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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY - May 2002 by Katherine Tandy Brown Black Gold Tales in Benham
And Benham – a National Historic District since 1982 – is the perfect location for a facility specializing in coal history. Every few minutes during my visit of several hours last December, coal trucks rumbled by the sturdy brick museum that lies in the shadow of Black Mountain, whose depths were a source of the “black gold” that put this town on the map. Known as “the little town that International Harvester built,” Benham was birthed as a coal camp in 1906 by Wisconsin Steel/International Harvester to house immigrant miners. Most of the miners were recruited from Ellis Island into southeastern Kentucky to excavate steel-making-grade coal from the area’s rich seams to fire the furnaces of the company’s own mills. In 1910 U.S. Steel acquired property nearby, calling its camp Lynch. Once the largest coal camp in the world, Lynch encompassed 1,000 buildings, the majority of which were crafted by Italian stone masons. Because both camps had a number of structures built to last of brick and stone, the two camps became known as Cadillac Coal Camp. In 1928, 1936 and 1940, the heyday of that area’s coal production, Harlan County cranked out more than 15 million tons annually, all of that deep-mined by hand, with shovels, pickaxes and breast augers, and dynamited. For years prior to the advent of today’s high-tech motorized augers and longwall machines, men (and eventually women) descended below the earth to spend their days at grueling, lung-congesting manual labor, often with only a helmet lamp for illumination, a caged canary to warn of noxious fumes, and the threat of being buried alive a daily possibility. Many miners never spoke to their families of experiences “down below,” preferring not to dwell on the job’s constant dangers. Until the 1970s, when women were hired and started working underground, having a woman around a mine was considered bad luck. Consequently, a number of miners’ relatives knew little about mining, other than scraps of information their fathers chose to share. Supplying missing pieces to coal family histories is a daily occurrence at KCMM, said the museum’s director Bobbie Gothard, whose father was a miner for 43 years. “So many families are affected by coal mining,” she explained. “Their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, someone in the family worked in a coal mine. They knew he went to work every day, supported the family, worked long hours and came home tired but they never knew what really went on. “These people come here daily. Yesterday, a woman from Pennsylvania said, ‘I’ve been so eager to find out about coal mines because my father worked in the mine, and my grandfather worked in the mine and was killed in the mine. They talked about crawling underground and I want to know something about it.’” After the woman spent time in the museum and watched videos about mining, said Gothard, she understood the things her father and grandfather talked about. In the late ’70s, U.S. Steel decided to close mine Portal 32 on Black Mountain, thus leaving the mine and its work buildings vacant. Representing the towns of Cumberland, Benham and Lynch, the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce, under its president, Dr. Bruce Ayres, acquired funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission in Washington, D.C. to develop the mine into an interstate coal museum. The commonwealths of Kentucky and West Virginia each added $500,000. By this time, the property had been sold to Arch Minerals, which eventually agreed to provide space for an exhibition mine. Originally the International Harvester company store in the middle of downtown Benham, the current museum facility was jointly purchased by the Chamber of Commerce and local fiscal court, who spent $1 million to bring it up to code. According to Gothard, the visionary Ayers, now president of Southeast Community College in Cumberland and chairman of the museum’s board, saw the importance of saving the history of the coal camps, which was being lost as older residents began to die. “With his leadership we’re pulling together grants and funding sources to stay afloat,” she said. “We’re not rich, but we’re still here!” In 1992 Gothard was hired to begin work on the museum, a board was set up, and nonprofit status acquired. In May, 1994, the first floor and mezzanine opened to the public, completed to the extent of available funds. “Every year since that time, we’ve put everything we make right back into it to build it and make it better,” said Gothard, who was voted 1998 Harlan Countian of the Year for her tireless work on the museum and in the community. “Now we have four levels.” They are packed with fascinating mining artifacts, most of which have been donated or loaned, describing coal and its excavation history throughout the whole state. You’ll see a scale model of Black Mountain built with layers that lift off to show placement of the actual coal seams, poignant early black-and-white camp photos, miners’ hats and lamps, core samples and Kettlebo Horn (small rocks that fall from mine ceilings) and a reconstructed miners’ house and engineering office. A Kentucky Coal Council Mock Mine exhibit features a working model of a 1960 coal tipple with vivid sound and video from modern mines. Six retired miners who are among the volunteer museum guides add colorful stories to the wealth of history here. “We want people to go out with a different, more realistic impression of coal than they brought in,” said Gothard.
Currently, an outside walking tour at Lynch features Mine Portal 31, a monument to longtime United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis, a memorial to the nearly 300 miners who died in mining accidents, a 1920s lamphouse, and an enormous bathhouse where 5,000 men used to bathe daily. This fall, Portal 31 Exhibition Mine will expand, offering visitors the chance to don lighted miners’ hats, view a safety film and take a ride down into an actual mine. With a former miner as a guide, visitors witness coal camp history and changes in mining procedures by following the life of a late 1800s immigrant miner through high-tech exhibits. “Short of a pick and shovel,” said Gothard, “visitors will get the full mining experience.” The million-dollar first phase of the project, bringing the mine up to safety code, has been completed. Phase two, restoration of the Lynch train depot into a museum with railroad memorabilia, is in work thanks to Transportation Enactment Act (TEA21) funding. The old camp restaurant will be converted into a studio and salesroom for the Southeast Community College Professional Pottery Program. “People come from all over the world now to see the museum and the portal,” said Gothard. “Once the portal exhibit’s opened, it’s going to be a world-class attraction.” Just across the street from the museum, the coal camps’ 1926 school has become a hostelry, where guests can dine and sleep in old, cleverly-converted classrooms. A Kentucky Historical Landmark, the 30-guest-room Benham School House Inn will transport you back to childhood, with its highly-polished floors and green lockers interspersed with comfortable cane furniture in every corridor. And yes, when you slam a locker door, those halls still echo. A sumptuous Sunday buffet is served in the old gymnasium with music or theater on the side, and home cooking in the Apple Room Restaurant draws hungry locals daily. I hit the Friday Fish Special and left full to the gills with fried catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw and baked beans. A great time to visit is during Coal Miners’ Days the second weekend of October, with talks on mining and entertainment such as the Messengers, a local a capella gospel group. Come the second Saturday in September for the Benham Fall Festival at Coal Miners Park, with lots of music, arts and crafts and a cookout. Drop by the first weekend in October to swap tales, music and crafts at Southeast Community College’s Kingdom Come Swappin’ Meetin’ or jingle your bells at the Christmas Tree Festival mid-November through December at KCMM. Find out more about the museum at
(606) 848-1530 and inn at (800) 231-0627. Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2002, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2002, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Country
music great Loretta Lynn helped turn the nation’s eyes to the men
who worked coal and their families with her celebrated ballad (and spinoff
movie), “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” So the fact that the
entire third floor of the Kentucky Coal Mining Museum (KCMM) in Benham,
Kentucky, is a tribute to the singer is a well-deserved honor.
A
visitor favorite, the “Coal Miner’s Daughter Exhibit of Loretta
Lynn” includes many of the singer’s glittery costumes, portraits
by noted Kentucky artist Jeff Chapman Crane and a rebuilt room from
the J.D. Maggard Store in Eolia in Letcher County that was featured
in the movie.