Lynch, KY, in "Bloody Harlan" County - Originally built by U.S. Coal & Coke

okay Shane Simmons with the Appalachian project and today's little adventure will take place in the Lynch Kentucky in Harlan County hey once again and Lynch was probably the ultimate coal camp of its day it was built by us coal and coke which was a subsidiary of the US Steel and they did it right as you can see the most houses are two stories and there's still in really great condition what people don't realize about a lot of these coal camps as they need it these coal mines needed hundreds if not thousands of employees and local populations just did not have enough people to sustain that so they had to recruit in people from Europe and African Americans from the deep south and what they did was they bloom in with better housing more amenities for example most of your coal camps had a bowling alley theater that type of thing just entertainment and they also advertise that their schools were actually better than public schools which was very important to a lot of families as it goes today speaking of which there's a Lynch high school up on the left and it is still was built of stone so the guts of it is still there obviously it's pretty until - dated on the inside but beautiful structure in its day and still quite eye-catching when he goes through town just absolutely gorgeous and up here ahead we will see any Catholic Church and that was also brought in mainly because of your Europeans the Russian is he a Polish the Italians most of those were at a Catholic background and that's why they have a beautiful Catholic Church the resurrection right up here on the right a little bit you can see that up there another stone structure up on the hill as you can see these houses are really crowded together and that was normal for one thing the mines just were just we're just looking to get housing they didn't really care about some I had a land or a yard they're more concerned about getting people here because I saw that church you see and they ran out of room for they quickly too because this is very mountainous area it's very difficult to build housing that close to the water which was absolutely necessary for day-to-day living you see another building up here state of decay coming up on to the mining part out beyond that and that whatever city hall up on the right it's still building in really great shape they've taken good care of it and here's coming up heads portal 31 and that is where they have my undermined ground mine tours and then do a really fantastic job with it when it's open it is animatronic tell a little story of the town I've been here take a look around up here so they still have the lamphouse building fired old fire station so the office and bath house are here you can see and fire station now looks like it's some type of antique store something possibly and then the lamp house is where you check in to go take the tours and you go in there to you know the mind looks that's pretty neat or when yours opened its use the clothes for the winter so not too much a point more than this time of year and you'll see across here it almost looks like a war zone this is the old with the actual mining take took place and the prep land all those things and now they are all in pretty bad shape still well-preserved and that was again because they were built so well to begin with but you know they're just really been neglected because we've really no use to keep those up there's nothing expense to do that would be outrageous versus what it would be worth but it almost has the feel of going into a ghost town that part of it obviously the town park still very well populated but then was the old powerhouse they have their own coal temple and the water water plant here your water today we're going up in here will be in been in here before too awfully long and now take a look around there that's where the new Devon mining museum which is fairly interesting as well actually I will in this video for now and it be back into spiritually

Channel: The Appalachian Project

Views: 17,878

Rating: 4.9061031 out of 5

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Id: 83U6FOGFVZA

Length: 4min 46sec (286 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2016