Part 1: The Louisville & Nashville Railroad's Buckeye Branch Spur: Kenmont Junction, KY to Kenmont, KY

A Quick Introduction to the Louisville & Nashville's Buckeye Branch Spur

Kenmont Coal Company

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 the Virginia Iron Coal & Coke Company. The 1916 edition of the Coal Field Directory reported that the directors of the Kenmont Coal Co. were as follows: C. A. Case; President and Purchasing Agent, L. K. Brown; Treasurer, and J. B. Allen; Mining Engineer. At this time, the corporate office was located in Zanesville, Ohio. The January 18th, 1917, edition of the Congressional Record reported that all mining infrastructure needed for the production of coal was completed and that operations could begin when the Kentucky River Power Company began supplying electricity to the plant. By February of 1917, the mine was fully operational and coal was being shipped from the Kenmont tipple via the Louisville & Nashville Railroad's Buckeye Branch 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. In 1920, the original owners of the Kenmont Coal Co. faced significant financial strains and were forced to sell the company. The new owners, led by Toledo, Ohio, native Elmer Miller, quickly resumed operations the following year. For the next twenty plus years Elmer Miller, and his son A. B. Miller, would preside over the operations of the Kenmont Coal Co., overseeing one of Perry County's most consistent coal operations. The final year of production would be 1953, ending almost fourty years of continuous coal mining on the property. Amazingly, the original Kenmont Coal Co. wooden tipple lasted into the late 1980s.

Kenmont Coals, Inc.

Beginning in the early 1960's, William B. Sturgill, noted coal baron, opened Kenmont Coals, Inc. which operated a small truck dump loadout just to the east of the original Kenmont Coal Company 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. Falcon Coal was eventually purchased by the Diamond Shamrock Coal Company and later purchased again by Arch Mineral Corporation in 1987. 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 2026. Only God knows if coal will ever be extracted from the mountains surrounding Kenmont Hollow ever again.

Arch Mineral Corp. Buckeye No. 1 Plant

In 1988, the Kenmont landscape was changing. The property once controlled by the Kenmont Coal Company and William B. Sturgell's Kenmont Coals, Inc.