By Tom and Patti Burkett
The first time we pulled into the Blue Heron Visitor Center the place was buzzing. Food tents were up, children were chasing big metal and wooden hoops down the road, women were walking around in dresses from the early 1900s, and a bluegrass band was picking away to accompany it all. It turned out that this was Haunting In The Hills, an annual event celebrating the mining culture of the eastern coal belt, especially here in southern Kentucky.
Cut into the coal seams from a valley where Kentucky and Tennessee come together, Mine 18 was home to hundreds of families during its heyday. It operated until 1962. Everyone moved away when the mine shut down, and the town just disappeared into the woods. A dozen years later the Park Service purchased it and began work to make it a living history museum. Today, with autumn’s foliage marching down the steep mountainsides, it’s a town again, running along the narrow valley beside the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.
Many of the mine buildings have been reconstructed on their original sites, but as skeletons. A roof and floor and open walls enclose displays that chronicle life in a miner’s
The park itself, Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, abuts interstate 75 at the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and includes several modern campgrounds. It’s also a favorite of equestrians, with several horse camping areas, an extensive network of trails, and stables. If you like, you can rent a horse for an hour or two or even a whole day and travel the area as the early settlers did. There’s great river access, too, if you like to have a paddle or a float. Maybe you’ll find us there, in some little eddy, just out of the beaten current.
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