Moving the earth in Muskingum, one busload at a time...

Ohio's abundance of coal has created many economic opportunities, including in ways to excavate the ore.  Muskingum County has a paradoxical monument dedicated to coal mining that is simultaneously large and small.  Strip mining requires large amounts of earth to be moved and a tiny park just outside McConnellsville pays tribute to the gargantuan machines that did it.

The park sits atop a hill looking over once-stripped hills where one particular drag-line machine known as the Big Muskie excavated more than 600 million cubic yards of earth. In its heyday, the Big Muskie was the largest mobile land machine ever built.  First put into operation in 1969, the Big Muskie rumbled, albeit slowly with hydraulic "feet", across the landscape until 1999 when it was dismantled.

While the coal excavated far out-weighed the operating cost, the Big Muskie needed the electrical equivalent of 27,000 homes to operate.  From the tip of the crane's boom to the ground was a staggering 32 stories. The 27 million pound machine weighed the equivalent of 13,000 cars.

The Big Muskie's career ended after legislation was passed on surface mining that forced owner American Electric Power (AEP) to "scrap" efforts to save the excavator as a historic treasure.  One of the three buckets, each which could hold two Greyhound Busses, was managed to be saved and relocated at the current park.  Pictures of the bucket being moved to its final destination are staggering to think of the sheer size of the entire mechanized monster.

The current park is little more than a roadside pull off, but offers static displays, memorialized markers and the centerpiece of the Big Muskie bucket.  AEP maintains the site, calling it the Miner's Memorial, and has an educational display of how mining provides power to the area.  One stunning photograph shows an entire area High School Marching Band snuggly fit inside the bucket.

Big Muskie draws visitors, including less desirable ones, who use the bucket as a source of graffiti.  While vehicle traffic is restricted from November to April, the views from the hilltop toward the horizon offer a moment of reflection on what was and what has become.  The entire area is a 60,000 acre reclaimed space that AEP had once stripped bare for coal.  Today the growth of the planted trees can offer a fall delight of colors.

Nearby McConnelsville, the country seat of Morgan County, is much older than the modern strip-mining economy.  Between railroad and steamboat traffic, McConnelsville was once a thriving community of 30,000 in its heyday in 1850.  Still today the Opera House from the turn of the 20th Century still stands and the feel of a Civil War town is evident as you pass through downtown.

Ohio, as America, has moved from the Industrial Age into the Information Age, the economy has struggled to transition.  While the money could never be raised to preserve the whole of Big Muskie, and what an attraction that would have been, history has been saved and is on display in the rolling hills that powered the transition of a state and nation from agricultural to industrial.

- J.