Blue Heron Tipple

I didn't intend to do a theme week when I started; it just turned out that way. So I decided to finish the week with another life-in-Appalachia post. We live on the edge of a National Park, the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. Contained within the Park is the Blue Heron interpretive area, which is a former mining camp. When the Park Service acquired the land, the tipple was about all that was left. It has been restored and "ghost structures," skeletal metal buildings, represent the miners' cabins, church, school, and such. The ghost buildings contain life-sized cut-outs of old photographs, posters, and recorded descriptions of the activity represented.

The restored tipple dominates the site, as it did when the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company operated the coal camp from 1937 until 1962. Known as Blue Heron, or Mine 18, the company housed miners in company-owned houses and operated a company store to provide residents with their essentials.

Park Service photo

 Coal was mined at several sites on both sides of the river and brought to the tipple by low tram cars.

Park Service photo

Tram cars unloaded the coal at the top of the tipple and mechanical screens inside sorted the coal by size and loaded it into railroad hopper cars for shipment to markets. The noise from the tipple was a constant in the coal camp, running 24 hours every day and stopping only for maintenance or emergency. Tipple operation also produced coal dust that drifted and settled over the site.

Park Service photo

 Since tipple, track, houses, school, and church were all packed into a small area along the river, there could be no escape from the dust and noise.

While the next photo really doesn't apply to the tipple, I couldn't resist including a photo of  "classmates" taken in the schoolhouse ghost structure.