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Life of the Kentucky coal miners has never been easy. The miners are required to work long hours, in the depths of the earth, tearing out the “black diamond” that keep the furnaces of the nation functioning. The trip to Benham on your Kentucky tourism adventure will include a visit to the Kentucky Coal Mining Museum where you will learn about the mines and the miners. The building the museum is housed in was built in 1923 after the original building burned to the ground. The original function of the building was as a company commissary.

There are four floors of exhibit space with a diverse collection of artifacts showing the early years of industrial coal mining. Some the exhibits will show how the company actually owned everything from the houses that the miners lived in to the hospital they went to when they were injured or sick. They also owned the store (commissary) where the miners and their families had to buy their supplies. The miners used the company script to pay their way and in order to get silver money a miner got 85 cents in silver for every dollar in script. Life was hard for the miner and his family.

You will be able to take a trip down into the mine when you visit Portal 31 in nearby Lynch. You can take a walking tour of one of the largest coal loading facilities in the world and take an actual tour of a mine by rail car. You will be dressed as the miners were dressed and experience the feelings they had as they descended into the bowels of the earth for the coal.