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100 Years of Coal Mining in Harlan

WEKU
Published August 21, 2011 at 12:20 PM EDT
Miners pose at mine entry in Lynch after work. Round lunch pails are triple-tiered to hold both food and water. Carbide lamps are mounted atop soft headgear which actually only served to hold the lights and offered no protection.
Lynch
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Benham and Lynch Collection, Southeast Community and Technical College Appalachian
Miners pose at mine entry in Lynch after work. Round lunch pails are triple-tiered to hold both food and water. Carbide lamps are mounted atop soft headgear which actually only served to hold the lights and offered no protection.

On Aug. 25, 1911, a Friday, a Louisville & Nashville locomotive steamed away from a tipple in a hollow in Harlan County with a load of coal bound for Western Kentucky, and the county changed dramatically, forever. It was the first commercial coal shipment by rail out of the mountainous county. Within a few short years, a sparsely populated place that had long been defined by subsistence farming was transformed into an industrial society largely controlled by the coal industry.
Kentucky Arts & Culture
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