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

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

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 reside ...

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 fe ...

McCreary County McCreary County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 16,888. Its county seat is Whitley City. The county is named for James B. McCreary, a Confederate war soldier and two-time Governor ...

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

, United States, that has been recreated and is maintained as an interpretive history area in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.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 all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

of the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company. Its coal mines opened in 1937 and operated until December 1962, when the underground mines 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 is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

. 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 full-scale model of the

coal tipple Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock formed by the cementation (geology), cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or ...

, 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