The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

The Way We Were





When coal was soon to be king here In 1912, just one year after Consolidation Coal Company purchased 100,000 acres of coal lands, much of it at the foot of Pine Mountain in what today is known as Jenkins, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company took photographs showing that the Elkhorn No. 3 seam of coal in that area reached heights of about seven feet. The photo at right was taken in October 1912, while the one above was taken in July 1912 at Consol’s Mine No. 205. This photos are part of the “Jenkins, Kentucky Photographic Collection” donated to the University of Kentucky Digital Library by the late David A. Zegeer.

When coal was soon to be king here In 1912, just one year after Consolidation Coal Company purchased 100,000 acres of coal lands, much of it at the foot of Pine Mountain in what today is known as Jenkins, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company took photographs showing that the Elkhorn No. 3 seam of coal in that area reached heights of about seven feet. The photo at right was taken in October 1912, while the one above was taken in July 1912 at Consol’s Mine No. 205. This photos are part of the “Jenkins, Kentucky Photographic Collection” donated to the University of Kentucky Digital Library by the late David A. Zegeer.

Clips from available Mountain Eagle pages since our founding in 1907

Thursday, October 20, 1927

Whitesburg now has “a first-class modern telephone system,” less than a year after the system was taken over by Southern Bell Telephone Company. Fifty new customers have been added since Bell took the system over last December, bringing the number of homes and businesses with service to 160.

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A federal marshal seized 15 pints of whiskey after a Whitesburg man left them in a suitcase he dropped as he ran from the Hazard railroad depot. Marshal Vincent Sergent, also of Whitesburg, said the man, who wasn’t identified, left the suitcase and “departed in haste” after he saw the marshal heading his way.

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As many as 3,000 people, including the governors of Kentucky and Virginia, are expected to attend a ribbon cutting ceremony at Pound Gap on November 19 to mark the opening of a four-mile stretch of road connecting Jenkins and Letcher County with Virginia. “The road will be the first hard-surfaced, all-winter road the rich Letcher County coal section has with the outside world,” The Mountain Eagle reports.

 

 

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The Kona Five-Piece Orchestra furnished the music and Mr. and Mrs. Roy McClure entertained with a dance Saturday night at their home at Thornton.

Thursday, October 21, 1937

The United Automobile Workers union has chartered an organization that includes nearly every automobile mechanic in Whitesburg. The mechanics organization has been designated UAW Local 548, says Frank Hall, organizer for Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

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Two men charged in the September 9 murder of Whitesburg taxi driver Monroe Hensley have been arrested. Sam Hensley was arrested at Jenkins Tuesday evening and Everett Gibson was apprehended at the Letcher-Harlan county line Wednesday night. The two men allegedly beat Hensley to death after they hired him to drive them across Pine Mountain. They have already been indicted, and their trial was set for October 25.

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Funeral services will be held in McRoberts October 24 for Payton Cook, who died Monday from stab wounds he suffered Saturday night (October 16). Cook, a native of Alabama who came to Letcher County to work for Consolidation Coal Company, died in the Jenkins hospital. Charged in the stabbing of Cook is Ed Long, also of McRoberts. Long was still at large Thursday.

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A Letcher County man has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of robbing five dollars from Crit Morgan while threatening Morgan with a pistol. William Addington had pleaded not guilty to the charge.

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The murder trial of a Jenkins man ended in a hung jury. Mistrial was declared after members of a Letcher Circuit Court jury were unable to agree on the question of whether Walter Bradford shot and killed Robert Franklin Hayes, also of Jenkins.

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A Letcher Circuit Court jury has found Homer Rose guilty of murdering Dolphie Hall in the Kentucky River section of Letcher County. Rose was sentenced to life in prison.

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Former Whitesburg High School football star Gene Adkins has signed to play professional football with the Armco Roller Mills in Ashland. Son of Dr. and Mrs. Boaz Adkins of Whitesburg, Adkins played two seasons at the University of Kentucky before a stint in the U.S. Army. After earning his discharge from the Army, he played two more seasons of college football at Morris Harvey College in Charleston, West Virginia.

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Sweet potato digging has been underway in the Blackey area since the season’s first frost hit Letcher County recently. In the Rockhouse area, many people are now making molasses.

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The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture has been notified that under provisions of the Marijuana Tax Act, which went into effect October 1, Kentucky farmers growing hemp are required to register with the Collector of Internal Revenue. Hemp, once an important crop in Kentucky, is still grown in a few of the state’s counties.

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Although bonded whiskies come to the consumer at a slightly higher price than other spirits less than four years old, the Kentucky State Tax Commission has lowered the valuations on bonded whiskies for taxing purposes. A barrel of bonded whiskey four years old and older is now valued at $50 instead of $60. Three-yearold whiskey not bottled in bond is now valued at $34 per barrel, down from $40 last year.

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Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell star in “Manhattan Melodrama,” showing next Thursday only (October 28) at the Kentucky Theatre in Whitesburg.

Thursday, October 23, 1947

Codell Construction Company of Winchester is grading land for the new coal mine that will take coal from the ridges on Marshall’s Branch by belt in a mining experiment being conducted by Consolidation

Coal Company. Consolidation is currently building a new telephone line from East Jenkins to the mine entrance on Marshall’s Branch.

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Funeral services were held yesterday for Whitesburg businessman John A. Webb, a direct descendent of Daniel Boone and member of one of the first families to settle in Letcher County — on Cumberland River — shortly after the turn of the 18th Century. Webb, the widower of Cornelia Frazier of Whitesburg, was a graduate of Cumberland College of Williamsburg, Ky., and was one of the county’s leading school teachers for 20 years.

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Consolidation Coal Company entertained its 300 supervisory and clerical employees from Letcher, Johnson, Harlan, and Pike counties October 18 with a party held at the Pikeville Country Club. Featured on the menu was Jim Looney’s famous burgoo.

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The Kentucky State Highway Patrol radio system, inaugurated in 1946 with a single fixed station in Frankfort, has grown into a statewide network responsible for a 45 percent increase in traffic violation arrests. The highway patrol now has additional 250-watt stations at Elizabethtown, Hazard, London, Madisonville, and Morehead, and 50-watt stations at Bowling Green and Mayfield. “With these stations and our 48 car units, it is possible for a message to reach every highway patrol district within three minutes,” said Highway Patrol Radio Supervisor J.C. Fisher. Plans are underway for another 250-watt station to be built in Pikeville with additional 50-watt stations set for Louisville, Williamstown, Richmond and Jamestown.

Thursday, October 24, 1957

A few Letcher County school teachers will be paid a salary of $3,500 for the 1957-58 school year, but most will be paid between $2,100 and $2,800, said Supt. W.B. Hall.

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C.A. Wardrup, 55, owner of Wardrup Packing Company at Blackey and Wardrup Provision Company at Harlan, died about 6:20 p.m. Wednesday night after the car he was driving from Blackey to his home in Harlan hit a tree. Wardrup was traveling alone when the wreck occurred about four miles from Harlan.

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Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, and Walter Matthau star in “A Face In The Crowd,” showing Thursday through Saturday at Isaac’s Alene Theatre in Whitesburg. Showing Sunday and Monday is “3:10 to Yuma,” starring Glenn Ford.

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“Letcher County has had two new polio cases during the past two weeks, bringing home in a most unhappy fashion the fact that polio is still a problem facing us all,” a Mountain Eagle editorial says.

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The 1958 Edsel, the “new member of the Ford family of fine cars,” is now available at Harlow Motor Company in Whitesburg.

Thursday, October 19, 1967

Construction of the new road between Whitesburg and Hazard has been delayed indefinitely by a “freeze” on funds imposed by the federal government. At the direction of President Johnson, all Appalachian road construction was halted, except what is already under contract. The President also “froze” funds for projects such as the Army Corps of Engineers dams, but permitted engineering work and site purchases to continue.

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Army Major James M. Caudill Jr., son of Letcher County Judge James M. Caudill and Mrs. Caudill, received the Distinguished Flying Cross at Fort Leavenworth,

Kan. Major Caudill received the medal for heroism in combat in Vietnam while serving as an observation pilot on a reconnaissance mission. The Army stated: “Receiving a message that the Viet Cong were attacking a ship on the Long Tau River, Major Caudill flew to the area and spotted the enemy positions. He attacked the Viet Cong with rocket fire and came under heavy fire. Throughout the action he was under fire and his aircraft received seven hits. However, his aggressive actions forced the insurgents to abandon their positions.”

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“The Millstone Council is in the talking stage of setting up a new organization to get many handmade articles that our women are good at making to an outside market,” writes Mable Kiser, Millstone correspondent and the guiding force behind the Millstone Sewing Center. “If an outside market can be found, each woman will receive the money for the piece she makes. We hope this will mushroom into something big.”

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The old swinging bridge at UZ is not quite so swinging this week. A sizeable section of the rotting structure collapsed and dumped a California visitor, his wife and two children and their station wagon to the ground below at the edge of the Kentucky River. No one was hurt. Residents say they on numerous occasions during the past few years told fiscal court, county officials, and state road officials of the condition of the structure, but that it has been allowed to continue to rot without attention.

Thursday, October 13, 1977

Estimating that as much as 150 gallons of water are lost each minute in the Fleming-Neon area, Don Shoemaker, an engineer with Kennoy Engineers in Lexington, told the Neon City Council that its long-awaited $150,000 federal grant “won’t solve your water problems. The water loss between the tank and Neon is what’s killing you. Everybody needs to be aware that this small amount of money won’t do the job.” Shoemaker said he was unable to evaluate where the major leaks are in the antiquated Neon water system, but that losses “are tremendous.”

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The Letcher County Board of Education has approved an amended plan to update and consolidate schools in the county that advocates building a central county high school if student populations continue to decline. The plan calls for building a new high school near Whitesburg and transforming the present high school into a junior high center.

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”I came home last Sunday expecting to find Linefork filled with a bad tide,” writes Linefork correspondent Thelma N. Cornett. “For as we came up the Kentucky River, I saw many Clorox bottles, milk jugs, and many other bits of garbage floating in mid-stream, which is usually covered by the smaller streams flowing into the river. However, Linefork had escaped a very damaging tide; but the hollows along the road from Whitesburg to Linefork had washed the road badly.”

Wednesday, October 14, 1987

The home of Jack Looney at Seco is threatened by subsidence from South East Coal Co. Number 2 Mine, which was closed in 1954. The mine is slowly collapsing taking Looney’s house and grounds with it. The U.S. Office of Surface Mining has pumped more than $175,000 from the Abandoned Mine Lands Program into stopping the subsidence, but the hillside is still sagging down into the county road and Looney fears his house won’t be far behind.

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A Letcher County grand jury was ignored when it ordered state government’s top AIDS specialist to appear in Whitesburg to discuss what he called “an overreaction” by local officials in the aftermath of AIDS patient Rocky Lynn Sergent’s death. Because local law enforcement officials had not been schooled on the way to handle the large amount of blood that was spilled on the ground and on Sergent’s van, his body was left lying in the Sergent road for more than three hours. After unsuccessful attempts to get advice from state and local health officials on how to clean up the contaminated blood, Sheriff Ben Buster Taylor and Commonwealth’s Attorney James Wiley Craft ordered the blood-soaked area doused with gasoline and set afire. Two months later, Taylor and Craft still can’t get public health officials to develop guidelines for police to follow when dealing with crimes involving people with AIDS.

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Jenkins and Whitesburg have received federal grants to upgrade their sewage treatment plants. Jenkins received $938,203 from the Environmental Protection Agency to build a new sewage treatment plant, and Whitesburg received $315,561 to upgrade three sewage pumping stations and the city’s current contact stabilization treatment plant.

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Anthony Collier of the Martha Jane Potter football Cardinals leads the county in scoring. Collier has 80 points in the first five games of the season.

Wednesday, October 15, 1997

Rep. Paul Mason thinks the Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission should reconsider its decision to deny the state Transportation Cabinet permission to use Nature Preserves land for a project to improve U.S. 119 across Pine Mountain. Mason says the project will be too costly if the commission won’t let the highway department build the road on 11 acres of a 760-acre tract that was recently added to Bad Branch State Nature Preserves.

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Bill Jones, 32, of Knott County, superintendent of M&D Coal Co. No. 3 Mine in Floyd County, pleaded guilty to allowing miners to work under an unsupported roof and failing to make them mark where the last row of roof bolts ended. He also admitted that he smoked underground, which could ignite explosive methane gas and coal dust. Tracy Bryant, 20, was shoveling loose coal from the mine ribs about nine feet beyond the last row of roof supports in the mine when he was crushed under an 11-footlong rock.

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Middle and elementary school students in the Letcher County school system have raised nearly $10,000 to support early detection of breast cancer. The students walked for an hour at the Whitesburg River Park in honor of Betty Kramer, principal at Martha Jane Potter Elementary School, who recently underwent surgery for breast cancer.

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A framed art print of Whitesburg artist Anna Daniel Hall’s portrait of author James Still of Knott County is now on permanent display at the Harry M. Caudill Public Library in Whitesburg. Kentucky Preceptor Sigma Sorority donated the portrait to the library, and Mr. Still was present for its dedication.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Letcher Fiscal Court took time out from its regular agenda to honor four Letcher County members of the 149th National Guard Infantry, known as the “Mountain Warriors”, who returned home recently from a long tour of duty in Iraq. Judge Ward presented certificates of appreciation to Specialists Kelly Sexton and Michael Combs, who are brothers from Little Dry Fork, and to Corporal Josh Webb of Payne Gap. Lieutenant Brant Pennington of Whitesburg was in Lexington and was unable to attend the meeting. His father, David, accepted the certificate on his behalf.

Letcher County E-911 workers are going to each residence in the county to record Global Positioning System (GPS) readings from satellites to help improve the county’s emergency response system. The project will make it possible for physical addresses to be located when 911 calls are made from cellular telephones.

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A forest fire that scorched nearly 20 acres at Cromona is under control, the Kentucky Division of Forestry says. Firefighters with the Division of Forestry got the fire on School House Road under control on October 14. The fire burned for about a week before on 10 other acres.

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The Jenkins Cavaliers defeated the Phelps Hornets, 43-0, and will assure themselves of playing in the post-season if they can beat the Evarts Wildcats later this week.


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