Historic Stearns Kentucky

In 1902, Justus S. Stearns of Ludington, Michigan bought 30,000 acres of virgin timberland in southern Kentucky, and when coal was discovered soon afterward, the Stearns Coal & Lumber Company began operations. The company built the town of Stearns as the hub of a logging and mining empire that, during its heyday in the 1920s, controlled over 200 square miles of land, built the Kentucky and Tennessee Railway and the world’s first all-electric sawmill, and employed over 2,200 people living and working in at least 18 coal camps. Coal and lumber production are no longer a significant part of Stearns’s economy, which today depends on manufacturing and a blossoming tourism industry. Land once occupied by loggers and miners is now covered by lush vegetation and abundant with wildlife, and many original buildings still exist as part of efforts to preserve and promote the social and material heritage of the people of McCreary County.

Stearns, Kentucky · United States