Nature's Bounty

Devil's Jump, a challenging rapid for whitewater canoeists and kayakers is located on the Big South Fork just to the south of the Blue Heron area.

"I missed many of a day's work to go fishin' and huntin'."

When Justus Stearns settled his mind and his business on Stearns and the region of the Big South Fork, there was appeal in the place for a man who made his way in the lumber business in Ludington, Michigan. Here were fine strands of oak, tulip, beech, sycamore, linden, cedar and pine-some still virgin growth.

And here too, was coal, millions of years of nature's changes giving back a bounty of energy. Justus Stearns started his railroad and the coal mines to fuel the engines to bring the timber out of the hills. Later, coal became the center of activity.

Here, too, were bluffs, cliffs and boulders cut through by the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Natural strata of sedimentary rocks created sculpture to capture the mountaineer imagination.

The river held its bass and walleye and catfish. There were whitewater rapids, small falls and eddies, and the undergrowth provided the place for frog and ginseng hunting, mayapple and muscadine grape searches, and trudges through piney woods.

Not only did many a morning fishing keep a man or woman from chores or paid work, but hunting squirrel or mink or even "manx" in favorite woodland haunts fill many an old miner's memory.

For all the timbering and the mining, the acid from the mines coloring the water and changing the wildlands to coal camps, the natural landscape still draws those who say with some who lived and worked at Blue Heron, "...I just love nature, that's all."

 

• Nature's Bounty

  
  

  Audio recording of Nature's Bounty Ghost Structure.
  Audio Transcript

  My great grandfather, Justus S. Stearns, started the Stearns Company in 1901 and 1902. He was a Michigan lumber man and was looking for timber as the story goes. He was running out of trees to cut in Michigan. He came down to Stearns and found the track of land. He subsequently bought there next to the old Southern Railway that was coming through. In 1902, they began the town, the timber activities, and also the K&T railway. I believe, I know, he mined some even that first year.

  I worked in timber woods some and some in the sawmills for my uncle.

  Well there wasn't much lumber back them days. I built a log house for myself.

  Yea, I liked it. That water was running between them two naried of rocks there. It wasn't very wide. It looked like it was six or eight foot.

  I loved to fish.

  Who'd fish with you?

  I'd fished with myself if no one else would. My younger sister would fish with me. I fished a lot with my dad. But he got me very discouraged. He would get his bait hung. I would have to go out and get the bait untangled. Finally I quit fishing with dad.

  I went many a days to work but went fishing, hunting. After living here on the ridge, I'd come to what come like a fine morning to fish. I'd get half way to work and say, ah heck with it. I'd turn and go back.

  I liked frog legs. Killed about forty frogs at night up the river. We had a carbide light you know. We'd shine their eyes. I should of left with two.

  The number two coal is high in sulfur. Water runoff is high in acid. You can tell where White Oak creek runs into Rock creek. It immediately takes on a different color.

  They called it the three cracks. It was big rocks in the mountains and were divided into three different parts. You could climb up on those rocks and there was a big rock over it. I mean if it rained you didn't get wet because you could go back in there just like a cliff house. Is that what I'm trying to say? Something similar to that. But it was huge. A bunch of us kids could get on them you see. We'd jump from one to another. They called it three cracks.

  You could usually find ginseng. It was high but had to be dried. You go out and get maybe quarter of a pound. Maybe two men would in a whole day's time unless you found a good patch of it. It had to be dried. But the worse thing was watching for the snakes, copperheads and rattlesnakes. I would not go back there hunting for ginseng at all. Dad had some bee hives. He would go up and rob the bees ever so often. There's whole lot of coons and squirrels. And there's plenty of minks, all kinds of minks, brown ones, black ones.

  In every hollow you could see smoke coming up.

  I tell you this one about moonshine. My brother-in-law told me, "If you sell it I'll give you half of what it brings.” I took it to Mine 18 to hide and sell it to them boys. I never sold a drop. Somebody stole it.

  Some of this natural scenery doesn't soak in on some of us old hillbilly like it does like people whose not use to it. We've seen it all our lives. People not used to it see beauty where we can't.