Travel The World

As a bit of an afterthought, I'm posting these two pictures of the main street in Hyden, Kentucky, a small town about thirty miles north of Harlan.  I stopped there on my way to Harlan to eat lunch and strolled around for a few minutes after eating.  Once again, I love these little out of the way towns with their early 20th century architecture.  Anyway, Hyden had a population of 303 in the 2020 census and has one major claim to fame.  In 1978, it was the first place where Richard Nixon gave a public speech after his resignation.  Interesting.

These are the last of the pictures from Harlan.  I wish I'd had more time to explore, but I had a long drive home awaiting me.  Perhaps, I can spend a few days the next time I visit as there are so many sights to see in this county as well as the neighboring ones. This is a nice memorial to the coal miners who died in pursuit of their dreams. Another memorial dedicated to the first cart of coal mined in Harlan County (and made out of coal). On the drive home, I took an alternate route to the one I'd used on the way down.  Glad I did because I was able to take in this view.  Its official name is the "Hogg Overlook" on Pine Mountain and isn't very far from the Cumberland Gap area. One last pic from the city of Harlan.  This friendly businessman was gracious enough to allow me to take his picture.  I'm not sure why, but he looks very familiar to me.  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed all of these.  Until the next trip!  

To continue . . . I mentioned in my last post how difficult it would've been to visit Harlan in the past because of the poor road conditions.  However, I was pleased that the roads these days are quite good except for the last 30 miles or so where I was forced to drive on a very curvy one at high elevation.  Still, it wasn't too bad and provided some nice views (which I couldn't snap pictures of due to the lack of wide spots to pull off on beside the road).   As a point of reference, you can see Harlan County highlighted on the map below.  To the northeast and on the WV border is Martin County, the county in which I grew up.  It's probably about 120 miles away as the crow flies. You can see more street scenes of Harlan in the next two pictures. In the next three, you can see the Justice Center, County Courthouse, and a Methodist church, respectively. More coming soon!

I took another trip yesterday, this time to Harlan, Ky.  I'd never been there before since it's about 120 miles southwest of where I grew up and about 180 miles from where I'm living now.  All of that distance on rough roads and through high mountains made it difficult to visit in the past.  Also, the area had had quite the reputation for violence because of clashes between coal miners and owners over the push for unionization.  It was even nicknamed "Bloody Harlan" due to all the deaths that resulted from this.  Still, I really wanted to go there and take some pictures since this is the hometown of a friend and former coworker of mine.  I hope he enjoys these.   In the first picture, you can read about the early history of Harlan.  Click the picture to read.   In the next one, you see the Harlan County tourist office.  I went in there and gathered up several brochures for my next trip to the area. This is literally the main st...

I decided to take a drive to Bluefield, WV, yesterday.  I was there just a few months ago but stopped only briefly due to wanting to visit some other areas the same day.  I'd promised myself I'd return and so I did.  Bluefield is about 150 miles southeast of my home and right on the WV/VA border.  As a matter of fact, there's a Bluefield, VA, right across the border.  The 'WV Bluefield' has a population of about 10,000 people and its economy was/is dependent on the coal industry (of course).  The first thing I noticed about the town was, oddly enough, how many vacant parking spaces there were.  It has to be the friendliest town for parking that I've ever visited!  Every street and every business had more spaces than could ever possibly be used on the busiest of days.  I know that's a strange thing to notice but it was so obvious everywhere I walked.  The next feature I observed was the early, twentieth-century architecture of small-...