Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Coal Mining stuff

Leach Cemetery
We got back to Knoxville Saturday night, Sunday the weather was great but we were to tired to do anything other then sit around and rest. Monday we were ready to go but it rained all day and it's rained most of today. Cabin fever was setting in so we took a few back roads into Clinton to do a some shopping, on the way there came across another small cemetery with a bunch of graves from the Coal Creek/Fraterville Mine Explosion.



Last year we found another little cemetery that had a ton of graves from this explosion.







This cemetery is bigger and there is a large monument with all the names of the victims engraved on it and then the graves themselves are in two circles that surround the monument.



The 2 closer stones are part on the inner circle, the ones in the background are part of the outer circle.
 While we were there a Sheriff's car pulled up behind ours, I had him blocked and went over to tell him I would just be a minute. We got talking and I mention that I was a retired officer and  that I thought it was pretty good that they got back to these little cemeteries to patrol them. That's when he point to a tree about 100 feet away and told us that they found a body hanging from it yesterday around 5pm. Glad it rained yesterday or we might have been the ones to find the body.

 Were going to try and find a map next week to see if we can track down some more mining sites.

A few pictures of the back roads on the way home.




That's Coal Creek on the right, with all the rain everything is running very high.









The blooms are starting to come out.

2 comments:

Lisa Wallen Logsdon said...

The photos are beautiful! Such a tragedy...a mining accident and all those deaths! REALLY shocking about the body hanging from the tree though!

Margie and Roger said...

Looks like spring in TN.

I like walking thru old cemeteries. Usually can find something interesting to read.