Learn About Coal Mining from Those Who Mined
Travel back in time, at the Big Fork National River and Recreation Area, in Oneida, Tennessee, to a time when coal was king as fuel. Once used to power locomotives, coal was also used in many American homes as a source for heat.The mines, which were created across the country, to supply the demand for the burgeoning coal market, were reliable sources of employment for resolute men determined to provide for their families. Located in Oneida, Tennessee, the Blue Heron Mining Community, at the Big South Fork, is a memorial and museum to those individuals who once worked and lived at one of those mines.
For those used to the mobility which Americans have come to expect in their daily lives, the lack of mobility of the miners, to come and go as they wished, at the Blue Heron, should be understood first, in order to understand the concepts and culture of coal mine life in the early Twentieth Century. According to wikipedia.org, many miners willingly entered into life at the mines, but later felt entrapped by the role they had taken on. The song, Sixteen Tons, expresses their languor: "You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."
Prior to the invention of mechanically loaded coal mine shuttle cars, which also eliminated the mules needed to haul the coal cars out of the mine shaft, miners wearing carbide lights on their heads, loaded coal into cars by pick, shovel, and hand. They were paid by the ton of coal loaded, an incentive for the able-bodied to increase their production, in exchange for cash.
In 1937, when the Stearns mine called the Blue Heron, or Mine 18, first opened, this is how coal was mined. A few years later, when the mine began using a new mechanical loader, and a coal tipple, used to sort coal of various sizes, however, cash incentives for loading coal were dropped, and men began to receive hourly or daily wages. In December, 1962, the mine closed, due to the rise of gas and electricity as power sources, which eclipsed coal's use as fuel.
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