to Mansfield.
Though Route 23 doesn’t pass through Richland County it does constitute most of the miles in the trip from the Ohio River.
Olive Hill is not on Route 23 either: it is 35 miles west on Rt 60 by way of I-64.
The Distance From Olive Hill To Mansfield
When you look at it on the map there are only 214 miles separating these two communities, but for the folks who came here in the ’40s and ’50s the length of the trip was measured in far more than highway miles on Route 23.
When you grow up in the mountains there is always earth around you, rising up surrounding you like soft and safe walls; it’s an unconscious protection like being a little kid among your elders who tower over you. Leaving the mountains can be quite unsettling. It can be disconcerting to see all that emptiness around you stretching away forever.
The folks from Kentucky were vulnerable when they got here, and to be honest, at that time in history Mansfield was not especially welcoming to strangers. It could be a snobby town, a town of cliques and clubs and inner circles. Though Mansfield economy was glad for new hands, the local society was not so accepting of people who spoke with an Appalachian accent.
It was fortunate for newcomers that they had a section of town that was all their own. It really was an entirely transplanted community—like you might lift the sod off one place and lay it over a new landscape. For many years it truly was a little revisioned version of Kentucky.
A Successful Graft
It wasn’t that long before Olive Hill natives or their children began to take part in defining Mansfield—as leaders in business, politics and city government.
Decades have come and gone since those days, and though new generations in Little Kentucky have been born and raised in Mansfield, the community next to the Steel Mill never really severed the umbilical cord to Kentucky. Carter County has always been home, and many people who spend their careers here move back home when they retire.
If Mansfield has a true sister city, it is Olive Hill—we are two branches of one tree. There are people in Mansfield who come from all over everywhere, but no one place on the globe is more represented here than Olive Hill.
This summer I was walking around Olive Hill taking pictures and quite a number of people stopped and asked, in a friendly, curious way, why I wanted photos of downtown. When I explained that I was from Mansfield, Ohio every single one of them said, Oh I have relatives in Mansfield.
Richland County History 
Nice story–even in the 70’s we was still going north–for me Marysville,Ohio. Spent 11 years there and like most of my friends came back home every weekend and moved back when the plant we worked in shut down. My class migrated north in the 70’s and south in the 80’s.
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My Dad and his Brother,” Arthur Kitchen,” used to travel by train to the Coal Mines in Logan county, WV. They would work all week and go back to Ky. on the weekend. Arthur raised my Dad. My Dad really loved him. They were really proud of their Heritage. My Dad was only 14 when he started working in the Coal Mine.
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My Daddy Ollie Kermit Valandingham worked in the clay mines at Grahn, KY that supplied the brickyard.
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Then your Grandfather cared for the mine Miles at Grahn. I grew up in Grahn and went to high school in Olive Hill graduating in 1942.
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I think you told it like it was. There was many homes that were broke up because all the men worked away. My dad was one of them my mother worked in Cowdens Garment factory and raised my sister and I. Things were rough. All the high lights our people were not used too. So the men strayed. My dad raised another family that lived in Mansfield and we stayed in Ky until we learned about it. Thank you for the story.
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Excellent article. My siblings (8) attended high school there & our father worked at the backyard til its closing. Some of us did as you described migrate north for employment and have never back after retirement.
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My mother Vaudean McGlone was born in Olive Hill. Moved to Mansfield with her family in the 5o’s. We still have a lot of family members in OHill we traveled down Rt 23 many times I was just there this summer love going there and sitting on my aunt’s front porch where we all gather and enjoy a great meal with our loved ones! I am blessed to be connected with this place.
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My father had a job at the old GM in Mansfield. He made many friends who had come up from Olive Hill for work there. I’ve recently been trying to locate one, Ken Parker or his son, Rick. Ken & his wife, June used to live on Averil Ave in Mansfield. Any help?
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Jo Ann n Billy stamper, from olive hill used to live on averill.
They stay n mansfield
419.524.2699
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We lived on Darby dale street
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Hey, I found some old Olive Hill bricks buried in my yard. We’re thinking about using them to build our new fireplace hearth. Do these beautiful old bricks contain asbestos?
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My name is Samuel C.Smith son of Walter L. Smith brother to Crawford Smith married to Vi
We grew up in little Kentucky Ohio, Roseland/ John Sherman Jr high Pappas tavern
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This has always been a migration of people not commonly enough told in American history. I am a direct descendant of this migration; my mother coming from Olive Hill and my father born and raised in Mansfield. My families ties to this story date back to 1895 when the Olive Hill Fire Brick Company was founded. One of the first workers there was my great grandfather, John Blevins. He worked his entire career there and my grandfather, Robert Blevins, ended up working there throughout this working career as well, being one of the last in the then, General Refractories brickyard when it closed its doors for good in December of 1976, officially sealing the decline for the region. But during the period of the 1940’s through the 1970’s there was a large migration northward, following the golden brick trail towards the steel industry where these bricks were shipped. The sizing down of one industry opened up doors for workers to expand the industry they serviced, now with new technology and the ability to scale production. Many of my grandparents brothers, sisters, and cousins made there way north, settling in Mansfield. Reasons were clear, the search for a better life. The options were more plentiful there, they had, afterall, spent 2 generations supporting the industries up north in this region with those clay bricks to allow the steel industry to prospur. My mother actually made the exodus’ out of Olive Hill to Mansfield twice, once in 1973 and the other in 1977. The second trip she met my father and I was born in Mansfield, in 1980. My family again migrated south in 1985 and landed back in Olive Hill in 1991. Since then, my mother, now well into her 70’s, lives in Olive Hill, between the remains of her parents home, the one-room school she once attended, the old stone general store and the remains of the general refractories factory surrounding her, a stark reminder of a time when the area was full of families, businesses and a hope for a better future. For those in my family that remained in Mansfield, well many of those connected generations are now gone. Their children, grand-children and great grand-children remain and only a few of them with fleeting memories of their ties to the little heart of the Appalachia where their roots originated. I only ever meet many of them today when the rare funeral of one of the few remaining elders passes; we come together, discuss our lives and I have a rare fortune to have lived on both sides of the story and have lived long enough to see the decline of both areas as progress has continued to leave these one bustling towns behind them and only the worn remains of a once powerful industrial enterprise that not only spurred an economic boom for those living within these two areas but opened the doors for a migration that ended in a shared culture that most have forgotten or never knew existed.
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