The Pack Horse Library Project ran from 1936 to 1943, with librarians on horseback traveling 10,000 square miles of rugged eastern Kentucky to provide reading materials to isolated families, some of the hardest hit by the Great Depression.
Census data from 1930 shows the illiteracy rates for southeastern Kentucky were as high as 35%. The number across the state was over 12%. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), inspired by earlier attempts to provide literature to the Appalachian region, harnessed an idea to help educate and connect families in rural Kentucky while also providing desperately needed jobs to young women.
The WPA “book women” rode out at least twice a month, in all kinds of weather, with each route covering 100 to 120 miles a week. These women were both dedicated and tough. They were putting reading materials into the hands of families and small schools that previously had none. The WPA only paid for their salaries, which was twenty-eight dollars a month. The librarians either used their own horse or pack mule or rented one.
All the books and materials were donated. Magazines such as Women’s Home Companion, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, and Western Story Magazine were popular. Adventure books and children’s stories like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver’s Travels were always in demand. Books were pulled off circuit once a month for mending and cleaning. Rarely new to begin with, once the books and magazines fell apart, the librarians would use pieces in scrapbooks, along with news articles and other materials. The families even passed on recipes and quilt patterns as gifts of gratitude, which the librarians added, creating homemade, travelling accounts of entire communities.
At its height, the program helped serve almost 100,000 people. By the time the Pack Horse Library Project ended in 1943, it had made a lasting impact on the people of rural Appalachia. The women who participated in the project, and the communities they served, had been forever changed by the simple, powerful act of bringing books and knowledge to those who needed it most.
