THE OLD COAL BANK HILL MINES
October 2, 2007
If you look at a current Holmes County plat map you will find that County Road 52 south of Nashville is also called Coal Bank Hill Road; and there’s a good reason for that. About 1.5 miles south of town at the crest of the hill there are several old coal drift mines, an unreclaimed strip mine, and also the highest point in Holmes County. This story will be about the old coal mines of coal bank hill.
On the east side of CR 52 is the STRIP MINE. In the early 1940s a commercial coal company made one huge circular strip mining dig and then gave up the venture because the coal seam was only about 30 inches thick and the coal quality was considered inferior. Still remaining today are the scars and hardships to nature’s regrowth from a time when coal companies had no responsibility for land reclamation. Visible today beyond the roadside brush are deep land gouges, huge barren tailing mounds, and decaying remains of an old coal tipple from this operation.
On the west side of CR 52 there are the remains of several much older and smaller mines. These are the DRIFT MINES of coal bank hill. Small tailing (or gob) piles and old shed foundations can be seen today back in the woods where these drift mine operations took place. The time for these mines was the late 1800s and early 1900s. The entry to a drift mine was a hand-dug upward-sloping tunnel starting into the hillside just below the depth of the coal seam at the hill top (10 to 30 feet), and the tunnels might be 100 or more feet long to reach the start of the coal seam. In this crude mining procedure a miner would kneel or even lie on his side picking out coal from seams that were less than 3 feet thick. The coal was then loaded into low wooden carts with small iron wheels that would move along on a wooden track. When the cart was full it was pushed or pulled to the mine entrance. Often a large dog was hitched to the small coal cart and helped the miner to transport the coal out of the mine. This was quite helpful since the dog could comfortably walk under the low mine ceiling which was usually less than 4 feet. The dog would pull the coal cart along the wooden tracks and the miner would push from behind. The work was arduous for both dog and miner. At the surface the coal was dumped into the tipple and was sold by weight or by the bushel.
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The photo shows two unidentified miners and (if you look closely) their dog. Also seen in the photo are a full cart of coal, two empty coal carts, mining tools, the wooden rails, tailing piles, and the miners’ shack. The miners’ shack would have a scale for weighing the coal and a coal stove for warmth. Surely other items for comfort were there too, but only the metal and glass items have been found during recent digs.