Miner Leagues

“Miner” leagues

I love a small town. I grew up in a small town and even though I’ve moved around a bit since my youth, I still choose to do life in a small town. Small towns across my home state of Tennessee hold the last grip on the America that I grew up in and is likely the reason I take every chance I can to get out and lallygag through them.

There is a lot to learn by driving the highways of small towns. The highways that built America - the highways before the interstates - the foundational pavements where the remains of yesteryear still scatter the roadsides and pastures. Passer byers will see decrepit buildings with bullet holed gas signs; brands that no longer exist today. Rusted farm equipment left in fields they last plowed. Old cars faded by the sun that no longer run. Antique trucks decomposing under rundown lean-tos. Neglect has turned these old towns into vintage treasure fields for some.

But I don’t come seeking these niceties. I don’t mind rummaging through antiques and looking at old cars and farm implements but my draw is a story. I am on the hunt for a historical marker, or two, that tell of a life lived a long time ago.

Stuff you never heard about in history class awaits us right here along the highways of our great country and nestled sweetly in the nooks and crannies of small towns. Consider a drive along the route of Highway 70. According to Wikipedia, US Highway 70 runs for 2,381 miles and extends from Arizona to North Carolina. It is known as the Old West Highway. In its infancy, highway 70 was also plotted a little north of its current location. It also merged with other US highways and probably DEmerged also. I guess what I’m trying to convey is that it has changed over the years – we all have - but most importantly, all that terrain from Arizona to North Carolina makes for a lot of stops for history hunting.

My focus is the highway 70 running through all three grand divisions of Tennessee; West, Middle and East. The town is Ravenscroft but don’t bother trying to find it on a map. You’ll have better luck finding nearby towns of Sparta and maybe you’ll find DeRossett on the map. Sandwiched somewhere in between the two, you will find Ravenscroft.

Ravenscroft was a mining town on Bon Air Mountain. It was settled as a coal mining town when the Ravenscroft mine was built in 1903. On that mountain, there were three more coal mining companies with their own community. Each community had its own company store and its own baseball league. Yup! Baseball and miners…the “miner” leagues right there in the middle of coal country in Tennessee. American as apple pie.

Families came from all corners of the world and settled into Bon Air Mountain communities with the expectation that it would hard. The mining work was dark and filthy. Creating a homestead and raising a family in a remote small town created hard people. Yet, they still made time to coddle America’s favorite pastime.

On Bon Air Mountain, there were four “miner” leagues named after the owners of the mines they worked for. And one of those miners went on to play in the majors. Earl Webb played for the Boston Red Sox, New York Giants, Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds. The historical account continues to tell the story that Earl was lost in New York while trying to find the baseball stadium when a man stopped and gave him a ride. That man? None other than Babe Ruth himself. (Retrieved from Mining on the Mountain)

I could be wrong. Maybe you did learn this history lesson in grade school and if that’s the case, I would like to take you out for apple pie. Because I bet you have a lot of cool stories to tell. Until then, take the roads less traveled. Travel through the small towns. Stop and read the markers. Journal about your findings. And share it with others.

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