African American Miners and Migrants: THE EASTERN KENTUCKY SOCIAL CLUB

5. "Living Tolerably Well Together": Life in Model Towns along Looney Creek

v v v chapter 5 “Living Tolerably Well Together”: Life in Model Towns along Looney Creek The opening of the Harlan County coalfields came when the L&N Railroad completed the Wasiota and Black Mountain Branch of its rail lines into the county in the early 1900s. By 1921 Harlan had become the top coal-producing county in Kentucky. The coal operations established by International Harvester at Benham in 1910 and United States Steel at Lynch seven years later ultimately became the largest in the county. The two towns also became thriving communities that fluctuated in size as the need for coal,and therefore labor,rose and fell.Ample evidence of their origins as model towns can be found in Benham and Lynch today. A company store, mine buildings, theater, schools, and homes—some in use and good repair, others boarded up and falling into ruin—dot the roadside and extend up the hills.1 It was the demand for coke used in the companies’ steel furnaces that led to the founding of these towns. Benham was first, founded when the International Harvester Company came to Harlan County to mine the rich coal seams under Black Mountain. Ten years earlier, the Deering Harvester Company (later to become the International Harvester Company) had decided to build a steel mill in South Chicago; it set up Benham’s coal-mining operations to provide a steady flow of raw materials at reasonable prices.The steel mill was completed in 1908 and operated by a subsidiary, the Wisconsin Steel Company.2 Two years later, the subsidiary company set up a sawmill next to Looney Creek, where virgin timber from Black Mountain was planed for building a self-contained company town.The L&N Railroad extended a spur from Pineville, Kentucky, to Benham, and in September 1911 the first load of life in model towns along looney creek 69 coal was shipped from Benham to Chicago. According to the Harlan Daily Enterprise, “By November 1912, 300 coke ovens were completed, 175 houses, the town was lighted by electricity, water works were under way, three churches were built, a school with an attendance of 130, and a well-equipped Y.M.C.A. building was opened.”3 The valley was later described as having hillsides “as steep as a horse’s face.”4 Consequently,Benham was designed in the form of a circle,with mine offices, company store, hospital,theater,schools,and churches at the center and eventually 520 company-owned homes lining the short streets running up the slopes from the valley. The Yowell Post Office, which sat on the site, was renamed Benham after a mountain that rose above the new company town.5 The building of Lynch by the United States Steel Company followed in 1917 after the company purchased forty thousand acres at the head of LooneyCreektostartitscoal-miningoperations.Asubsidiary,theUnited States Coal and Coke Company, began construction of a town and opened a mine shaft inAugust of that year to provide coal for U.S.Steel’s mills in Gary, Indiana. Because the L&N Railroad refused to extend its spurupLooneyCreekfromBenham,supplieshadtobehauledupstream by wagon to build the new town. Named after Thomas Lynch, the first president of the United States Coal and Coke Company,the model town took more than eight years to complete.6 Memphis Tennessee Garrison, a black welfare worker in U.S. Steel’s West Virginia mining operations, notes,“But now U.S.Steel had the best houses;they had the safest mines. They had the most modern mining machinery and they set the pace.”7 Lynch was laid out in six sections along Looney Creek, with the first section downstream closest to Benham and the last at the farthest point upstream. The long, narrow town filled the valley floor and spread up both hillsides.The mine portals,tipple,offices,store,schools,and other buildings housing mine operations were at the center of the town. Housing for the work force included two hundred single homes, four hundred double homes, and five boardinghouses with twenty-two bedrooms each for unmarried employees. A hotel with 108 bedrooms was built to accommodate visiting company officials and others needing temporary housing.A fifty-four-bed hospital,power plant,churches , and recreational facilities were also constructed.8 african american miners and migrants 70 A third town in the area,Poor Fork,had been settled during the 1820s at the confluence of Looney...