Advertisement
CUMBERLAND GAP
All I had to carry up here was my camera and I barely made it. Those immigrants had to struggle along with all that they owned. It was a brutal trip for them in to Kentucky but the free land was worth the trip. Right beside the parking lot at the base of the hill the railroad has put a tunnel through the mountain. DAY 16: MAY 7, 2013
This morning I hiked up the steep trail to the Cumberland Gap Saddle. It is only a distance of 0.6 miles, but it almost killed me. The round trip was 1.2 miles. Almost exactly the same distance as the Kentucky Derby. It took me far longer than 2 minutes though. I don’t understand it. I have been eating plenty of oats. This evening I have come to roost at the Candlewood place in Logan, West Virginia after a drive of 248.4 miles. It is the only motel here, but it is the nicest one I have stayed in. Kevin will be pleased that it has child-protected electric outlets. I can’t figure out how they work of course.
Cumberland Gap Daniel Boone found his way into Kentucky through here in 1769. At that time it was the well-worn route the Cherokee and Shawnee used to attack one another’s villages. It was known then as the Warriors Path. Dan’l founded the first American settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. It was called Boonesboro and Dan’l located it by simply following the Warrior Path northward until
IRON MILL
These are the remains of the iron works at Cumberland Gap. he found a place he liked. It was clear up by Lexington on I-75. All of the settlers who flooded into Kentucky and Indiana during the following years crossed the mountains at Cumberland Gap, and they began calling it the Wilderness Road. Coonrod Pile crossed here to go settle the Wolf River country in Tennessee. He must have been hopelessly lost to settle there. Coonrod was Alvin York’s great grand uncle or whatever. Meriwether Lewis crossed the here too in 1803 on his way from Washington City to Oregon. Abe Lincoln was born in Kentucky but his folks crossed the mountains over Cumberland Gap like everyone else. The South could have saved themselves a good bit of grief had they robbed and murdered Abe’s dad just like they did Meriwether Lewis in 1806 as he was returning to Washington City. A thriving little community sprang up at the gap beginning in about 1820 when an iron deposit was located nearby. An iron mill is labor intensive because it requires plenty of firewood, plenty more of limestone, and a reliable stream of water to operate the billows.
Pikeville Old Ran’l McCoy was a
PIKE COUNTY COURTHOUSE
The building was remodeled during the Depression and made larger than it was. The Hatfield-McCoy Feud ended here when many of the Hatfields were given life sentences. citizen of Pike County, Kentucky. Pikeville was the county seat. Old Ran’l could not keep himself out of trouble his bothersome neighbors the Hatfields. The Hatfields lived across the Tug River in West Virginia. A bloody feud broke out between the two families shortly after the War Between the States ended. The feud lasted for 25 glorious years. Old Ran’l had a brother who served with the Yankee army and he turned up murdered by the Logan Wildcats in West Virginia. The Wildcats were a Confederate militia outfit that some Hatfields were part of. Resentment between the families started there. It was fueled over the years by white lightning and jealousy on the part of Old Ran’l. The Hatfields were more numerous and more affluent and when Old Ran’l felt his bile rising he would look for a reason to file legal proceedings against the Hatfields. Old Ran’l filed suit over a pig, and over a parcel of land. Always he lost his court battles and that caused more resentment. Big trouble broke out in August of 1882 during a political rally on the West Virginia side of the Tug when three of Old Ran’l sons got into a fight
BLOODY MINGO
The Matewan Massacre took place right here in the alley beside the old bank. with Ellison Hatfield and knifed him numerous times. The McCoy sons were taken into custody by Hatfields and when Ellison died they were tied up to Paw Paw trees and executed. The killing of his son’s incited Old Ran’l to hire a bounty hunter to kill Hatfields. Attacks on the Hatfields incited them to respond with a raid on Old Ran’ls home. It was burned down and two more of his children were killed. One of his daughters had to be disowned for bearing a Hatfield child. The feud ended in 1890 when a passel of Hatfields were arrested for the McCoy murders, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Ellison Mount was convicted of killing Alafair McCoy, who was just a little girl. They decided to hang him and did so on February 18, 1890.
Bloody Mingo Mingo County split off from Logan County in West Virginia about the time the McCoy-Hatfield Feud ended. The little coal mining town of Matewan sprung into existence on the Tug River very near where the McCoys killed Ellison Hatfield and near those paw paw trees. Labor unrest reared its ugly head in Matewan in
PAW PAW INCIDENT
When I took this photo I thought the trail went to where the paw paw trees were. Most likely it is the wheel chair ramp to the little park where Ellison Hatfield was shanked by the McCoys. What is a paw paw tree anyway? 1920 when the United Mine Workers tried to organize the miners there. The coal companies did not wish to see their cost of production go up so they fired the miners who had joined the union and sent a group of thugs from Bluefield to evict the fired miners from company houses. The thugs were employees of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. The thugs were getting themselves a brisk workout by forcibly removing possessions from the fired miners’ homes and stacking them up in the street. Sid Hatfield was chief of police in Matewan and intervened on behalf of the miners. The thugs claimed the houses were company property and the evictions were legal. Sid claimed the houses were located on city property and were in his jurisdiction, and the evictions would only be upheld by court order. The argument became heated and erupted in gunfire. Seven of the thugs, two miners, and little boy were killed in the street fight. Nineteen indictments were handed down against miners who participated in the fight, but all of them were acquitted. In August of 1921 the Baldwin Felts thugs filed proceedings against Sid Hatfield in the town of Welch. When Sid and his deputy, Ed Chambers, appeared for the court session they were ambushed and killed on the courthouse steps. The unions went nuts. They armed themselves and organized a solidarity march in Charleston. By the time the march reached Blair Mountain the miners were about six thousand strong. It was an armed force to be reckoned with, and the governor called out the National Guard to oppose them. A pitched battle broke out on Blair Mountain in which the miners all tied red bandanas around their necks to avoid shooting one another. It gave birth to the term “redneck”. The march dissipated when the National Guard broke out their machine guns and called in aerial bombardment commanded by Billy Mitchell. Sid Hatfield was a man of conviction and unafraid to stand up to injustice.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.221s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 52; dbt: 0.1024s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb