PHOTOGRAPHS 1972 "Down Greasy and Up Laurel"

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series: PHOTOGRAPHS
“Down Greasy and Up Laurel”
Barry Bingham and wife
Mary Clifford (Caperton) Bingham
From negatives
Photographer unknown
c. 1972

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TAGS: photographs, Greasy Creek, Big Laurel, Little Laurel, Arthur Dodd, Courier-Journal, Board of Trustees, Barry Bingham Sr, Mary Clifford (Caperton) Bingham, photographic negatives

PHOTOGRAPHS 1972 “Down Greasy and Up Laurel”

[FROM recovered negatives]

Greasy Creek is a picturesque stream that begins its journey at Pine Mountain Settlement School and eventually flows into the Kentucky River. It is a rough but beautiful stream, a prime small fish habitat, and ruggedly scenic for most of its long journey.

Big Laurel Creek is made up of waters from Little Laurel and a myriad of small streams that flow out of hollows and eventually into Greasy Creek. All the streams are near Pine Mountain Settlement School and the populations of these hollows and streams were some of the main educational service areas for the Settlement School. Barry Bingham Sr. the founder and owner of the Louisville Courier Journal, is seen in some of the images. Bingham was an important member of the Board of Trustees of Pine Mountain Settlement School from 1949 through the 1970s.

The images in this set are partially duplicated by those in the aggregated photographs prepared for “Friends and Neighbors” by Mary Rogers and replicated in the Berea SIA Project. SIA, the Settlement Institutions of Appalachia project was important in the preservation of much of the history of the early Settlement School history in Appalachia. These images are taken directly from the negatives discovered in 2024 and may represent the work of Pine Mountain educator and photographer, Arthur Dodd, or possibly a photographer accompanying the Binghams on this journey “Down Greasy and Up Laurel.”