After Devastating Floods, Appalshop Archival Recovery Makes Steady Progress

When deadly flooding swept Eastern Kentucky in July 2022, it claimed the lives of 45 residents and devastated homes, roadways and infrastructure.

For Appalshop, a regional media and arts hub, the floods brought severe damage to its film and audio archive, which documents decades of Appalachian culture and folk life.

This month, another bout of severe flooding killed at least 23 people in Kentucky and three in West Virginia. Reporter Jack Walker spoke to Roger May, Appalshop’s director of artistic programs, about the recovery process thus far, plus the future of archival work as environmental disasters become a seemingly ever-present concern.

Listen to an extended version of this conversation below:

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Walker: Can you tell us about what kind of archives Appalshop posts and its ties to Appalachia as a region and the regional heritage here?

May: Our archive is, we believe, the largest repository of Appalachian ephemera in the country and quite possibly the world. That includes film. That includes video, photo negatives, audio recordings and other types of ephemera. A lot of that material was damaged in the flood of July 2022, when the flood waters off of the North Fork of the Kentucky River reached about six-and-a-half feet in height inside our vault in the archive at our Whitesburg building.

It was a huge blow to not just our archive, but to the region and to the folks that know what’s in that archive and the richness that’s contained therein. But we’ve been able to get that material out to the respective subject matter experts in those fields. And we’ve been really pleasantly surprised with the results that we’ve seen from the cleaned and digitized material that we’re getting back.

Walker: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that, this February, both Kentucky and West Virginia have been affected by flooding, which has been fatal in certain communities. Given that we’re talking about flooding today and how it’s impacted your work, could you speak to what the situation is like over in Eastern Kentucky?

May: In 2022, it was deemed the 1,000-year flood. One that no one could recall seeing [another flood] as bad as it was. It was just devastating. Now, in February of 2025, we find ourselves in the midst of another 1,000-year flood in fewer than 1,000 days. So it seems like the frequency of these kinds of floods are increasing, and the impact of these floods are just horrific every time they may happen.

There have been a number of deaths in Eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. And it’s just, it’s hard. We’re often labeled as resilient people, and there’s a point at which resilience is not a choice. It’s something you have to do. But it’s also tiring to have to be resilient all the time.

Walker: You mentioned that a lot of these materials were damaged during the 2022 flooding incident. What did the restoration process actually like? You said you found experts who were able to restore certain materials. Can you walk us through what it takes to restore archives?

May: Well, from from a lay perspective — again, I’m not an archivist or a restoration expert — but from my 30,000-foot understanding of it, as soon as those materials are exposed to water or humidity or mud or any of the elements that came through during the flood, they can begin to break down. So the first thing is to suspend that growth of mold and so forth. And you do that by getting it into a freezer or colder storage. So that’s step one.

Then the experts in the field have developed methodologies to carefully clean and restore those items. Then they have a digitization process that they go through. And once that’s completed, they send those films and audio recordings and footage and so forth back to us on hard drives. So that’s a little bit of what that process looks like.

Walker: Now that we’ve seen the impact that flooding can have on archival materials like this, are you taking any steps to prepare for incidents like that in the future?

May: One of the things that we had to do in 2022 was look for another space. We simply just couldn’t be in the building we were in in Whitesburg anymore. So we relocated to a temporary office space in Jenkins, which is about 15 miles away from Whitesburg, still in Letcher County. We’ve moved our materials over there. Also, our archive standard practices geographical separation. So we have multiple copies of hard drives backed up in geographically different locations. So, if something catastrophic like a flood were to happen again, we would have multiple copies of those materials at different locations.

Walker: I’m a little biased because I’m coming from a West Virginia perspective here. But maybe for our West Virginia listeners, are there any things that have stood out from the West Virginia materials you’ve collected?

May: Yeah, one that really stands out to me. Again, I’m biased too, because I was born in Pike County, Kentucky, and raised in Mingo County, West Virginia. So I usually joke and say I get to claim dual citizenship.

But as a West Virginian and as somebody from Chattaroy in Mingo County, Nimrod Workman, the regionally well-known activist and singer and performer is from Chattaroy. We have June Appal Recordings, our record label; the very first imprint on our record label is an album by Nimrod Workman and his daughter. There’s an Appalshop film about Nimrod Workman called “To Fit My Own Category.” Again, as a West Virginian and somebody from Mingo County, I’m really proud that those items are in our archive at Appalshop.

Walker: I was curious, then: Do you think archival work like this that focuses on the entire region of Appalachia plays a role in uniting communities here, and making them feel like they are part of a shared history?

May: I think it’s really important for people to be able to see themselves in the archive — that they see themselves represented and reflected back to themselves in our archive. That’s one of the amazing things about the archive at Appalshop. It counters the stereotype of Appalachia just being white and rural. We’ve got a really broad collection of materials, from Cherokee speakers to African American folks. As an archive, we want to continue to build on that and continue to show the diversity in Appalachia.

Walker: A word you used earlier in the conversation that I think really highlights what we’ve spoken about so far is ephemera. So, materials that aren’t necessarily long lasting. I’m curious, when you face an incident like this that really highlights how ephemeral, for lack of a better word, some of these archival materials that relate to Appalachian heritage really are, how does that change your motivation to protect these pieces of cultural heritage? Does it add a sense of urgency to the work that you’re already doing?

May: I think it does. In this time, everything feels urgent. I think it’s important that we remind ourselves of why we’re here in the first place. That is to help other people tell their stories and to center those stories in a landscape where their their voices and their stories are often not centered and not heard, and to celebrate the beauty in that, and to lift that up and to preserve it so that future generations can also see and learn the beauty and the value of it. Whether it’s a flood or another natural disaster, it’s important to preserve these materials.

To learn more about Appalshop, its archive and its arts programming in Appalachia, visit the organization’s website.

This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.