Pumphouse, Carpentry Shop, And Railroad Scale At Rush KY

Few of the industrial fixtures of Rush’s rich coal mining past remain.  When serendipitously an image is found that reveals one of these fixtures appears, it is special.  Here is a restored image of a railroad pumphouse, carpentry shop, and railroad scale at Rush KY that were part of that coal mining enterprise.

Drift mining of coal on an industrial scale began at Rush KY in 1871 and continued at a reasonably large scale until the 1930’s.  After the 1930’s there was still some drift mining, but the size of these operations were very small, typically just one or two people pickin’ at the leftovers the larger operations had abandoned. 

Mining at Rush was a direct outgrowth of intensive drift mining in the nearby community of Coalton, where mining operations began in the mid 1860’s. Industrial scale drift mining activity was extended from Rush to nearby Grant, just inside Carter County, in 1893.

Rail service to Coalton, Rush, and Grant was essential to move the mined coal to market.  The railroad from Ashland made it to Coalton in 1857, Rush in 1872,^{KY Encyclopedia,Jackson, p109} and Grant sometime before 1881.

These large-scale mining operations brought hundreds of miners to the area to work the coal. Communities developed in areas that had previously been without any meaningful population.  Most of these miners were accompanied by their families.  This resulted in the formation of communities of thousands with the resultant stores, merchants, farmers, houses, churches, etc.

Little physical evidence of this large-scale coal mining initiative remains.  The rail tracks still remain to Coalton, but the tracks elsewhere have been razed and sold for scrap and the right of way sold.  In some places double wide trailers sit on the abandoned railroad right of way.  The coal tipples are gone, the coal company stores are gone, the spur railroad lines that serviced Rush Creek, Meadow Branch, Star, Big Run, and Trace are all gone.

What remains are a few mining company houses in Rush at New Row, Greasy Row, and at the mouth of Blackleg Hollow.  In a few places the iron rail bridges over Williams Creek remain on the abandoned railroad right of way.

In about 2010 Ed Hicks was demolishing his parents’ house on KY SR5 near the bridge across the East Fork of the Little Sandy River.  Ed’s parents were Harold Franklin “Peroo” Hicks (1916 – 1982) and Mary Louise Coffee Hicks (1922 – 2018). This was an old and large house that had been expanded several times.  The initial core of the house was a two room, two story, log structure.

Above the central fireplace on the first floor of this log part of the house was a cutout in the ceiling that exposed the rough sawed floor joists of the second floor.  Ed was unsure if this cutout served some sort of function, but he thought it might have once provided a crude heat vent for the upstarts from the nearby first floor fireplace.

Ed noodled a bit in the cutout and discovered a very grimy flat piece of glass about 5 X 7 inches in size with some pieces broken on the edges.  He was unsure what it might be and later cleaned it up a bit and found it was a glass negative.  Ed set the negative down where it remained for a few years. Ed thought the building depicted on the negative was related to the Rush KY area so he finally gave the negative to his brother-in-law, Glen Roy Shavers.  Glen Roy is from Rush and has an interest in local history.^{Ed Hicks Interview}

Glen Roy showed the negative to one of his neighbors at Cannonsburg KY. This neighbor, Tim Preston, was a reporter for the Ashland Independent Newspaper.  Tim wrote a nice story about the glass negative called “Old photo reveals timely details” for the 9 July 2015 edition.  The article included a very rough reproduction of the glass plate negative image that showed only part of the negative.

The precise date of the image is unknown, but photography using glass plates went out of favor in the 1920’s. The poster on the far right of the image on the scale shed is a widely distributed World War One “Third Liberty Loan” war bond advertisement circa 1917, so this image is likely from about 1917.

Glen Roy later gave me the glass negative.  A close friend, Bob Ihrig, spent many hours digitally restoring the negative’s image.

This is what the negative image looked like before Bob Ihrig’s excellent restoration efforts.

The image is of a pumphouse, carpentry shop, and railroad scale facility located at the very beginning of the rail spur that followed Rush Creek.  This Rush spur was off the main rail line running from Ashland KY to Lexington KY. The pumphouse was used to provide water for the steam engines active on the railroad.  The scale was used to weigh loaded rail cars to determine the amount of coal, clay, and possibly cord wood in these cars.  The carpentry shop likely serviced the local mining activity.  These structures sat at or just to the right of the current US Post Office at Rush at the Mouth of Blackleg Hollow.  A small white frame house now sits at or near where this pumphouse structure was located. The noted scale sat in what is currently the SR 854 road, or the right of way for this road.  The blacktop for SR 854 can be seen in front of this house image link below. Click on the link below to see Google Maps street view showing the location of this small frame house and road.

Link to Google Maps Street View of White Frame House at mouth of Blackleg

Below is a Google Maps link showing a recent aerial view of this general location at the mouth of Blackleg Hollow at Rush. The red teardrop marker is at the location of this pumphouse, carpentry shop, and scale.

Link to Google Maps aerial view of the area of interest

This small white house was originally built for Gwendolyn “Gwen” Seaton McGuire (1903 – 1970).  Gwen lived here with her two sons, Edward McGuire (1929 – 2013) and David McGuire (1940 – 2020). Gwen Seaton was the daughter of Samuel “Sam” Seaton (1867 – 1927). Sam Seaton was the longtime superintendent of the mining operations at Rush for Ashland Iron and Mining, the primary mining company at Rush.  Some older Rush locals think it is very likely this white frame house sits on part of the foundation of this pump house building shown in the glass negative. David McGuire indicated this small house’s construction was supervised by Rush local William “Bill” Ratliff (1870 – 1953) and was built in about 1947 on all or part of an existing foundation. ^{David McGuire Interview}

Below is a portion of a 1916 Ashland Coal and Iron Railway map^{ACI V33a-19 Map} that shows the exact location of this pump house, carpentry shop, and scale at the mouth of Blackleg Hollow.  This map is part of a series of 22” X 55” maps on linen of the Ashland Coal and Iron Railway submitted to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1916. This submission was a requirement of all railroads in the US.  The pump house is noted as “1-S-F Pump House & Carpenter Shop”.  1-S-F indicates it is a one story wood frame structure.

Also notable in this map image:

• The scales seen in the photo
• The waterline pipe to the right of the pumphouse (dashed lines) coming down the hill from a dug pit reservoir. This elevated water pit is out of the range of this map and not shown. This pumphouse forced water up that hill to the pit dug reservoir to provide a constant pressure water supply. This elevated pit would provide an accommodating constant water pressure function much like a municipal water tower.
• Waterline to filling station beside the main rail line to fill steam locomotives with necessary water.
• The Ashland Iron and Mining (AI&M) Company Store, designated as “2-S-B Store” (2 story brick). Several years later this building was used as a private general store run by the Ratliff and Chapman families.
• AI&M Stable, for the many mules and ponies used in the coal mine operations.
• AI&M Office. Years later this building served as the US Post Office at Rush.
• The creek in the map is Williams Creek.
• Note that the C&O railroad depot many remember in this area is NOT present. It was built after 1916.

This pumphouse replenished a dug pit reservoir on the hill behind the pump house / scale. This dug pit reservoir will be the subject of a future article on the Williams Creek Basin website utilizing several of my recent photographs of this pit.

The 2nd part of this article regarding the pit reservoir is at the link below:

Pumphouse Reservoir For Rail Steam Engine Water At Rush KY

A big thanks to Glen Roy Shavers, Ed Hicks, and Bob Ihrig for the kind help detailed above.  Also, a big thanks to Jim Kettel at the Boyd County Public Library for finding the exact date and title of the previous Independent newspaper article on this glass negative. Another big thanks for David Barker for his very focused help to determine the essence of a poster on the weight shed allowing a more precise dating of this image.

This was Part 1 of a 2 part article. The 2nd article

Enjoy!    Lon

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