Moving

Transporting early Stearns Logging houses on K&T railway flatbed logging cars.

"It seemed like all the families were moving all the time."

In each of the structures you visit today, you will hear more than one voice. In most cases there is no house or public building in the Blue Heron camp that is solely associated with a single family or individual. Even in the short time from 1937-1962 different families moved in and out of Blue Heron Camp.

Most came to Blue Heron in the beginning of operations there from another camp, often Worley, Fidelity, or Cooperative. Some who lived away from Stearns Company property would stay on their own private place regardless of the location of the mine where they worked. Still others would live at one camp for a while as they worked at another.

It is not only the people who moved, so did the houses. Most were simple and small enough to be loaded on flat cars when no longer needed at one mining camp and moved to a new place. This practice began with the logging camps that preceded mining in the area.

People remember different numbers of houses in the camp because there were different numbers at different times. At one point, there were 22 houses, but one was moved out. At the end of operations, some structures were moved, some salvaged, and others merely fell away to nothing.

It is often difficult to say just who lived in a particular house in Blue Heron, as most people would move around in the camp when they could get a better house because someone moved away. Some families lived in as many as six different houses during their time at Blue Heron. Some remained in the same house as long as they worked Mine #18.

When it came time to move to another camp, most people loaded all they owned on a train flat car and traveled to the new place. Friends and neighbors would help them load and unload. When moving inside the same camp, push carts were the common way of taking belongings along.

Many of the people who worked at Blue Heron still have family and homes in McCreary County or nearby. Others have gone to Indiana, Georgia, and further away. Moving seemed as much a way of life for mining families as did mining. As one fellow put it, "...seemed like they'd get restless".

 

• Moving

  
  

  Audio from the Moving Ghost Structure
  Audio Transcript

  It seemed like all the families were moving at that time. It was the first one we lived in. It was little three-room house down on the right.

  We came from "Fidel" town; moved to Mine 18.

  I moved into a company house in Stearns and lived a there a little while.

  Then we moved into that little two-room house.

  Very few of them lived down here or wanted to live down here. They didn't want to bring their families down here because there is nothing here.

  There's quite a few people who lived in the upper end of Worley because there were not enough houses up here. Some of them lived at Barthel and worked here.

  Oh yes, we kept the houses full. If a house got empty though, they would get one a little bit better than the one they had. They moved.

  We lived in seven, I guess about, I believe, me and momma are counting about seven different houses down there at Blue Heron. We moved out of one I remember one time that had water in it and we moved into one that didn’t have water. You had to carry it from a spring. It was Jack Daniels idea. Usually getting these different houses was his idea. Course he didn't do much of it because he worked. You know at night. He'd go on to work and we moved in the evening.

  We had what we called the outdoor toilet you know, in the other house. But when we moved down there, we were kind of getting into society, you know modern.

  Most of them houses, lot of people don't know that most of them houses at 18 come out of Camp 3. They loaded them on flatcars and brought them up the tracks. Luther went to work there before you know were any houses. He had a tent you know over in the bottom. We moved to Barthel till they got some houses built.

  When they put them down they painted them. They painted white and trimmed them. They trimmed all their houses in blue or red or something like that.

  What we done. We kept them weeds and everything cut out. We whitewashed them trees about five foot high. It was really pretty.

  They was painted up and looked good inside. But they wasn't insulated or nothing.

  Some of the little four-room houses that didn't have no bath or nothing, I paid twelve or fourteen dollars a month, but that included the water. That water was piped across that river to those houses. Good water and its natural flow.

  The house was on columns like, you know. It got so the river got so high that they put a box car in there to move the furniture into and they cabled it down. They cabled the house down.

  Here and there, we moved a lot.

  They get kind of restless you know. They want to be moving around. They get thinking the grass was greener somewhere else.

  We closed in December, 1962. We decided that we would not to tear them down this time. It was pretty down there. People loved to go fishing down in there basically when the walleye were going. It was a nice place to camp out. Almost immediately they began tearing the houses down and abusing them. It was no time at all they just disappeared.