A few years ago when my wife and I belonged to a WRITE YOUR LIFE STORY group, I researched and wrote a story on the COAL MINE INDUSTRY OF PARIS, ARKANSAS. I hope you like it.

The year was 1871. Residents of Arkansas had begun to recover from the trauma of the Civil War. Families who had fled to Texas and Missouri to escape the perils of war returned to their homes and farms to resume a normal way of life. Each day, new settlers arrived, mostly from states east of the Mississippi River.

Many of the families settled in Johnson County, which at that time included territory on both sides of the Arkansas River. Clarksville, located around three miles north of the river, had been established as the county seat and showed promise of becoming a flourishing town. However, residents of the county on the south side of the river had become quite disgruntled about the location of the county seat. In order to transact business at the county seat in Clarksville, citizens south of the Arkansas River had to cross the river by ferry, then walk or secure transportation for the three-mile trip into town. The residents began to circulate petitions to present to the State Legislature requesting the county seat be moved to Spadra, a more convenient site, on the river.

Businessmen in Clarksville, who were anticipating a great economic future for the town, were highly disturbed by the situation. Fearing that moving the county seat from Clarksville would have a dire effect on the future of the town, these men began to search for ways of quieting demands for a change in the location of the county seat. They realized that the surest way of appeasing demands for a change in the location of the county seat in Clarksville would be to establish a separate county government south of the river. This solution hardly seemed feasible as there was not enough area in that portion of Johnson County south of the river to create a new county.

Influential citizens got together and came up with a plan. Together, they raised $1000.00 and approached their State Senator John N. Sarber with another plan. Sarber was to use the money to secure an agreement from the citizens of Scott, Franklin and Yell counties to give up areas in their counties to be added to the area of Johnson County located south of the river to create a new county. Sarber reluctantly agreed to pursue that course of action.

On March 22, 1871, Senator Sarber, who was a veteran of the Union Army and a leader of the Republican Party in the reconstruction government, introduced the bill to create a new county south of the Arkansas River from areas of Franklin, Scott, Yell and Johnson Counties. The bill referring to the new county as the County of Sarber passed, and a new county was formed.

By 1875 the Democrats had regained control of the Arkansas legislature changing the name of Sarber County to Logan County, in honor of James Logan, an early pioneer of the region. This act also established Paris as the county seat although it did not have a name at that time.

Although this community did not become incorporated until 1879, it was selected as the county seat in 1874, the county commissioners, after considerable deliberation, decided to name the community after the city of Paris, France. Paris was located on the military road (now Highway 22) about halfway between Dardanelle and Fort Smith.

Coal was discovered near Paris in 1866 by Robert Dayton Waddell, (In later years known as Uncle Bob around Paris) the 19-year-old son of the town blacksmith, Jessie D. Waddell, three miles west of what is now called Paris.

The Paris coal industry is what this story is about.

THE FOUNDING OF THE PARIS COAL FIELD

The Paris Coal Field was egg-shaped, approximately eight and one-half miles long and two and one-half miles wide. The outcropping started at the northeast edge of Paris and extended west approximately eight and one-half miles under both Short Mountain and Horseshoe Mountain. The seam pitched to the south on a seven percent slope, South from the outcrop, toward the basin center and was 18 inches to 36 inches thick.

The articles in the Paris Express, dated March 29, 1934, explains best the discovery of coal near Paris. It is as follows:
Paris, Ark.—

Because of a boy's desire to help his dad find something in his blacksmith shop that would take the place of charcoal 68 years ago, this little town in the west-central section of Arkansas owes thanks today for its present million-dollar a year coal field. "The boy, Robert Dayton Waddell, the son of Jessie D. Waddell was then 19 years of age. The boy, now known as Uncle Bob, age 87 years, who has been living in these parts nigh onto 66 years, is one of the oldest living residents of Paris and Logan County. He has lived here all the time with exception of a brief two-year stay in Missouri and Kansas. His birthplace is Holly Springs, Mississippi. "Bob's dad was one of the village blacksmiths. That is—he served the few families here then in this little community of some dozen families. The folks got their mail at Mr. Jessie's eight-room post oak, two-story log home. Their letters were just addressed then to Calico post-office. Uncle Bob says, 'This house, while it is not used by Uncle Sam any more to house mail, is still sheltering Uncle Bob and his housekeeper, Mrs. C. J. Pinkerton, despite the fact that it was constructed 101 years ago. "Built long before the war of the states, this building still stands erect as a tribute to carpentry of long ago.

"But back to the blacksmith shop! Mr. Waddell, the village smithy, like the rest of them in this section, had to rely upon charcoal for his furnace. Hard coal was scarce, and it cost to too much to have to have this black lumpy luxury in a blacksmith shop.

"Mr. Waddell was far from satisfied. But it was the best he could do under the circumstances. He continued to use charcoal—until Bob stepped into the picture.

"One day the boy, who was his father's first aid in the shop, came home excited. He had discovered a small cropping of semi-anthracite coal about three miles west of what is now called the city of Paris. At that time, Uncle Bob explained it was merely three miles west at a clump of woods. "This stuff was the very thing Bob's dad needed in the shop.

"So Bob, the first coal miner, operator and distributor, started in the coal business all alone.

"He had his father make him a pick. With the aid of this homemade implement, Bob dug four tons of this coal.

The surplus supply which his father could not use, Bob sold to nearby blacksmiths for seventy-five cents a bushel. Nobody dug any then cause they didn't know about it. That's why I got so much for it, Uncle Bob said.

"And today—some 68 years later, an average of 450,000 tons or if you are railroad minded, 6,500 car loads of this same commercial coal, is shipped mostly to northern states, Twenty-one mines are now in operation, and they stay that way on the average of eight months out of the year."

The number of mines increased in the Paris coal field and reached their peak in the 1930s. Some of the earlier mines were the Lone Star by George Lump and Angelo Digiacomo; the Dennis Mine by Jack Pettyjohn and W. A. (Bill) Tinsley; John Hargot and Cope Ming Mine; the Jewell Coal Company by Anthony Hall later sold to George Colville in 1921; the Comet Mines #1 & #2 and Cathead Mine were part of the Jewell holding; Mack Coal Company by Dr.A. M. (Mack) Smith; A & M Coal Company by Jack Reginato; the Old Union Mine (replaced by the New Union); Local Mine and The Carbon Mine (Drunken Monkey) by Leo Smaltz; the Davis Mine Company (taken over by The Economy by Bill Tinsley and Ab Simmons); Grand Coal Company #1 and #3 by Charles F. Wahl; New Union and Shockley by Bob Winn and Afton Mitchel; Economy Coal Company by Bill Tinsley and Ab Simmons; Watson Mine by J. W. Watson and sons; Superfuel Coal Company by George Minmier and Cantrel C. Fitts; Victor Coal Company by Harry Arnold; Ideal Coal Company by L. B. Cox; Paris Purity Coal Company by Heber Denman; The New Standard and Green Coal Mine by Johnson and Green. I am sure there are some mines located around the outcropping that I have missed.

Lack of railroad facilities held back development for years, but after the Missouri Pacific was completed and new capital enlisted, field progress was steady.

Dr A. M. (Mack) Smith was called the "Daddy" of the Paris field. Others who aided in developing the field before and during World War One were Judge Anthony Hall, Charles F. Whal Sr.

The Paris coal field was a semi-anthracite, high in BTU (British Thermal Unit) (Produced lots of heat per pound of coal), clean-burning, free of impurities, good coking qualities, smokeless, long-burning and easy to start burning. It was considered one of the best for domestic use. The coal industry started expanding after Robert D. Waddell mined his first basket of coal.

The coal industry expanded even more when George Lumpp and Angelo DiGiacomo opened the first coal mine in 1881to get 25 tons of coal for their blacksmith shop.

A slope was opened on the Hixon property in 1886, which expanded the market to customers all over Logan County. The coal business in Paris was fast becoming its major industry.

The two cotton gins, The Paris Cotton Seed Oil Mill, saw mills, roller flour mills, the Paris Power Plant, blacksmiths, a machine shop, and every house in Paris used coal. The market began to expand. World War One in Europe was drawing the United States into war. The United States was furnishing a lot of material to the Allies. This created more demand for Paris coal. Mr. Will Argo opened a marketing office in Paris during this period and expanded the market for Paris coal throughout the northern states west of the Mississippi. Kansas City was the largest market for Paris coal. It expanded from Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. St. Louis passed a smoke ordinance and this increased the demand for Paris coal because it was smokeless coal and replaced the Illinois coal, which was nearer but was not smokeless. This increased the market for Paris coal in that area. As its smokeless and other good qualities became known, the Paris coal market continued to grow.

It was reported in the local paper on April 26, 1917 the following:
"Charles F. Wahl, manager of the Grand Coal Company reported that last Wednesday he invaded new territory with Paris coal, shipped one car to Wisconsin, one car to Minnesota, and one to South Dakota. On Thursday, he shipped one car to Iowa and one to Nebraska. Mr. Wahl's company has had a good trade in Missouri and Kansas for some time. Paris coal is now coming into its own and the mines have orders ahead to keep running full-time through out the entire year."

During the twenties the Paris coal developed a large market in those states mention above. But along came 1929, the BIG CRASH. Although coal for heating homes was still necessary, people didn't have the money to buy coal. Coal was taken from almost every train that left Paris. Trains, leaving Paris at night, would be raided by men, on the long grade west of Paris. They would throw the coal over the side of the cars and pick it up later. Cars of coal in many cases would have to be weighed at their destination because of the loss of coal.

The depression years were hard for miners. The work days during these years were reduced from eight months and some years from ten or eleven months to five or six months per year and maybe seven months in a good year. By 1935, the middle of the depression, the mines were getting back to a better working schedule. The number of miners increased to over 1,000 men during that year.

The rumors of war in Europe began to rear its ugly head during the late thirties and by 1940 over 2,000 miners were employed in the Paris Coal Field. This lasted until after World War II and then one mine after the other bega n to close. The Jewell mine closed in 1958 and was one of the last to close. The reason the mines closed was they lost their markets to natural gas and there was not enough local trade to keep them open.

The first depot was located just off South Elm Street in walking distance of the square. Mr. G.C. Freeman became the depot agent for Paris and remained in that position for sixty years. He retired shortly before the old depot was torn down in 1974. The station during the busy season would receive over a hundred telegrams a day.

Mine operators and mine personnel met at the rail station each morning to give their switch orders and pick up their telegrams for coal orders. The switch order was to let the station agent know how many empty cars they needed and to bill out the loaded cars. During the busy days, from August through May, around 200 cars of coal were shipped from Paris each day. Two switch engines worked day and night to keep empty rail cars at the mines for the day. If the switch engine was late switching it could shut the mine down for the day.

The old engine Number 815 was retired to the Paris City Park as a reminder that the railroad was an important part of the history of Paris and the coal industry. Paris was never a boom town as many other town in the nation when there were discoveries of coal, gold, or other minerals. Paris had two small coal camps, The White Camp and The Red Camp, both on the west side of Paris. The houses in the White Camp were painted white and the houses in the Red Camp were painted red. The camps were for the transit miners, so they could live with their families while they worked in the mines.

Most of the Paris miners owned their homes and were outstanding and important citizens of the city of Paris. Many ran for political offices and were elected. Most of the regular miners had large gardens and some lived on farms in the locality. They could farm in the spring and summer and also work in the mines.

Very few today remember the good old days when coal mining was at its peak in Paris. The square on Saturday nights would be full of people. Friends, neighbors and the young people would meet at local drug stores. McGlen's Grocery on the north side of the square and Piggley Wiggley Grocery on the southwest corner of the square would be full of families buying their weeks' groceries. The Eagle Drug Store on the northeast side of the square, and the Royal Drugstore on the northwest side of the square were the loafing places for the teenagers. Many took in the movies at the Strand Theater one-half block east of the bank building on the northeast corner of the square. Saturday afternoon was a time the older miners sat around on the courthouse steps and talked of old times. Saturday mornings were times when all the young kids gathered at the Strand Theater for a thrilling morning watching a good western and a serial that left the young girl tied to the railroad track with the train was about to run over her. The run-a-way wagon would go over the bluff with the hero and the leading lady in it. We waited until the next week to find out they got out in the nick of time.

Paris was alive on Saturdays. Everybody came to town and caught up on the news. Many of the farm folks brought in their eggs, chickens, milk, cream, vegetables and fruits of all kind to peddle to the town folks, much different from today's Paris Square.

The type of mining is the process of getting coal from the ground into the form that industry or domestic markets can use at a price which makes it more affordable than other like substances that could be used for the same purpose. Coal mining has many processes for extracting it from veins close to the surface and those that are hundreds of feet under the surface. The different types of extracting this black gold from the earth in the Paris Coal Field are as follows:

The earliest method of mining coal in Paris coal field used by Robert Dayton Waddell was strip mining. The overburden (Earth on top of the seam of coal) is removed from the top of the coal and then the coal removed. The first mine was opened for market in 1881 and the first slope was driven in 1886. Uncle Bob, as he was called in his later years, had homemade tools, made by his father in his blacksmith shop, to remove the overburden. The earliest form was done with pick and shovel.

Some of the Paris coal was removed by strip mining, but the steam shovel moved into the Branch and Ratcliff area only nine to fifteen miles west of Paris, and left large piles of soil and rock in long rows which let workers remove the seam of coal. This type of mining made wasteland out of stripped areas. These waste areas of piles of soil and rock grew up in blackberry vines, Many families would go there each year during blackberry season to pick blackberries. A cobbler in the pie tray of a miner's bucket was a delicious dish. Strip mining was a less expensive way to mine coal if the seam was not too deep. This made a waste area out of a lot of acres of land. The federal law now requires that the land be restored to its original state.

There are several other methods of underground mining and I will explain each one used in the Paris coal field. The types of underground mining used in the Paris Coal Field are room and pillar, face track, scow pan, and long wall. There are several ways of accomplishing each type of mining mentioned.

There were two methods of getting to the coal seam. One was to dig a shaft straight down to the seam of coal and use an elevator to lift the coal out. The other way was to dig a slope on an angle to reach the coal seam. Some of the slope mines started on the outcropping and followed the coal seam underground.

There were two mines in the Paris coal field that were shaft mines, the Jewell Coal Company mines and the Paris Purity Coal Company Mine, Grand #1. The Jewell Coal Company abandoned its shaft and went to slope and the Paris Purity Grand Mine #1 did the same.

Shaft mining was to dig a hole straight down to the coal seam and install a cage, which was just a big iron box to run the cars into on the end of a large steel cable that could be hoisted up and down the shaft from a tipple. (Like an elevator in a large building.) Coal cars could be rolled onto the cage at the underground station and lifted one or two at a time to the tipple to be unloaded. It is easy to understand why the shaft system was abandoned. There was a limit to the number of cars that could be pulled out of the mine at one time. The Paris Purity Coal Mine abandoned their shaft in 1930 and the Jewell Coal Company did the same in 1938. Room and pillar type mining used before the invention of the mining machine, coal was blasted out with black powder. Black powder was used because it was a much slower explosive than dynamite which would leave a pile of slack coal after the explosion. Black powder would push the coal out in large lumps.

In the early days in the Paris field room and pillar mining was done on a tonnage basis. Each worker had round brass tags about the size of a half-dollar. They would load a car of coal and place their brass tag on the car which had their number on it. When the car reached the tipple, the car of coal would be weighed, and the man was given credit for the pounds of coal in the car. The man would be given credit and paid for the pounds of coal he mined that day. Many fathers took their sons into the mines with them to help increase their tonnage. In many cases boys as young as ten years of age and older would be working, helping their fathers increase their tonnage.

Room and pillar mining gets it name because coal was mined and pillars of coal were left to hold up the roof. In some mines, after the rooms were worked out, the pillars would be mined and let the roof settle down behind.

After the mining machine was invented, it was used to undercut the coal and the miner could use a pick, hammer and wedge to break out the coal. The mining machine looks like a large chain saw with a swinging cutter bar. It is pulled against the face of coal and the cutter bar is engaged and starts cutting. The cutter bar is turned to cut under the coal until it is at right angle to the machine. A large log chain is pulled up the face of coal and with a jack wedged between the roof and the bottom to hold the chain. The mining machine is moved along the face undercutting the seam of coal. This machine is what made the long-wall the major type of mining in the Paris Field. There are three types of long-wall operations, face track, conveyor and scow pan. All three types have been used in the Paris field.

Face track, was the first type used. A track was laid along the face of coal and cars were pulled along the face by a hoist. Each man working a place along the face would cut his car and load it. After all the men had their car loaded, the hoisting engineer would let the loaded cars back down the face. Each man would hook his car of coal onto the trip and the trip world be pulled by mules or hoist down the entry to the slope or shaft. The top hoist would pull the trip to the surface. It took from sic to seven hours for twenty men to break-out and clean up a six-hundred-foot wall. A six-hundred-foot wall would produce over a hundred tons of coal. The conveyor type of mining was like the face track except there was a conveyor along the face of coal. The men loaded their coal onto the conveyor and it was transported to the entry. Loaded coal cars were pulled to the slope and hoisted to the top to be unloaded into trucks or rail cars. Scow pan was a large flat metal plate that was pushed under a block of coal that had been undercut by a mining machine. The block of coal was wedged down on the steel plate and was pulled to the entry, loaded onto a coal car, pulled to the top, broken up and loaded into rail cars for shipment to customers. The Jewell Mining Company was the only company to use scow pan operation that I know of.

Variations of all these types of mining were used in the Paris Coal Field. The long-wall conveyor was the mainstay of the Paris Field. The conveyor not only increased the output but lowered the cost of operation. For the narrow seam of coal, the conveyor was the most practical way of producing large tonnage of coal at a reasonable cost. I have other stories about the men responsible for the Paris coal field, the hazards of mining, stories told in the wash-house, and Paris, my home town.