A Paint Lick Station was referred to in military dispatches as early as 1780. The site was named for Indian art painted on the debarked trees near a local salt lick when the first white settlers arrived and was originally part of a tract belonging to George Lewis. The trading post was purchased by the Carolinian Rev.Henery Dixon in 1812 and laid out as the town of Paint Lick Station in 1826. The town was formally established under that name in 1834, although the post office was probably named Paint Creek. It was incorporated as a city under its present name of Paintsville in 1843, the same year it became the seat of Johnson County.