Eastern Kentucky is believed to have supported a large
Archaic Native American population in prehistoric time. Cliff dwellings were used by successive cultures as residences and at times for burials. In 1923, an Indian Cliff Dwelling was discovered near
Bledsoe, Kentucky Historical tribes in this area included the
Cherokee and
Shawnee. Before the American Revolutionary War, the area presently bounded by state lines was considered to be part of the Virginia colony. In 1780, the Virginia state legislature divided Kentucky County into three counties: Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln. In 1791 - as part of the state of Kentucky - these were incorporated into the new nation. In 1799, part of Lincoln County was divided to create Knox County. Harlan County was formed in 1819 from a part of
Knox County and named after
Silas Harlan who built a log
stockade near Danville, which was known as "Harlan's Station". His grand-nephew was
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan . Due to increasing population, in 1842 part of the county split off to become
Letcher County in 1842;
Bell County was likewise established in 1867. In 1878, the northwestern area was partitioned to form part of
Leslie County.
Coal Mining was the only major resource in the county and was exploited to fuel the growth of early 20th century industry. When the
Great Depression struck in 1930 and demand for coal reduced, often-violent confrontations between strikers, strikebreakers, mine company security forces, and law enforcement were termed the
Harlan County Wars. After the
Battle of Evarts, May 5, 1931, Kentucky governor
Flem D. Sampson called in the
National Guard to restore order. Ballads sung on the picket line at the Brookside mine in Harlan County were captured on film by documentarian
John Gaventa. The county was the subject of the documentary film
Harlan County, USA (1976), directed by
Barbara Kopple. It documented organizing during a second major period of labor unrest in the 1970s, particularly around the Brookside Strike. In 1924, Conda Uless (Ulysses) "Condy" Dabney was convicted in the county of murdering a person who was later found alive. From the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century, Harlan County and nearby counties were settled by numerous persons of multiracial descent, with African, European and sometimes American Indian ancestors. Many such families were descended from
free people of color in colonial Virginia, who formed families of free white women and free, indentured or enslaved African and Black men. Because the mothers were free, their mixed-race children were born free. Descendants of such free people of color, some of whose members have been called
Melungeon, have documented the racial heritage of Harlan's early settlers through 19th-century photographs, DNA analysis such as the
Melungeon DNA Project, and historic records. In 2007, the
Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe of Indians formed as a non-profit organization to work on improving the lives of multiracial families and preserving Native American heritage, structures and artifacts in the area. It established the Kentucky Native American Data Bank, which has the names of 1,000 people of documented Native American descent related to this region; it is accessible for free on the Rootsweb Internet site. Now known as the Ridgetop Shawnee, they have become the heritage arm of Pine Mountain Indian Community, LLC, which since 2013 has taken the lead in working on economic development in the region. In 2019, the county was the site of the
2019 Harlan County coal miners protest, one in a long history of coal mining. Coal miners demanded back payment from a coal company that fired them shortly after declaring bankruptcy. They occupied a railroad track and prevented a coal train from leaving the county for almost two months. ==Geography==