Pack Horse Library Project

The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943. Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people. Pack horse librarians were known by many different names including "book women," "book ladies," and "packsaddle librarians." The project helped employ around 200 people and reached around 100,000 residents in rural Kentucky.

Because of the Great Depression, and lack of budget money, the American Library Association estimated in May of 1936 that around one third of all Americans no longer had "reasonable" access to public library materials.

Eastern, rural Kentucky is a geographically isolated area, cut off from much of the country. Prior to the creation of the Pack Horse Library Project, many people in rural Appalachian Kentucky did not have access to books. The percentage of people who were illiterate in eastern Kentucky was at around 31 percent. People who lived in rural, mostly inaccessible areas wanted to become more literate, seeing education as a way to escape poverty. While there were traveling libraries, which were created by the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs starting in 1896, the lack of roads and population centers in eastern Kentucky discouraged the creation of most public library services in those locations. The traveling libraries were discontinued in 1933. In Kentucky, 63 counties had no library services at all during the early 1930s.

The first Pack Horse Library was created in Paintsville in 1913 and started by May F. Stafford. It was supported by a local coal baron, John C.C. Mayo, but when Mayo died in 1914, the program ended because of lack of funding.Elizabeth Fullerton, who worked with the women's and professional projects at the WPA, decided to reuse Stafford's idea. In 1934, A Presbyterian minister who ran a community center in Leslie County offered his library to the WPA if they would fund people to carry the books to people who couldn't easily access library materials. This started the first pack horse library, which was administered by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), until the WPA took it over in 1935. By 1936, there were eight pack horse libraries in operation.

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