The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles

From every imaginable point of view a place like this is subject to unsparing test before it is finally fixed upon as a town site and enters upon a process of development. Nothing would better illustrate the tremendous power with which the new South, hand in hand with a new North, works with brains and capital and science. A few years ago this place was seventy miles from the nearest railroad. That road has since been built to it from the south; a second is approaching it from a distance of a hundred and twenty miles on the west; a third from the east; and when the last two come together this point will be on a great east and west trunk line, connecting the Ohio and Mississippi valleys with the Atlantic seaboard. Moreover, the Legislature of Kentucky has just passed an act incorporating the Inter-State Tunnel Railroad Company, and empowering it to build an inter-State double-track highway from the head-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky rivers to Big Stone Gap, tunnelling both the Black and Cumberland Mountains, and affording a passway north and south for the several railways of eastern Kentucky already heading towards this point. The plan embraces two double-track toll tunnels, with double-track approaches between and on each side of the tunnel, to be owned and controlled by a stock company which shall allow all railroads to pass on the payment of toll. If this enterprise, involving the cost of over two million dollars, is carried out, the railroad problem at Big Stone Gap, and with it the problem of developing the mineral wealth of southwest Virginia and south-east Kentucky, would seem to be practically solved.

That so many railroads should be approaching this point from so many different directions seems to lift it at once to a position of extraordinary importance.

But it is only a few months since the nearest one reached there; and, since little could be done towards development otherwise, at Big Stone Gap one sees the process of town-making at an earlier stage than at Middlesborough. Still, there are under construction water-works, from the pure mountain river, at an elevation of 400 feet, six miles from town, that will supply daily 2,500,000 gallons of water; two iron-furnaces of a hundred tons daily capacity; an electric-light plant, starting with fifty street arc lights, and 750 incandescent burners for residences, and a colossal hotel of 300 rooms. These may be taken as evidences of the vast scale on which development is to be carried forward, to say nothing of a steam street railway, belt line, lumber and brick and finishing plants, union depot, and a coke plant modelled after that at Connellsville. And on the whole it may be said that already over a million dollars' worth of real estate has been sold, and that eight land, coal, and iron development companies have centred here the development of properties aggregating millions in value.

It is a peculiarity of these industrial towns thus being founded in one of the most beautiful mountain regions of the land that they shall not merely be industrial towns. They aim at becoming cities or homes for the best of people; fresh centres to which shall be brought the newest elements of civilization from the North and South; retreats for jaded pleasure-seekers; asylums for invalids. And therefore they are laid out for amenities and beauty as well as industry – with an eye to using the exquisite mountain flora and park-like forests, the natural boulevards along their watercourses, and the natural roadways to vistas of enchanting mountain scenery. What is to be done at Middlesborough will not be forgotten. At Big Stone Gap, in furtherance of this idea, there has been formed a Mountain Park Association, which has bought some three thousand acres of summit land a few miles from the town, with the idea of making it a game preserve and shooting park, adorned with a rambling club-house in the Swiss style of architecture. In this preserve is High Knob, perhaps the highest mountain in the Alleghany range, being over four thousand feet above sea-level, the broad summit of which is carpeted with blue-grass and white clover in the midst of magnificent forest growth.

V

Suppose once more that you stand outside the Cumberland or Stone Mountain at the gap. Now turn and follow down the beautiful Powell's Valley, retracing your course to Cumberland Gap. Pass this, continuing down the same valley, and keeping on your right the same parallel mountain wall. Mark once more how inaccessible it is at every point. Mark once more the rich land and prosperous tillage. Having gone about thirty miles beyond Cumberland Gap, pause again. You have come to another pass – another remarkable gateway. You have travelled out of Kentucky into Tennessee, and the Cumberland Mountain has changed its name and become Walden's Mountain, distant some fifteen miles from the Kentucky State line.

It is necessary once more to define topographical bearings. Running north-east and south-west is this Cumberland Mountain, having an elevation of from twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet. Almost parallel with it, from ten to twenty miles away, and having an elevation of about two thousand feet, lies Pine Mountain, in Kentucky. In the outer or Cumberland Mountain it has now been seen that there are three remarkable gaps: Big Stone Gap on the east, where Powell's River cuts through Stone Mountain; Cumberland Gap intermediate, which is not a water-gap, but a depression in the mountain; and Big Creek Gap in the west, where Big Creek cuts through Walden's Mountain – the last being about forty miles distant from the second, about ninety from the first. Now observe that in Pine Mountain there are three water-gaps having a striking relation to the gaps in the Cumberland – that is, behind Cumberland Gap is the pass at Pineville; behind Big Stone Gap and beyond it at the end of the mountain are the Breaks of Sandy; and behind Big Creek Gap are the Narrows, a natural water-gap connecting Tennessee with Kentucky.

But it has been seen that the English have had to tunnel Cumberland Mountain at Middlesborough in order to open the valley between Pine and Cumberland mountains to railroad connections with the south. It has also been seen that at Big Stone Gap it has been found necessary to plan for a vast tunnel under Big Black Mountain, and also under Pine Mountain, in order to establish north and south connections for railroads, and control the development of south-east Kentucky and south-west Virginia. But now mark the advantage of the situation at Big Creek Gap: a water-gap at railroad level giving entrance from the south, and seventeen miles distant a corresponding water-gap at railroad level giving exit from the south and entrance from the north. There is thus afforded a double natural gateway at this point, and at this point alone – an inestimable advantage. Here, then, is discovered a third distinct centre in Cumberland Mountain where the new industrial civilization of the South is expected to work. All the general conditions elsewhere stated are here found present – timbers, coals, and ores, limestone, granite, water, scenery, climate, flora; the beauty is the same, the wealth not less.

With a view to development, a company has bought up and owns in fee 20,000 acres of coal lands and some seven thousand of iron ore in the valley and along the foot-hills on the southern slope of the mountain. They have selected and platted as a town site over sixteen hundred acres of beautiful valley land, lying on both sides of Big Creek where it cuts through the mountain, 1200 feet above the sea-level. But here again one comes upon the process of town-making at a still earlier stage of development. That is, the town exists only on paper, and improvement has not yet begun. Taken now, it is in the stage that Middlesborough, or Big Stone Gap, was once in. So that it should not be thought any the less real because it is rudimentary or embryonic. A glance at the wealth tributary to this point will soon dispel doubt that here in the future, as at the other strategic mountain passes of the Cumberland, is to be established an important town.

Only consider that the entire 20,000 acres owned by the Big Creek Gap Company are underlain by coal, and that the high mountains between the Pine and Cumberland contain vertical sections of greater thickness of coal-measure rocks than are to be found anywhere else in the vast Appalachian field; that Walnut Mountain, on the land of the company – the western continuation of the Black Mountain and the Log Mountain of Kentucky – is 3300 feet above sea, and has 2000 feet of coal-measures above drainage; and that already there has been developed the existence of six coals of workable thickness above drainage level, five of them underlying the entire 20,000 acres, except where small portions have been cut away by the streams.

The lowest coal above drainage – the Sharpe – presents an outcrop about twenty feet above the bed of the stream, and underlies the entire purchase. It has long been celebrated for domestic use in the locality. An entry driven in about sixty feet shows a twelve-inch cannel-coal with a five-inch soft shale, burning with a brilliant flame, and much used in Powell's Valley; also a bituminous coal of forty-three-inch thickness, having a firm roof, cheaply minable, and yielding a coke of over 93 per cent. pure carbon.

The next coal above is a cannel-coal having an outcrop on the Middle Fork of Big Creek of thirty-six inches, and on the north slope of the mountains, six miles off, of thirty-eight inches, showing a persistent bed throughout.

Above this is the Douglass coal, an entry of forty feet into which shows a thickness of fifty inches, with a good roof, and on the northern slope of the mountains, at Cumberland River, a thickness of sixty inches. This is a gas coal of great excellence, yielding also a coke, good, but high in sulphur. Above the Douglass is an unexplored section of great thickness, showing coal stains and coals exposed, but undeveloped.

The uppermost coal discovered, and the highest opened in Tennessee – the Walnut Mountain coal – is a coking variety of superior quality, fifty-eight inches thick, and though lying near the top of the mountain, protected by a sandstone roof. It is minable at a low cost, admirable for gas, and is here found underlying some two thousand acres.

As to the wealth of iron ores, it has been said that the company owns about seven thousand acres in the valley and along the southern slopes of Cumberland Mountain. There is a continuous outcrop of the soft red fossiliferous, or Clinton, iron ore, ten miles long, nowhere at various outcrops less than sixty inches thick, of exceptional richness and purity, well located for cheap mining, and adjacent to the coal beds. Indeed, where it crosses Big Creek at the gap, it is only a mile from the coking coal. Lying from one to two hundred feet above the drainage level of the valley, where a railroad is to be constructed, and parallel to this road at a distance of a few hundred feet, this ore can be put on cars and delivered to the furnaces of Big Creek Gap at an estimated cost of a dollar a ton. Of red ore two beds are known to be present.

Parallel and near to the red fossiliferous, there has been developed along the base of Cumberland Mountain a superior brown ore, the Limonite – the same as that used in the Low Moor, Longdale, and other furnaces of the Clifton Forge district. This – the Oriskany – has been traced to within ten miles of the company's lands, and there is every reason to believe that it will be developed on them. At the beginning of this article it was stated that iron of superior quality was formerly made at Big Creek Gap, and found a ready market throughout central Kentucky.

Parallel with the ore and easily quarriable is the subcarboniferous limestone, one thick stratum of which contains 98 per cent. of carbonate of lime; so that, with liberal allowance for the cost of crude material, interest, wear and tear, it is estimated that iron can here be made at as low a cost as anywhere in the United States, and that furnaces will have an advantage in freight in reaching the markets of the Ohio Valley and the farther South. Moreover, the various timbers of this region attain a perfection seldom equalled, and by a little clearing out of the stream, logs can be floated at flood tides to the Clinch and Tennessee rivers. To-day mills are shipping these timbers from Boston to the Rocky Mountains.

Situated in one of the most beautiful of valleys, 1200 feet above sea-level, surrounded by park-like forests and fertile valley lands, having an abundance of pure water and perfect drainage, with iron ore only a mile from coke, and a double water-gap giving easy passage for railroads, Big Creek Gap develops peculiar strength and possibilities of importance, when its relation is shown to those cities which will be its natural markets, and to the systems of railroads of which it will be the inevitable outlet. Within twenty miles of it lie three of the greatest railroad systems of the South. It is but thirty-eight miles from Knoxville, and eight miles of low-grade road, through a fertile blue-grass valley, peopled by intelligent, prosperous farmers, will put it in connection with magnetic and specular ores for the making of steel, or with the mountain of Bessemer ore at Cranberry. Its coke is about three hundred miles nearer to the Sheffield and Decatur furnaces than the Pocahontas coke which is now being shipped to them. It is nearer St. Louis and Chicago than their present sources of supply. It is the nearest point to the great coaling station for steamships now building at Brunswick. And it is one of the nearest bases of supply for Pensacola, which in turn is the nearest port of supply for Central and South America.

No element of wealth or advantage of position seems lacking to make this place one of the controlling points of that vast commercial movement which is binding the North and the South together, and changing the relation of Kentucky to both, by making it the great highway of railway connection, the fresh centre of manufacture and distribution, and the lasting fountain-head of mineral supply.

VI

Attention is thus briefly directed to that line of towns which are springing up, or will in time spring up, in the mountain passes of the Cumberland, and are making the backwoods of Kentucky the fore-front of a new civilization. Through these three passes in the outer wall of Cumberland Mountain, and through that pass at Pineville in the inner wall behind Cumberland Gap – through these four it is believed that there must stream the railroads carrying to the South its timbers and coals; to the North its timbers, coal, and iron; and carrying to both from these towns, as independent centres of manufacture, all those products the crude materials of which exist in economic combinations on the spot.

It is idle to say that all these places cannot become important. The competition will be keen, and the fittest will survive; but all these are fit to survive, each having advantages of its own. Big Stone Gap lies so much nearer the East and the Atlantic seaboard; Big Creek Gap so much nearer the West and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the Lakes; Cumberland Gap and Pineville so much nearer an intermediate region.

But as the writer has stated, it is the human, not the industrial, problem to be solved by this development that possessed for him the main interest. One seems to see in the perforation and breaking up of Cumberland Mountain an event as decisive of the destiny of Kentucky as though the vast wall had fallen, destroying the isolation of the State, bringing into it the new, and letting the old be scattered until it is lost. But while there is no space here to deal with those changes that are rapidly passing over Kentucky life and obliterating old manners and customs, old types of character and ideals of life, old virtues and graces as well as old vices and horrors – there is a special topic too closely connected with the foregoing facts not to be considered: the effect of this development upon the Kentucky mountaineers.

The buying up of the mountain lands has unsettled a large part of these people. Already there has been formed among them a class of tenants paying rent and living in their old homes. But in the main there are three movements among them. Some desert the mountains altogether, and descend to the Blue-grass Region with a passion for farming. On county-court days in blue-grass towns it has been possible of late to notice this peculiar type mingling in the market-places with the traditional type of blue-grass farmer. There is thus going on, especially along the border counties, a quiet interfusion of the two human elements of the Kentucky highlander and the Kentucky lowlander, so long distinct in blood, physique, history, and ideas of life. To less extent, the mountaineers go farther west, beginning life again beyond the Mississippi.

A second general tendency among them is to be absorbed by the civilization that is springing up in the mountains. They flock to these towns, keep store, are shrewd and active speculators in real estate, and successful developers of small capital. The first business house put up in the new Pineville was built by a mountaineer.

But the third, and, as far as can be learned, the most general movement among them is to retire at the approach of civilization to remoter regions of the mountains, where they may live without criticism or observation their hereditary, squalid, unambitious, stationary life. But to these retreats they must in time be followed, therefrom dislodged, and again set going. Thus a whole race of people are being scattered, absorbed, civilized. You may go far before you will find a fact so full of consequences to the future of the State.

Within a few years the commonwealth of Kentucky will be a hundred years old. All in all, it would seem that with the close of its first century the old Kentucky passes away; and that the second century will bring in a new Kentucky – new in many ways, but new most of all on account of the civilization of the Cumberland.

THE END