Blue Heron, also known as Mine 18, is a former

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

community or

coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides residen ...

on the banks of the

Big South Fork of the Cumberland River The Big South Fork of the Cumberland River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 8, 2011 river in the U.S. states of Tennessee and Kentucky. It is a major drainage fea ...

in McCreary County,

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

, United States, that has been recreated and is maintained as an interpretive history area in the

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, commonly known as Big South Fork, preserves the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and its tributaries in northeastern Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky. Within it are reminders of th ...

.Blue Heron, Kentucky
National Park Service. Retrieved on 2010-08-08 Blue-heron-tipple-ky1

Blue Heron was operated as a

company town A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and re ...

of the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company. Its coal mines opened in 1937 and operated until December 1962, when the

underground mine Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

s closed down for lack of profitability. The town was abandoned, and its buildings were either removed or decayed. The community was "re-created" in the 1980s as an outdoor

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

. Some of the original structures have been replicated as open, metal shells of buildings, referred to as "ghost structures," on the approximate sites of the original buildings. Structures include a

railroad depot A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a Rail transport, railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passenger train, passengers, freight rail transport, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one r ...

, a full-scale model of the

coal tipple Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as stratum, rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen ...

, a school, and homes. Photographic exhibits and audio programs in the ghost structures tell about various aspects of life in the isolated mining community.

References

External links

National Park Service website about Blue HeronBig South Fork Scenic Railway

Gallery

Image:Blue-heron-view-ky1.jpg, The depot (right), company store (left) File:Blue-heron-mine-entrance-ky1.jpg, Entrance to Mine 18 File:Blue-heron-mine-display-ky1.jpg, Mine 18 display Coal towns in Kentucky Ghost towns in Kentucky Museums in McCreary County, Kentucky Company towns in Kentucky Populated places established in 1937 History museums in Kentucky Open-air museums in Kentucky Mining museums in Kentucky 1937 establishments in Kentucky {{McCrearyCountyKY-geo-stub

See also

References

External links

Gallery