Meet

Eddie Lindimore estimates his memories of mining.

In his house in McConnelsville, the almost 90-year-olds are through newspaper clippings through newspaper excerpts, which are scattered in the middle of maps and manuals.

“Here is the interior of the machine. I stand there, ”said Lindimore proudly in his eyes when he took a man's black and white photo in a protective helmet in a machine room.

For a large part of the 20th century, Ohio was a power plant of coal production. Today, many of the once flourishing coal cities and mines were given up that left the remains of a past industry.

In Southeast -Ohio, a relic of the Goliath industry, which is lovingly referred to as “Big Muskie”, is recognized with a new historical marker.

“Great than life”

After the Second World War, the energy requirements rose and in 1969 the central -hio coal aid company received a massive machine to meet it. Lindimore was the first superior to become the largest hiking drag line in the world, a high -towering device that looks like a cross between a tank and a crane.

Although the Engineering Marvel had no similarity to the fish, it became south -east -Hio and beyond as a “Big Muskie”.

“This was bigger than life in every respect, “said Neil Humphrey, administrator of the historical resource program at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.” During his life it was the largest moving object on Earth. “

Dust clouds would form because the almost 22-story machine changed the landscape Southeast-Ohio in a single ball. Every day it was looking for up to 325 tons of dirt and coal or over the weight of a Boeing 747.

“It is insane how big it was … it is estimated that it discovered twice as much earth in the construction of the Panama Canal, ”said Humphrey.

The size of Big Muskie is a symbol of how large Ohios contributions to the country's coal production was. Lindimore said the machine was an almost constant component in Southeast-Ohio.

“It worked every day when it wasn't broken,” he said. “Now it has collapsed a lot, but it worked every day, seven days a week except Christmas. It's the only time it was closed.”

Preside the inheritance

Then the floor shifted. The changes to the Clean Air Act increased the bar for air quality and complicit high sulfur coal. Big Muskie was closed in 1991.

“Nobody knew exactly what to do with it. Some people wanted to turn it into a museum. And people want to take parts of them or sit down somewhere,” said Humphrey.

Ultimately, Big Muskie was dismantled in 1999 and sold for scrap. But a part is preserved in the Miners Memorial Park.

On a sunny summer day, Lindimore grinned when he went to a bucket that was big enough to hold an entire brass band.

“The pictures come here,” he said, pointed to the piece of metal and laughed with joy.

What once hollowed out hill is still sitting for selfies with tourists. Martha Bradley Maxwell came all the way out of Texas to visit Big Muskie. She said she wanted her cousin Charles Mitchell, who was only 26 when he lost his life to Big Muskie.

“Last year was the first year I saw it and I just couldn't believe it. I thought:” Oh my god, he worked on this thing? “Said Maxwell and stared at the bucket.

With a historical marker who tells the story of Big Muskie, the historian Humphrey hopes that more people will see the artifact as Maxwell does: not just a big bucket, but a monument to Ohos coal inheritance.

It deserves to remember, he said because Big Muskie shaped both the country and the life of the people who worked on it.

“Without someone who takes care of something, these things disappear. Even something like this massive machine is the only part that is left: what can disappear from history if this can disappear? “