Community Centers

Community Centers are defined as… “public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialized group within the greater community.” But, they are so much more than that. These are so important to our little communities, serving as a safe place to go, at times a bed and maybe the only hot meal some people have in a day.

Hemphill Community Center

A gathering place for families, friends, and neighbors. A place where mountain traditions such as quilt making, bluegrass music, and hospitality abound. A place to host reunions, parties, receptions, and community events.

Every Friday night when the weather is right you can hear local musicians playing, see people of all ages and backgrounds dancing, and you can smell all the amazing food coming from Black Sheep Brick Oven Bakery.

Located on KY Hwy 317 just north of Neon, KY in the old Hemphill Grade School building on the Coal Miner's Highway. Home of the Letcher County Coal Miner's Monument.

Cowan Community Center

Cowan Community Center is a landmark in the Cowan community as a facility where everyone can feel at home away from home.

Currently, the Center offers the following programs: Grow Appalachia, the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, a Head Start Center, a Community Theater, Cowan Homemakers, the Leadership Development Program, Christmas on the Creek. We are constantly searching for funding to add to the services offered.

The Cowan Community Center is part of the Cowan Community Action Group, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and donations are tax deductible. The Cowan Community Action Group is governed by a volunteer board of directors whose meetings are open to any community members who wish to be a part of the organization.

Finding its start in 1964, The Cowan Community center serves the Community Of Cowan Creek in Letcher Cowan. With a colorful history, Cowan Community Center thrives and treats the community with daycare services through LKLP, Square Dances every Month with local Old Time Musicians, A traditional Music School, an after school Music Program, and a range of other very impressive and contributing endeavors that you will learn about in following the Cowan Community Center as a member of the group.

Carcassonne Community Center

Until the founding of Carcassonne Community School in 1923, the children of Gander, Kentucky, had no access to a high school education unless they traveled several miles each day or moved to another community, such as Berea. Carcassonne held its first classes in July of 1924.

It was a first through twelfth grade school, replacing the Pine Grove School at the junction of Bull Creek and the Meadow Fork of Bull Creek, where James Memorial Church now stands. Carcassonne served as a community and boarding school from 1924 through 1948, when the high school was moved by Letcher County to the Stuart Robinson School near Blackey. It was a first through eighth grade elementary school sporadically from 1948 until June 1974. By the mid-1960s, the school had been vacant for a while.

Time and youthful vandals had taken a toll on the building. With the advent of the War on Poverty, volunteers from Vista, the Appalachian Volunteers, and the Carcassonne community came together to preserve the heritage and culture of the area. The Community Center was repaired and used for sewing circles, square dances, woodworking classes, and an elementary school when enough community students enrolled. The school functioned as a first through sixth grade “one room” school until the Letcher board of education consolidated it with Letcher Elementary during the 1974-75 school year.

The Carcassonne Square Dance has been featured in several books regarding the preservation of this cultural art form, and most recently appeared in the Fall issue of Modern Mountain Magazine and a 2008 issue of le Magazine du Carcassonne et du lOuest Audois, a French magazine from the area around Carcassonne, France. Carcassonne Square Dance is the longest-running square dance in Kentucky, featuring food and live music. It is held the second Saturday of every month, March-November