Name/Title
S02.15.057Description
Ohio State Geologist Horace R. Collins standing to the far right with geologist James Morton Schopf and Russian geologist Petr Petrovich Timofeev (Timofeyev) under the back end of the Big Muskie. The Big Muskie was a coal mining Bucyrus-Erie dragline owned and operated by the Central Ohio Coal Company. Big Muskie removed overburden to access Meigs Creek (No. 9) coal in the Muskingum, Morgan, Noble, and Guernsey counties area. The Big Muskie was officially dedicated during a ceremony on May 22, 1969. This picture was taken on May 24, 1969, during the opening week of public tours.
Identifications of Dr. James Morton Schopf and Dr. Petr Petrovich Timofeev confirmed by Dr. James William Schopf, of the University of California, and Mikail Alexandrovich Fedonkin, Director of the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in e-mail exchanges with Lisa F. Long during July and August 2016.
The location given is approximate to the Central Ohio Coal Company's mining area south of Renrock, but in northern Morgan County as per location given in: At Dedication Ceremony by Bud Harsh, The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio), Friday, 23 May 1969, pages 1 and 19.
The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio), Thursday, 22 May 1969, page 29. The giant dragline soon will start filling an important role in the economic progress of the Muskingum River Valley. Big Muskie will have a down-to-earth function—literally. The 27-million-pound machine is destined to prowl Central Ohio Coal Company’s 100,000-acre field for the next 35 years uncovering the earth overburden form the rich veins of coal. The coal, which will be extracted by other, smaller machines, will feed the Philo and Beverly plants of the Ohio Power Company. The coal fires the boilers to produce steam which is used in giant turbines to generate electricity. Big Muskie will be part of American Electric Power system’s electricity-making complex on the Muskingum River. The plant near Beverly will soon put into full use a new 615,000-kilowatt generating unit. The plant, with a new capacity of 1.5-million kilowatts, will be the largest power plant in Ohio. Big Muskie’s task will be to strip away the overburden on an estimated 185 million tons of coal—about 5 million tons a year—in the counties of Muskingum, Morgan, Noble, and Guernsey. The $20.8 million machine, which stands 32 stories high, will greet the earth-and-rock covering on the coal with a bucket which can hold 12 automobiles. Its walking shoes are 20 feet wide and 130 feet long. Figures on its actual work chore amount to this: It will be charged with peeling back 235 tons of earth every minute, or 150,000 tons a day. Big Muskie will be teamed with a totally automated railway (Muskingum Electric Railroad) and a recently added-to fleet of huge trucks which run from a complex near Cumberland to the tipple and service center near Unionville. From there, coal is transported overland by a conveyor beltline to the Beverly plant. A bonus asset for this area of the state is Ohio Power’s land-reclamation efforts. Strip mined land in other areas of the nation lies in desolate contrast to the lake-studded and green-clad Central Ohio mine area. It provides top fishing and camping and other recreational opportunities not often surpassed anywhere. Dedication ceremonies today will draw invited civic, business, industrial, governmental and press representatives. Included will be a tour of the mine area. A public open house will be held July 9. Big Muskie is certain to add power to the industrial-development movement in the Muskingum Valley. It will be a guarantee that the coal will be supplied to the electric plants, and the abundance of electric power is the assurance that modern industry must have.
See also, At Dedication Ceremony by Bud Harsh, The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio), Friday, 23 May 1969, pages 1 and 19.
This slide image included in the USGS National Digital Catalog for NGGDPP Grant G15AP00115 in FY2015.Context
Three man standing underneath colossal excavator; excavator towers above their heads. Central Ohio Coal Company site in northern Morgan County, Ohio.