Early coal mining areas of Harlan County

In Harlan County, Kentucky, there were 53 such towns, but they were by no means a homogeneous lot (Fig. 106.1). Historian Crandall Shifflet (1992 24) describes them as complex social arrangements where the nature of life depended on the nature of an individual operator, the life cycle of the town, the composition of it population, and other forces of change (see also Fishback, 1996 Goode, n.d. Coal Towns in Harlan County, 2009). 

In this chapter we will focus on the Kentucky mining towns of Benham and Lynch as case studies (Fig. 106.2). Benham was built by the Wisconsin Steel subsidiary of International Harvester in 1910 U.S. Steel founded Lynch a bit farther 

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Fig. 106.1 Early coal mining areas of Harlan County. (Map courtesy of Appalachian Archives, Southeastern Kentucky Community College)...

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