This corporate entity and its numerous corporate derivatives were extremely important to basic life in the Williams Creek Basin. These corporations owned the railroad running beside Williams Creek for about 10 miles from Princess KY, to the head of Williams Creek near Music KY. They owned the large industrial coal mining operations that ran for many decades at Coalton and Rush in Western Boyd County, and Grant in Eastern Carter County. They owned company houses and company stores that serviced the miners and their families. And, they owned almost all of the land, thousands and thousands of acres, at Coalton, Rush, and Grant.
If you are interested in the history of the Williams Creek Basin you should gain some understanding of these corporations that controlled so very much.
Linked below at the bottom of this article is a very dry, but information-packed, three page document on these corporations. It was possibly written for a corporate bigwig by a corporate legal department so that the bigwig could get a quick, bottom line understanding of how these corporations intertwine. This document has no cited author or written date. It had to be produced after 1924. It was found in the corporate records of ARMCO.
A short introduction to each corporate entity may help the uninitiated understand this three page document.
The Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad (L&BSRR) 1852 – This was a railroad chartered by the Kentucky state legislature to run from Lexington KY to Catlettsburg KY. The route was later modified to go to Ashland, not Catlettsburg. This railroad company folded before much work was completed.
The Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad – Eastern Division (L&BSRR-ED) 1864 – Industrialists centered in Ashland KY, and including the Means family, bought the rights for a small part of the Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad. This small part eventually would run from Ashland KY to Denton (or Seaton) KY in 1881. But before it made it to Denton, it was a dead-end railroad from Ashland to Princess in 1857, extended to end at Coalton in 1858, extended to end at Rush in 1872, and finally Ashland to Denton in 1881, to link with another railroad going to Lexington KY.
Ashland Coal & Iron Railway (AC&I) 1880 – The renamed and direct successor to the Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad – Eastern Division. This railway also owned large coal mine operations at Coalton, Rush, and Grant, and iron furnaces and processing facilities in Ashland KY.
Ashland Iron & Mining (AI&M) 1902 – Governmental pressure forced a split of all railroad holdings from other corporate operations. So, the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway was split into two parts. The railroad operations, still called the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway, became one part. The coal mines and the iron production facilities in Ashland constituted the other part, renamed to Ashland Iron & Mining. Strangely, and at the same time, the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway was made a separate corporation owned by Ashland Iron & Mining.
American Rolling Mill, later referred to as ARMCO, purchased Ashland Iron & Mining along with the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway, in late 1921. This became the foundation for what eventually became ARMCO’s huge industrial facility in Ashland KY.
American Rolling Mill (ARMCO) sold the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in 1924.
Not mentioned in this corporate analysis but yet important, is that ARMCO sold most of the huge corporate land holdings in Western Boyd County and Eastern Carter County in the Williams Creek Basin (and numerous other locations in Boyd County) to Eastern Kentucky Lumber & Development Corporation in the mid 1940’s.
So now you are primed to understand the document linked below, which provides the corporate skinny on these intertwined corporations.
A big thanks to Orville Smith for his kind and focused help.
I personally digitized, edited, and produced the attached Adobe PDF document. Just click on this link.
LINK – Corporate History – The Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad – Eastern Division
Enjoy! Lon
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