(Satellite information is below)
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Larry Senalik posted
Strip Mine - probably east central part of the state based on the other pictures in this collection 10/24/1951
#sangamonvalleycollection
James Stine Well, it took me a bit, but we can tell you where and what’s here.
This is the United Electric Coal’s Cuba No. 9 which was located near Cuba, Illinois. The machines are a BE 950-B stripping shovel in the foreground and the W-1 Koble Wheel at the back of the cut or pit.
James Stine If you look in the upper right hand corner of this photo, I believe that’s another 950-B belonging to Truax Traer Coal and is their Fiatt Mine.
Alan Hummel That looks like County Route #5 and the TP&W [now Keokuk Junction Railway] track at the upper end of the pit. Must have been in the late 50's.
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| One of several photos in a 1958 brochure provided by Charley Smart that describes the wheel excavator. |
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Roger Kujawa posted
United Electric Coal Mine 9 Cuba, Illinois. Wheel excavator.
John Carson Great picture. When I was a child I remember stopping and watching a Wheel and Shovel pair work outside of Cuba Il. I remember seeing equipment like these mine along Il. Rt. 95 west of Cuba, and along the Canton -Cuba blacktop. I do not know if this particular Wheel and Shovel were the ones that were moved to mine the Banner Marsh area, but somebody knows for sure, I remember them sitting silent in a field near Banner, until they were disassembled and moved to the Industry Mine which was starting up. I met the gentleman who was an Engineer with Bucyrus-Erie, who was in charge of their reconstruction, and he showed me around several times during the process and I got to see the engineering blueprints. He told me that the Wheel originally started life as a Steam Powered Bucyrus-Erie shovel. Freeman United Coal Company came up with the idea for the wheel, which was a cooperative venture between B-E and Freeman. This wheel was either the first or second one. The thing that amazed me was this Engineer (I can't remember his name), was showing me these HUGE parts and explaining how this or that was worn out and had to be replaced. He knew them by sight to be good or bad. More amazing was Bucyrus-Erie had replacement parts in stock. I was up in the Cab of the Shovel several times while it was in operation. Nice little benefit of being a Deputy Sheriff on Night Patrol. As I understand, both the Wheel and Shovel from the Industry Mine were scrapped when it closed. . JCC |
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Justin Curless posted
United Electric Cuba Post Card Photo - Unknown Year: This Machine is Similar to another '' Wheel Machine" set up at the Fiatt Mine in about 1962.The back of the post card says . W-4 Kolbe Wheel Excavator , in operation near Canton, illinois. Constructed at United Electric's Cuba illinois,Mine,This 2100 ton Mobile giant was developed by Frank F . Kolbe. Powered by Electricity for overburden removal in open pit pit mining, it is this Nations largest in both size Capacity. Tall as a Fifteen story building and 420 Feet long,it's maximum capacity is 4,800 cubic yards per hour.
Justin Curless posted
United Electric Coal Strip Mine Excavator Cuba illinois 1950 S |
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Justin Curless posted
Shown here is one of the Cross-Pit Bucket Wheel Excavator Machines Built By The United Electric Coal Companies(Now Freeman-United Coal Mining Company).The one illustrated was Known as The W4 Kolbe Wheel,Named. after The Company's President Frank Kolbe. It Started work at the Cuba Mine in Illinois in 1959,and Could excavate at the tremendous rate of two million Cubic yards of overburden per month. The'Cross Pit Bucket Wheel excavator had its Discharge boom fixed in the same position as the digging Boom.
Kent Beckner THEY DEAD HEADED IT CROSS COUNTRY T0 BUCKHEART MINE .I BELIEVE IT WAS 1967 IT WENT TO THE SOUTH PIT WITH THE 1650 |
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Justin Curless posted
Kolbe Wheel-Near Cuba
Roman Keating Any mines still operate in Illinois?
Myron Dudenbostel Peabody's Gateway Mine at Coulterville, Carter Coal has several underground and strip mines in the area also.........
Lennie Hanner I work at Prairie State Generating Company's Lively Grove underground mine, in Washington County, near Marissa.
Pat Willard W-4 on it way to Buckheart mine.
Bill Richter Pat i have a full page out of daily ledger showing w4 crossing route 78 |
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Justin Curless shared Stine James' photo
In Jan. of 1959, at the Cuba Mine of United Electric Coal, the Kolbe W-4 BWX began its work assisting the 950-B shovel which had worked the mine since 1941. The W-4 was built on the lower works of the old Marion 5600 shovel and was the largest of it's kind in it's day. The dia. of the wheel was 27 feet with ten 2.5 yd. buckets and spanned the cut some 420 feet. She could move 3500 yds./hr and weighed in at 2100 ton. I believe this machine was moved to the Industry Mine in the early 1980's and had the lower works of the first 1050-B installed on it for service there.
Bruce Weirauch's posting gives photo credit to Hedrick-Blessing |
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Larry Senalik posted
Pana - 9/25/1950
no additional information on the photo
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I started by finding Cuba on the Google Maps road map. I could tell by all of the long skinny lakes that there had been a lot of strip mining in this area. [
MetaLandscars]
The mine was opened in 1923 by building a spur north from the CB&Q line that ran from Galesburg to Havana. [
Blog] The blog indicates the mine spur was west and south of Cuba. So I found a 1949 topo map that covered this area when the spur existed.
The mine spur left the CB&Q branch where the CB&Q track curved close to IL-97. So now that I know where to look, I found the 1938 aerial photos.
00rz05422 shows the mine spur leaving the branch. The one to the north is the one of interest and an excerpt is included below. It shows
the land scars of strip mining already covering a significant amount of land.
Below is a contemporary satellite image of the same area. A problem with strip mining is that it buries the top soil with subsoil. I've seen evidence with other old mines that trees seem to be able to grow in the infertile subsoil. And they hide the ridges left by strip mining. The oldest aerial photo since 1938 that I could find was 1988. And the land already looks like it does today. You can tell by the 1951 date given for the photo at the top of these notes that at least basic land reclamation regulations had been written by then. The top soil was saved and used to not only to restore the land along IL-5, but some of the land mined by 1938.
At the bottom of the above 1938 aerial, we can see the CB&Q branch entering the frame. Below is a closer look at the prep plant. There is a small rail yard north of the plant. And, like a logging camp, they have built tracks to the North and East to access the active mining areas. The prep plant in the 1950 photo looks bigger than the one in this image.
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| Digitally Zoomed |
The rail spur to the north was extended to give them access to the TP&W as well as the CB&Q. The coal mine was closed in 1971. [
Blog] So the USGS has done a good job of updating the map to show the spur as abandoned. Their railroad connected to the TP&W in 1954. [David Jordan comment on a
post]
It appears someone left a toxic waste holding pond. They build an earthen dam with the solid waste to hold the liquid waste. I assume the inside has been lined with clay and/or plastic to keep the toxic liquid out of the surface and ground water. Given the amount of land available around Cuba, I would have thought they would have built their school further away from the waste dump.
738 UNITED ELECTRIC COAL CO. CUBA 9 STRIP 1923-1971 FULTON 6N 3E 28 [
index]
I presume that the grey numbers below are index numbers. I don't know what the black numbers are. The index entry above for #738 indicates section 28. But I see the index number in Sections 14 and 13. Green (blue on a different monitor) is abandoned strip mining, pink is abandoned underground mining, and yellow is indefinite abandoned underground coal mine boundary. We saw in the 1938 aerial photo above that mining began in Section 28.
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Justin Curless posted, cropped and at posted resolution
Shown here in this Photo is a little Story of Coal Mining. |
Cuba used to supply Wallace Power Station.
Roger Kujawa
posted three images with the comment: "
Old set of Postcards from United Electric #9 Coal Mine Cuba, Canton Illinois."
[At least the first one duplicates an image that is already in these notes. But it is worth repeating.]
Justin Curless
shared
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Justin Curless posted
United Electric Cuba Coal Mine Complments photo of Carlos Shaw
Montey Johnson I remember this move the highway had a dip in it from the crossing.
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Bruce Weirauch posted
1965
[At Facebook resolution] |
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Roger Kujawa posted
EARLY CUBA ILLINOIS Real Photo Postcard Strip Mine - United Electric Coal Mine
Roger Kujawa posted with the same comment
James Stine: I’m glad you got that Roger Kujawa. You beat me out on this one. This was the first stripping shovel to be mounted on crawlers. It a Marion 350. It forever changed the industry.
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I lived in Galesburg as a kid in the 1950s. My Dad took us over to an operating strip mine in this area. The depth of the cut, the exposed layer of coal and the big shovels were very impressive. We drove through areas that looked like the area in the first photo of this article. Areas that had not been reclaimed after taking the coal. Even as a kid that was a depressing sight.
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