Throughout February, we will share a series of four stories that explore Black relationships to land, legacy, and community, looking at both historical foundations and contemporary expressions. We begin with an exploration of the Coe Ridge Colony, an African American community founded after the Civil War, whose history offers important insight into self‑determination, resilience, and adaptation.
The Community of Coe Ridge, KY
School children and their teacher at the Coe Ridge Colony. Courtesy of Clio
“The loss of the nuts ended a way of life and brought economic hardship to many. ‘The blight was hard on people, for chestnuts were used as money at the stores,’ Max Thomas said. Thomas was not alone in his belief that the death of chestnuts helped destroy a semi‑subsistence economy and forced many mountain residents to find wage labor.”
~Ralph H. Lutts (2004), Like Manna From God: The American Chestnut Trade in Southwestern Virginia
This is exactly what happened to the notable African American community of Coe Ridge, founded in 1866 in Cumberland, Kentucky.
After the Civil War, Ezekiel Coe, a formerly enslaved man, together with his wife Patsy, founded what became known as the Coe Ridge Colony. In 1866, the couple purchased 300 acres of land from Ezekiel’s former enslaver, Jesse Coe. Over time, Coe Ridge became a refuge for African Americans, Native Americans, and white women who faced hardship and exclusion elsewhere.
The community grew into a rare example of Black land ownership and independence in post-emancipation Appalachia. Transforming overgrown, forested land into a functioning settlement required constant labor, collective effort, and a careful reliance on natural resources.
Among the most important of those resources were American chestnut trees. Prior to chestnut blight, these trees were a fundamental way of life for local communities like Coe Ridge. Many residents traded chestnuts for store credit, using them as a form of currency. The nuts also supplied food, while the trees themselves provided an excellent source of lumber—easy to cut against the grain and naturally resistant to rot, making them ideal for building shelter.
Residents of Coe Ridge in front of a local business. Courtesy of Clio
Although many chestnuts were gathered through foraging, the process was not always informal. Some residents maintained what were known as “chestnut orchards,” natural stands of trees that families carefully tended by clearing underbrush. By keeping the forest floor clean, farmers made it easier to locate and collect the fallen nuts.
In much of rural Appalachia, unfenced land functioned as a “foraging commons:” shared spaces where people gathered wild foods or grazed animals. The chestnut stands at Coe Ridge, however, were understood differently. Because residents invested so much labor into maintaining them, these orchards were considered private property, even if the surrounding landscape appeared open and unfenced.
According to folklorist William Lynwood Montell, the community at Coe Ridge reportedly had a “large chestnut orchard.” This orchard became a source of conflict with white neighbors who resented the presence and success of the Coe Ridge Colony. The land turned into contested ground, with each side claiming ownership, and therefore entitlement, to the profits the orchard produced. Ralph H. Lutts, Adjunct Professor of History at VA Tech, records that “friction between the races was intensified by some of the white boys who made it a habit to go to the ridge and freely partake of the abundant chestnut supply. The Negro boys and girls, who picked up the chestnuts and sold them for cash, resented the intrusion on their personal property. On one occasion, a fight over chestnuts broke out between the races.”
Residents who depended on chestnut sales deeply resented these intrusions into their carefully maintained property. According to Tim Coe, the disputes escalated into violence. “That’s what started all of the killing,” he recalled.
Then came chestnut blight. By the early twentieth century, the fungal disease had wiped out nearly all mature American chestnut trees. For Coe Ridge, the consequences were devastating. With the trees gone, chestnut harvesting ended, lumbering declined, farming income shrank, and the old foraging economy effectively disappeared. As Lutts observed, the loss of chestnuts helped destroy a semi‑subsistence economy and forced many people to seek wage labor elsewhere, with members of the community turning primarily to bootlegging and moonshining to survive.
Over time, families left the ridge in search of steady industrial work in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Illinois, following a broader Appalachian migration pattern. By 1958, the Coe Ridge Colony had become desolate, its once‑busy community abandoned. Today, only three houses, a cemetery, numerous folk legends, and lingering reminders of slavery and emancipation remain of the original 300 acres of Coe Ridge.