HAZARD

A short history of Hazard

Local landowner Elijah Combs Sr. laid out the town in 1824 as the planned seat of the newly established Perry County. Both the town and the county were named for Cdre. Oliver Hazard Perry, a commander in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. The post office was initially known as Perry Court House but the name was officially changed to Hazard in 1854. The city was formally incorporated by the state assembly in 1884.

Long isolated by the surrounding mountains, Hazard was opened to the outside world by the arrival of the railroad in 1912. The only access to the valley had previously been 45 miles down the North Fork of the Kentucky River or a two-week trip over the surrounding mountains. The railroad brought prosperity to the town, which ended up on the start of the Great Depression.

Although the television series The Dukes of Hazzard was set in Georgia, cast members made appearances in the community. In 1981, Catherine Bach, James Best, Sorrell Booke and Rick Hurst, visited Hazard during its Black Gold Festival. In January 1982, series' star Tom Wopat delivered a $25,000 check from Warner Communications to the families of eight miners killed in a December 1981 explosion.

After several decades of population decline, the city saw a rapid increase of new residents as the growth rate approached 20% between 2010 and 2020. In July 1999, Hazard was the first stop on President Bill Clinton's tour of poverty-stricken communities that had failed to share in the boom of the 1990s. Hillary Clinton visited Hazard on November 2, 2008, at a political rally for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford.

In July, 2022, the city was affected by the 2022 Appalachian floods upwards of 14-16" of rain falling during a 5-day period. Entire communities were swept away by flood waters, leading to over 600 helicopter rescues and countless swift water rescues by boat, and 45 deaths, 7 from Perry County. The storm "totally annihilated" Perry County's infrastructure, Sheriff Joe Engle told CNN. "Water, telephone, internet, electricity, all the basic roads, all the basic things you would build a community around have just disappeared," he said.

The Red Cross estimated that nearly 2,300 houses were damaged beyond repair, but determined almost 80% of those lost were not in the flood plain. FEMA reported that only 4% of those applying for housing recovery assistance had flood insurance.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Hazard, Kentucky, revision 1377377890 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.