Big South Fork Scenic Railway:
A blast from the past
By Shane Morgan
When one first arrives at Historic Stearns in McCreary County in southern Kentucky, one immediately gets the sense of stepping into a time warp, transported back a full century.
In fact, the many community leaders and volunteers who work diligently to restore and maintain such a vital era of historical Kentucky and American life, have done such a good job that you might just forget you’ re actually in 2025 instead of the 1920s or‘ 30s.
Historic Stearns is located in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and offers many attractions, the biggest of which might be the Big South Scenic Railway attraction.
This exciting feature involves a train ride on a genuine train down the same track that coal miners and their families rode to the former mining town of Blue Heron, a then-bustling community which sprung up in the early 20th-Century as a result of mining activity conducted by the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company.
The train treks through several miles of some of the most beautiful countryside this side of the U. S. A., including forested mountains, undisturbed river scenery, and a morethan-100-year-old-train tunnel.
About halfway through the train ride, there is a stop where Park Ranger Pete Bostich will share a wealth of information about the old coal town and what being a coal miner was really like back in those days.
Bostich should know what he’ s talking about, because his father spent many years in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Passengers will learn the dangers and difficulties the miners faced, as well as the benefits of working for one of the best-paying jobs the entire region had to offer at that time – providing a miner didn’ t owe the company store too much when it came to paycheck time!
While there, visitors can walk around the old mining site and see the giant coal tipple used back in the day, a building used to store coal and transfer it into trains for transport.
The entrance to an old coal mine is on site as well, giving folks a feel of how damp and cramped the conditions were in which the miners had to work.
Many of the original buildings, including a school and church, have been re-created with“ ghost” frames in the shapes of the original buildings in the spots at which they were originally located.
At many of the sites, there are original
Big South Fork Scenic Railway carries passengers back in time through beautiful riverside forest scenery arriving in the early decades of a 20th-century mining town.
Shane Morgan photo
34 Stay & Play Lake Cumberland Region- Summer 2025