323 - The Pack Horse Library Project

The Pack Horse Library Project was part of the WPA's attempt to relieve rural poverty in Kentucky. Since many people in Appalachian Kentucky didn't have access to books, the "book ladies" of the Pack Horse library brought books to them in remote areas via packhorses. The librarians would haul hundreds of books into the back country via horseback, serving rural communities and promoting literacy and education in communities that didn't have any books. Women would ride routes that covered over 100 miles as then rotated through communities, sharing books and homemade "instructive literature". At the end of the WPA funding in 1943 the communities were again cut off from library access until the advent of the bookmobile in the 1950s.