We took off this morning to hook up with Hal 47 near the Kentucky line on his way down from Indiana to ride God's Country in The Great State Of Tennessee this weekend. Tomorrow we are taking a overnight up into the Tennessee / Virginia mountains. This first picture was taken outside of Rocky Top, Tennessee ( Coal Creek ) . The Coal Creek War took place near here.
The Coal Creek War was an armed labor uprising that took place primarily in Anderson County, in the state of Tennessee, in the early 1890s. The struggle began in 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed attempted to replace free coal miners with convicts leased out by the state government. Over a period of just over a year, the free miners continuously attacked and burned prison stockades and company buildings, hundreds of convicts were freed, and dozens of miners and militiamen were killed or wounded in small-arms skirmishes. One historian describes the conflict as "one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in all American labor history."
The Coal Creek War was part of a greater struggle across Tennessee against the state's controversial convict-leasing system, which allowed the state to lease its convicts to mining companies to compete with free labor. The outbreak of the conflict touched off a partisan media firestorm between the miners' supporters and detractors, and brought the issue of convict leasing to the public eye. Although the uprising essentially ended with the arrests of hundreds of miners in 1892, the publicity it generated led to the downfall of Governor John P. Buchanan, and forced the state to reconsider the convict-leasing system. In 1896, when its convict-lease contracts expired, Tennessee's state government refused to renew them, making it one of the first Southern states to end the controversial practice.
After hookin' up with Hal we took off through coal country on some awesome mountain roads . We made our way into Middlesboro, Kentucky.
Middlesboro is a home rule-class city in Bell County, Kentucky. The population was 10,334 while its micropolitan area had a population of 69,060.
It is located 1 mile west of the Cumberland Gap and is the largest city in southeastern Kentucky. It is located entirely between Pine Mountain and the Cumberland Mountains in the Middlesboro Basin, which geologists believe to be an enormous meteor crater (one of three known astroblemes in the state). The city claims to be the only one in the United States built entirely inside such a crater, as well as the home of ragtime music and the oldest continuously-played golf course in the country.
My iPhone didn't get a good clear picture here of the old road that before 1933 was the main road until the Norris Dam was completed and the area flooded. You can see old home and business foundations and a bridge when the water is below winter pool that is rare the last time I remember was the early 80's when we had severe drought conditions.
Couple more pictures on beautiful Norris Lake... Tomorrow and Sunday we will be playing in the mountains on the
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