L&N Jeff Mine Spur

Buckeye Creek located in Perry County, Kentucky, appears like any other creek in coal dominated Eastern Kentucky. Stemming from a hollow know as Kenmont, Buckeye Creek has been at the center of various extensive coal mining operations beginning as early as 1916. Starting in May of that year, the Kenmont Coal Company began developing 1,500 acres of leased land for the exploitation of the coal reserves found in the Hazard No. 7 seam. These lands were leased from none other than the Virginia Iron Coal & Coke Company. By February of 1917, the mine was fully operational and coal was being shipped from the Kenmont Coal tipple via the Louisville & Nashville Railway's Jeff Mine Spur. It is recorded in 1919 that the mine had produced on average approximately 2,000 to 2,500 net tons of Hazard coal per week since opening. Of interest, the name Kenmont comes from the combination of the words Kentucky and Mountain. In The Black Diamond, Volume 62, No. 10, published on March 8th, 1919, the Kenmont tipple is noted as having a daily processing limit of 1,500 net tons with 4 loading tracks.

The original Kenmont Coal Company is recorded as having closed around 1953, rather late for many of the classic coal enterprises in Perry County. Amazingly, the original Kenmont Coal Company wooden tipple lasted into the late 1980s. Beginning in the early 1960's, William B. Sturgill, noted coal baron, operated Kenmont Coals, Inc. which operated a small truck dump loadout just to the east of the original wooden tipple. This small loadout can be seen next to the old tipple in the below aerial photograph. Kenmont Coals, Inc. would eventually become a subsidiary of Sturgill's Falcon Coal Company. Before the construction of the truck loadout, Kenmont Coals, Inc. may have used the original tipple. By 1995, the original tipple as well as the truck loadout had been demolished to make way for a new, massive preparation plant to be called Buckeye No. 1.  With the construction of this new plant, all of historic Kenmont was razed. James River Coal owned Buckeye No. 1 beginning in June of 1995 and operated the complex under the Leeco flag. In 2014, Blackhawk Mining LLC purchased James River Coal. In 2016, the operator of Buckeye No. 1, Blue Diamond Mining LLC, a subsidiary of Blackhawk Mining LLC, decided to idle the plant. Since that year, no mining activity has resumed on Buckeye Creek. The future of Buckeye No. 1 as well as mining on Buckeye Creek is still in the air as of 2024. Only God knows if coal will ever be extracted from the mountains in Kenmont Hollow ever again.

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