Friday, August 28

It was more than a mere structure of wood and iron, the Hardburley coal tipple was a landmark for many decades. Built by rugged men as a rugged monument to a rugged era, it was symbolic of an economy. Across the span of a half century, many fortunes in coal were shaken through its sturdy timbers. At one time it was the largest wooden tipple in the world. Two generations of mining families grew in the coal camp around the gaunt black structure. Men of the hills, men with the strength of the hills, erected the Hardburly tipple, as part of the booming of the coal industry in Eastern Kentucky soon after the turn of the century. The men whose muscle hoisted those huge square oak timbers into place have departed the human scene. There are none to replace them. This is a weaker age, in more than physical ways, too.

Now the Hardburley tipple is gone, it burned in 1962. Besides its purpose in moving a vast tonnage of coal, it was a tourist attraction. Thousands of travelers went out of their way to watch the giant apparatus at work.

Harburly was founded by and named for the Hardy Burlington Mining Company.

6 comments:

  1. My uncle, Dr. Lyndon Combs, had a job as a teenager
    shoveling up the cowpiles left under the tipple by the cows that slept there during the night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wish I had seen this when it was first posted. Harry I do not know where you get your information, but it appears to me you are the one that is shoveling crap!!!! Dr. Lyndon Combs never had such a job. In fact he didn't live here as a teenager he was in Berea those years. The only Harry I know that had any contact with the Combs family was Harry Birmingham who was the one that popped up at Hardburly after WWII and stole everything that Lora Combs had including a Ford automobile she helped buy for him to help his jailbird a** get work and the work he got was to repair the old courthouse clock and he stole the money and parts on that job.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I son't know where you get all your info, Wanderer, but I think Harry George knows more than you do about his Father. Just be a little polite and not be nasty.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Harry George was not mentioned on the blog. This story featured the Hardburley coal tipple.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hardburly was named by the coal owners whose names were Hardy and Burlingham. Check your facts, wanderer.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have this same pic on the wall in a painting

    ReplyDelete