BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
Martin County Fiscal Court will receive $20,000 in state grant funding to create interpretive exhibits on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historic “War on Poverty” visit to Inez in 1964, the Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC) announced Friday.
The KHC said the second and final round of America250KY Sub-Grant Awards will provide $500,000 to support preservation and heritage projects across the state in recognition of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. Martin County’s award is part of that round and “will help create two permanent interpretive exhibits to engage students, residents and visitors.”
Martin County officials announced in November 2025 that the grant award would support “A President’s Visit” exhibit in the vicinity of the Historic Martin County Courthouse in Inez and the “Himler Heritage Caboose” exhibit in Warfield.
The grant will cover the design, fabrication and installation of the exhibits, according to Martin County Deputy Judge/Executive Carolea Mills.
“This grant allows us to preserve two of Martin County’s most powerful stories without placing any burden on local taxpayers,” Mills said while announcing the grant in November. “We’re being resourceful and using available funds that are only available for these projects so that we can bring positive attention and tourism to our community.”
She said the county hopes the exhibits will draw visitors while honoring Martin County’s place in history.
Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty echoed that sentiment.
“By investing in our story through grants like this, we are investing in our people and our future,” Lafferty said.
State officials said the America250KY grants will help preserve the places that hold Kentucky’s history.
“Our heritage is rooted in real places – brick, mortar, timber and stone,” said Kentucky Heritage Council Executive Director Craig Potts. “These grants focus on the essential preservation work that keeps historic structures sound… This is the groundwork that allows history to endure.”
County officials are planning a special Independence Day celebration of the projects.
‘A President’s Visit’
The “A President’s Visit” exhibit will focus on President Johnson’s stop in Inez on April 24, 1964, “when one in five Americans lived in poverty and this coal-mining area had poverty rates of 60%,” KHC said.
Few small towns became as closely tied to the nation’s anti-poverty movement as Inez did. The visit became one of the defining public moments of Johnson’s newly declared “unconditional War on Poverty,” a national initiative that led to programs still central to American life, including Head Start, Job Corps, food assistance, Medicare and Medicaid.
Johnson’s stop in Inez helped give a human face to poverty and placed Martin County at the center of a movement that reshaped federal policy for decades.
More than six decades later, the community remains linked to that historic moment, remembered as one of the places where the War on Poverty took on national meaning.
‘Himler Heritage Caboose’
The “Himler Heritage Caboose” exhibit will honor Martin Himler, a Hungarian immigrant from Eastern Europe who founded the cooperative mining town of Himlerville in present-day Beauty in 1918. Himler also built the railroad bridge across the Tug Fork River connecting Warfield to West Virginia.
For a brief moment in the early 20th century, Martin County was home to one of the most unusual communities in Appalachian history — a Jewish-run coal town built on the belief that immigrant families could find both economic opportunity and cultural belonging in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.
Although Himlerville is gone in name, it remains one of the most remarkable chapters in Martin County’s past.
Himler built the community along Buck Creek and named it after himself. At a time when Jewish life in America was largely associated with cities and antisemitism was widespread, the idea of a Jewish coal town in Appalachia drew national attention. For several years, it was real.
Himlerville included homes, stores, a school and even a synagogue, a rare sight in Eastern Kentucky’s coalfields. Himler also published a newspaper to promote the town and connect it to the wider world.
Historians have called Himlerville one of the most significant experiments in Jewish communal life ever attempted in Appalachia, and an early reminder of the region’s cultural complexity.
The town’s decline came quickly. Like many coal communities, Himlerville was vulnerable to forces beyond its control. Flooding, shifting coal markets and financial pressures mounted through the 1920s. By 1928, Himler’s coal company failed, families moved away and the town faded into memory, eventually becoming known as Beauty.
A few physical traces remain, including the caboose in Warfield, and Himlerville continues to draw interest from historians, writers and descendants. Its story is a reminder that Appalachia has never been a single narrative.
Other projects
Several other projects in Eastern Kentucky also received grants, including $75,000 for restoration of the Beattyville WPA Building in Lee County and $20,000 for an interactive exhibit on coal camp life and regional sports heritage at the Weyland Historic Society partnership in Floyd County.
Additional awards across the state will support preservation work at historic homes, veterans memorials and civic landmarks, including the Nannine Clay Wallis House in Bourbon County, the Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Franklin County and the Darby House in Hopkins County.
The KHC administers the America250KY Preservation Grant program on behalf of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Sestercentennial Commission, which is coordinating statewide efforts leading up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.