Big Sandy Heritage Center in Pikeville, Kentucky Chronicles Appalachian History

The Big Sandy Heritage Center is located in cozy Pikeville, Kentucky in the old passenger depot built in 1924 by C & O Railroad. The building was later used as City Hall when an upstairs addition was added with a lovely, very tight spiral staircase. With the advent of the world famous cut-through project, the railroad and river were moved in the early 1980s. This made room for the construction of Hambley Boulevard, which is now the official address of the Center (one now enters it through the small back door that served as the exit to the loading platform when it was originally built), and on September 20, 2003 the Big Sandy Heritage Center opened it doors as such.

This little museum is crammed full of delights. It chronicles the history not only of Pikeville (first Pike Town, then Piketon, and now Pikeville), but also the history of the entire Big Sandy Valley area- from pre-historic times and stretching to the present day.

I was greeted at the door by a life-size likeness of Daniel Boone and a very friendly man who introduced himself as Everett Johnson, the Curator. Mr. Johnson was kind enough to accompany me for most of my tour.

To the left of the entrance hall is the Railroad Room. This room is dedicated mostly to the history of coal mining in the Big Sandy Valley which has been its major industry since the Industrial Revolution (no room was solely dedicated to a subject. Some displays seemed thrown in unlikely places for lack of sufficient space). There was an assortment of various tools, photos of mines old and new, photos of train depots (most of which no longer exist as such), and even a Western Union Telex Teleprinter machine. Also in the Railroad room was an exhibit celebrating the Pikeville Cut-through Project, which the New York Times called "the eighth Wonder of the World". Tucked tightly in a corner was the aforementioned spiral staircase. To comply with the ADA Act, no exhibits are featured upstairs.

Along a tiny hallway to the right of the entrance hall, a table full of books by local writers and poets invited perusal. The museum seems to have all of the published works of renowned Appalachian poet Effie Waller Smith to hand.

This tiny hallway leads, by a turn to the right, to the Civil War room. Kentucky was a divided state during that war and this division also divided families themselves between North and South, thus the area's Civil War history is unique, cruel, and brutal. This exhibit did not chronicle the emotional scars such a state of affairs created as much as it might have, but it did contain jewels of artifacts. There was a very early edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on display as well as a child's adjustable slave collar from the 1840's or 1850s. Several bits of soldier's uniforms, furniture, and meager belongings were viewable, including a deck of playing cards from the era. A case of bullets found on a battlefield in nearby Prestonsburg and something like a photograph (or a very good artist's rendering) of the Prisoner of War camp where a local man was held captive on Johnsons Isle in Lake Erie were carefully displayed. There were examples of false Unionist propanganda to consider. In this room also was a small exhibit featuring the Hatfield and McCoy Feud which was a direct result of the division of opinion during the War and a small exhibit on the Giants of Seville, Ohio who were all nearly eight feet tall.

Leaving the Civil War room and proceeding directly left, I found myself in another hallway lined with various articles from the New York Times about the area during the Civil War, an issue of Life magazine showing a local school yard in 1959, and a National Geographic article with images of Pikeville from 1942.

At the end of this hallway was the largest room in the museum with a mind-boggling assortment of displays. This room featured the history of Pikeville itself. I saw there everything from an early car phone (such as we called "bag phones" in the day) to local newspapers, to displays dedicated to the many singers and musicians from the area- most of whom achieved world fame (Pikeville is located on U.S. 23, the Country Music Highway, after all), the original Greyhound Bus station sign, and more. Scale models of the homesteads of both the Hatfields and the McCoys were labeled "Do Not Touch". In one large corner, a log home from the late 1800s is roughly suggested with various items that would have been found within it, even a catalogue from the Sears & Roebuck Company and one from Montgomery Ward dated 1894-95. There were displays for Doc Boston, the first African-American dentist in the area, John Paul Riddle, an aviation pioneer who graduated from Pikeville College Academy (now UPike), and a boudoir doll from the late 1800s made after the likeness of Kentucky ghost story legend Octavia Hatcher (of the old Hatcher Hotel where Hampton Inn now stands) after she was mistakenly buried alive in 1890. Not to be ignored was a 42 star flag that never existed officially as an emblem of the country but which hangs faded by time down the entire height of the wall, guest rosters from the old Pinson Hotel which was demolished in the midst of great controversy in 2010 to make way for a new Justice building, and a group of stained glass windows salvaged when a local Presbyterian Church was torn down in the 1920s to make way for a more modern structure. The interesting thing about these panes was the star of David prominently placed in the design of one of them. And let's not forget the Pikeville Cubs baseball team which in the early 1980s was a class A farm of the Chicago Cubs. Greg Maddux spent his first year in professional baseball with the Pikeville Cubs.

At the end of the big room was a smaller room for Special and Temporary Exhibits. It was a true hodge-podge. Most of it featured the history of Native Americans in the area and included arrowheads, tools, jewelry, and hand-woven crafts found in the mountains. There was a Ceremonial drum and two life-size likenesses of Native Americans as well. Also in this room was an assortment of collectible dolls, glass, china and dinnerware, a model of a washing machine from 1901, a book on Mark Putnam who became an FBI agent and then murdered to remain one, an old voting machine, various old local election paraphernalia, and a collection of old Bibles and religious material dating back to the 1850's.

All in all, the Center is well worth its admission price: $3.00 for adults, $2.00 for students and seniors. It is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Weekends and nights by appointment only. The staff are accustomed to catering to groups of children on field days from local schools which makes the Center very child-friendly. Future plans (if funding becomes available) is to install interactive displays that come alive and tell stories at the touch of a button. Come and enjoy this wealth of history and culture in little Pikeville, Kentucky!