Biohazard Cleanup Near West McDowell McDowell, KY

McDowell is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in southern Floyd County, in Kentucky's eastern Appalachian coalfields.

The community lies along Left Beaver Creek where Kentucky Routes 122 and 680 meet, just west of the community of Minnie, at an elevation of about 824 feet.

McDowell was first counted as a census-designated place in the 2020 census, which recorded 661 residents across its 2.48 square miles.

The community's anchor institution is McDowell ARH Hospital, which opened in 1956 as one of the ten Miners Memorial Hospitals built by the United Mine Workers of America to bring modern health care to coal-mining communities.

After the Miners Memorial system was sold in the 1960s, the hospital became part of the nonprofit network that is now Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH), and it still serves southern Floyd County today.

McDowell Elementary School, built in the 1930s beside Frasure Creek, flooded repeatedly over the decades — including a damaging August 2013 flood — before closing in 2018, after which the Floyd County Board of Education sold the property as surplus.

Children from McDowell now attend other Floyd County Schools campuses in the Left Beaver Creek valley.

McDowell's own ZIP code is 41647, and like the rest of Floyd County it observes Eastern Time.