The Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad
The Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad was a short-line railroad owned by the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company and used for the purposes of hauling coal and timber from the rugged terrain of the Big South Fork region, including the “Big Survey” that is present-day Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area in western Scott County. A portion of the railroad fell into northwestern Scott County.
Precursor to Railroad
The Cumberland Plateau region was opened to rail traffic in 1879, when the city of Cincinnati, Oh. completed construction of the Cincinnati & Southern Railroad — which was rebranded the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific (CNO&TP) and is owned today by Norfolk-Southern — through the region.
With the new railroad came greater exploration of the region’s natural resources — beginning with timber and then coal — and the rise of companies like the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. (Stearns), the New River Lumber Co. (Norma), the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Co., the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. (Glenmary) and others.
Many of these companies soon realized the value of branch-line railroads to assist with the movement of the resources they were extracting or producing in the region. A total of 14 independent branch railroads existed along the CNO&TP route through the years, with seven of those located in Scott County. The first were short branch lines at Glenmary and Helenwood to compliment coal-mining operations in those communities, beginning in 1881, followed by the short-lived Knoxville & New River Railroad from Robbins to Brimstone, then by the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Co. Railroad from Oneida to Paint Rock, which became the Tennessee Railroad. Much later came the Brimstone Railroad from New River to Brimstone, which followed a portion of the K&NR route.
The last two of those seven independent railroads were the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co.’s Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad, and the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co.’s Oneida & Western Railroad, which are somewhat connected.
The Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. was founded in 1902 by Justus Smith Stearns (1845-1933), a sawmill operator from Ludington, Mich. He acquired his first lumber operation in the 1880s, and by 1901 owned timber interests in Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and the Pacific Northwest. It was in 1902 that Stearns acquired 50,000 acres of timberland on the Cumberland Plateau in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, and then added another 25,000 acres in Whitley County, Ky.
It was in Whitley County — now McCreary County — that Justus Stearns located his company store. The store was situated at a crossroads of the main road from Jacksboro, Tenn. to Somerset, Ky., and the main road from Williamsburg, Ky. to Monticello, Ky. The new town quickly became known as Stearns. Coal was discovered soon thereafter, and Stearns Lumber, as the company was originally known, was renamed Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. in 1910. The operations were managed by Robert Lyon Stearns (1872-1939), Justus Stearns’ son.
Stearns built an empire that employed more than 2,200 people and pulled timber and coal from 200 square miles of land, with a total of 18 coal and lumber camps.
The railroad begins
The Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad was formed in 1902 as a 3.5-mile spur from the CNO&TP, running from Stearns to a coal camp in Barthell, named for Nashville attorney Edward East Barthell (1866-1937) who helped incorporate the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. and served as the company’s legal counsel until his death. Barthell married Florence Freeman, who was a sister to Robert L. Stearns’ wife, Laura Freeman. While the Barthell and Freeman families were from Nashville, Edward E. Barthell and his wife later moved to Illinois, and are buried in the same cemetery (Lakeview Cemetery in Ludington, Mich.) where the Stearns family is buried.
The railroad line would eventually be extended to Yamacraw in 1906, a distance of 7.5 miles from the CNO&TP at Stearns. From there, a bridge was built over the Big South Fork River in 1907, and the railroad was extended to Oz in 1909. By 1914, the tracks had reached Difficulty, or Exodus, a distance of 16 miles from Stearns. In 1918, the line was extended to Bell Farm, where it connected with a 25-mile logging railroad that extended up Rock Creek into portions of Scott, Pickett and Fentress counties, ending northeast of Jamestown.
A one-mile spur from the K&T to the mining operation at Blue Heron was completed in 1938.
Life on the K&T
In addition to freight traffic, the K&T offered passenger service on the railroad. At its peak, the railroad hauled 1,000 passengers and 3,500 tons of coal daily. Most of the passengers were Stearns workers who were traveling to work in the mines and log woods.
The railroad reached its peak in the 1940s.
The decline of the K&T
With time, both the coal and the timber played out. The K&T reached its peak in the 1940s, but in 1948 the 25-mile logging railroad was abandoned, ending the Stearns company’s rail traffic into Scott County. The coal mines at Exodus (Difficulty) and Fidelity had already played out in the 1930s, and in 1949 the railroad line was closed between White Oak Junction and Bell Farm. The mine at Cooperative closed in 1950, and the railroad was closed at Oz — the first stop on the west side of the Big South Fork River — in 1953. That same year, coal tipples at Yamacraw and Worley closed, which left only Mine 16 at Oz and Mine 18 at Blue Heron.
The K&T purchased a pair of Alco S2 diesel locomotives in 1963, ending the era of steam engines on the railroad. The last steam locomotive was removed from service in February 1964. By that time, however, Mine 18 at Blue Heron had closed, and Mine 16 at Oz closed in 1966.
The Justus Mine at Barthell opened in 1967, bringing new life to the Stearns company. This kept the railroad running from Stearns to Barthell, the original 3.5 miles, until 1987, when the Justus Mine closed.
The railroad today
Today, the Big South Fork Scenic Railway operates an excursion train between Stearns and Blue Heron, the site of the old Mine 18, which is owned by the federal government as part of the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area. The excursion railroad uses S2s, one of which was owned by the K&T.
Ties to other Scott County railroads
When the K&T dieselized in the 1960s, it learned about driving and maintaining Alcos from the Tennessee Railroad, the coal railroad that ran from Oneida to Devonia. By that time, the Tennessee had a diesel fleet of Alco RS1s, which were similar to the S2s.
When the Jamestown Railroad was chartered by the Tennessee Coal & Lumber Co. in Glenmary in 1912 and then was changed to the Oneida & Western Railroad in 1913 with plans to run a rail line from Oneida to Jamestown, it was fiercely opposed by the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co., and the case wound up in court. The Stearns company’s argument was that the O&W did not have a proper charter to build a railroad. A judge ruled in Stearns’ favor — but also ruled that the court action had created the O&W as a legal entity, meaning the railroad could be built.