The Pack Horse Librarians Are a Unique Part of Kentucky History

"Hidden gems" come in all shapes and sizes. In most cases, the term refers to significant discoveries of physical things, such as restaurants, towns, and landmarks. But fascinating little pieces of history can count, I think. So I count this one.

Works Progress Administration

As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration was established in 1935 to create jobs for millions of unemployed Americans. Many of the jobs were infrastructural (bridge, road, and public building construction, for example), but a WPA initiative called Federal Project Number One also employed artists, musicians, actors, and writers, as well as members of other cultural professions.

Pack Horse Librarians

One of the WPA's projects was a drive to promote literacy in Eastern Kentucky Appalachia. Women who became known as Pack Horse Librarians were hired to bring books and magazines deep into the mountains of the Bluegrass. A treacherous endeavor, considering the rugged terrain over which they had to ride, the librarians nevertheless forged ahead and supplied reading material, collected through donations, to some 50,000 families every two weeks from 1935 through 1943.

Bookmobiles

If you're thinking this was the precursor to bookmobiles, you're not wrong. President Roosevelt ended the program in 1943, but three years later, motorized bookmobiles made their way into territory once successfully managed by the Pack Horse crew.

By 2014, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 75 bookmobiles owned by various Kentucky libraries were in operation.

I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that that is one way for the Pack Horse Librarians' legacy to live forever.