| Coal Monument ~ Baxter, Kentucky |
Harlan County is an area that is located in the south eastern coal fields of Kentucky, an extensive coal field stretching from the Appalachian Mountains westward. Wages in the early days of coal mining were relatively low and the mines were not safe. Mining in the middle years [1940's and 1950's] was being organized by the UMWofA [United Mine Workers of America] and too often, strikes interruped coal production. The economy was generally depressed. Family gardens and odd jobs were the way of life during unemployemnt.
Miners lived in the company owned town and usually walked to their work at the mines. There were many coal mines that operated in the county during the peak years of 1917 - 1960. The use of coal declined in America following World War II and the mines began a gradual closing in the 1960's.
Many Europeans migrated to Harlan County to work in the coal mines. Some came because jobs were plentiful and they learned the skills to become miners, some continued the mining skills they had used in Europe, and some probably were recruited as strike breakers during the several union disagreements with coal companies. They worked together with union members and some lived with their own relatives and fellow countrymen as neighbors.The coal mine families of Americans, Afro-Americans, Hungarians, Italians, Russians, Polish, and Yougslavians are now gone just as the signs of the coal mines. Flowers grow in yards now with never a hint of the passage ways that lie underground. The 1960 Census list the population of Harlan County as 51,107 as compared to the 1970 Census of 36,596 a loss of twenty five per cent of its people over a decade
The unique mining history of Harlan County Towns and the rich cultural contributions of its sons and daughters give the mine communities a character all its own and a place in the history of the American Dream.
