Snaking through the southern reaches of Floyd County, Kentucky is the remains of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Long Fork Subdivision that connected to some of the most prosperous coal mines in the state.
Snaking through the southern reaches of Floyd County, Kentucky is the remains of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Long Fork Subdivision that connected to some of the most prosperous coal mines in the state.
The Long Fork Railway, a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) subsidiary, was incorporated in 1912 with the goal of building a line from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway’s (C&O) Elkhorn & Beaver Valley Branch at Martin to a proposed mine at Wheelwright along the Left Fork of Beaver Creek. Construction started in 1916 and the line opened from Martin to Weeksbury and from Wheelwright Junction to Wheelwright in 1918. The line was leased to the C&O in 1925 and acquired outright in 1933 and operated as the Long Fork Subdivision for 25 miles from Martin to Wheelwright Junction, as the Wheelwright Subdivision from Wheelwright Junction to Wheelwright, and as the Clear Creek Subdivision for four miles from Clear Creek Junction to Ligon.
After Inland Steel developed a new underground coal mine and preparation plant at Price in 1951 and connected its Wheelwright mine to Price via a 4½-mile 42″ gauge underground railway, the Wheelwright to Wheelwright Junction was abandoned. The branch from Wheelright to Weeksbury was disused in the 1950s after the mine at East Weeksbury closed, followed by the segment above Clear Creek Junction after the early 1970s. After a small loading dock was installed in Melvin, approximately three miles below East Weeksbury, the line was put back into service.
As of 1977, the Long Fork and Clear Creek Subdivisions boasted a dozen active mines that produced 125 to 145 50-ton cars daily, including one owned by the Sizemore Mining Corporation. It was formed in 1942 to mine coal from the Upper Elkhorn No. 1 and No. 3 seams near McDowell, and was owned by Jake Cooley and later operated by Paul Patton who later became governor of Kentucky (Patton had married the daughter of the owner of Sizemore). Later, coal was loaded from the tipples into cars and was sent a few miles up the branch to the preparation plant at Price for cleaning.
In 1966, operations were leased to the Old Circle Coal Company with the mine operated with workers from United Mine Workers (UMW) Local 5967. After the contract expired in September 1984, workers agreed to stay on and work for six months at full pay as maintenance and cleanup workers while negotiations played out. Unfortunately, the talks failed and the workers went on strike in April 1985. The mine never reopened.
The mine and preparation plant at Price closed in March 1991 and was being partly dismantled by Kentucky May Coal Company by 1993. In 2006, Elk Horn Coal Corporation and New Vision Energy proposed the development of a new coal mine and preparation plant at Price. As of 2022, the refuse conveyor, supply house, bathhouse, and office building remain in various states of decay.
