Stearns, Kentucky

Over one hundred years ago in 1902, Justus S. Stearns of Ludington, Michigan bought 30,000 acres of virgin timberland in Southern-Kentucky. When coal was discovered soon afterwards, the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. was in business. The company built the town of Stearns to serve as the hub of a logging and mining empire that would in it's heyday in the 1920's control over 200 square miles of land, build the Kentucky and Tennessee Railway as well as the world's first all-electric sawmill, and employ over 2,200 people living and working in at least 18 coal camps.

D800EKentuckyStearnsTraincommercial building