Hudson Mine Rescue Tribute is Saturday

MARION, Ky. – A detailed presentation recounting the 1926 Hudson Mine cave-in and the extraordinary rescue effort that followed will be the featured attraction at a free centennial celebration Saturday, Aug. 8, in Marion.

“All Found Alive!” will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Fohs Hall and the neighboring Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum. Registration will begin at 9 a.m., and organizers encourage visitors to arrive before the featured program starts promptly at 10.

Bo Moodie will lead the presentation at Fohs Hall, using historical photographs and A.M. Shelby’s written report to provide a play-by-play account of the disaster and rescue.

“People need to be here at Fohs Hall between 9 and 10 for registration,” organizer Andrea Clement said. “The stuff you don’t want to miss is at 10 o’clock.”

The program will explain the daunting conditions rescuers encountered and the repeated mechanical and logistical failures that complicated their work.

“It was Murphy’s law in effect,” Clement said. “Anything and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And they never gave up.”

Five fluorspar miners — Randolph Cobb, Roy James, George Castiller, U.B. Wilson and Harry Watson — were trapped about 150 to 160 feet underground after a massive cave-in occurred between 9 and 10 p.m. Aug. 5, 1926, at the Hudson Zinc and Spar Mine southwest of Salem.

The mine had operated intermittently since the 1890s. Near the working area was an abandoned pit about 90 feet deep that had filled with water, mud, discarded timbers and other refuse. Older miners had warned

that if the ground beneath the pit gave way, water and debris would rush into the lower workings.

When timbers began snapping, two miners escaped in a mining tub and climbed out through the main shaft. James ran to warn four men working elsewhere in the mine and became trapped with them.

The five had no food and almost no drinking water. They shared four matches and conserved their carbide lamps by burning only one at a time. In the bitter cold and darkness, they collected condensation in a Prince Albert tobacco can to provide small dabs of water.

Believing they might never return to the surface, the men wrote messages inside their caps. The most famous read, “If we are dead when you find us, we are saved.”

Above ground, mining companies quickly assembled and vowed to spare no expense. Fluorspar mines suspended operations and sent their best workers and equipment. The coal industry also joined the effort.

Heavy machinery had to be hauled over rough roads, and tractors repeatedly broke down. Workers welded through the night to keep the equipment moving. A bearing failed in a new centrifugal pump within about 30 minutes of its arrival. A replacement pump brought from Memphis also experienced a bearing failure.

When a replacement part missed an expedited train, a mining company vice president and his pilot flew it to Salem and landed in a field. The truck sent to retrieve them then broke down. After the equipment was repaired, the local power plant failed.

Despite every setback, the rescuers continued pumping and digging.

Thousands gathered near the mine, creating such congestion that the National Guard was summoned to control access and oversee food distribution. Community members supplied rescuers with meals and hot coffee as the operation continued around the clock.

The story spread internationally, with accounts of the rescue appearing as far away as England. Clement compares its impact to the 2010 rescue of 33 miners in Chile — another disaster that, coincidentally, began Aug. 5.

During the night before the Hudson miners were reached, a radio operator was flown from Evansville to lower a microphone into the mine. Voices were detected, confirming that the men were still alive, although the discovery was kept relatively quiet to avoid raising false hope.

Rescuers finally broke through on the morning of Aug. 12 after six days and seven nights. All five men were brought out alive. Cobb, the first lifted to the surface, greeted the cheering crowd with the memorable words, “Hello there, boys. I’m not sick.”

Following Moody’s presentation, the program will feature direct quotations from the miners describing what they endured underground. An open microphone will allow descendants and community members to share family stories.

Guest speakers Jeremy Walker and Josh Orr, who work in mine inspection, will discuss modern safety practices. The Hudson disaster and the national attention it received helped spur greater oversight and safety inspections within the fluorspar industry, making the rescue an important chapter in the development of modern mine-safety standards.

Music will be provided by Cutter & Cash and The Kentucky Grass. The morning program will also include an introduction to Bluegrass Fluorspar and a drawing for an America 250-themed quilt made by a descendant of a Revolutionary War patriot.

A photo booth created from an image of the actual rescue will be available, along with a miner’s lunchbox station offering ham biscuits and coffee. The refreshments are intended as a snack rather than a full meal.

The formal lunch break will run from noon until 1:30 p.m., allowing visitors to eat at local restaurants before returning for afternoon activities.

“Most of the restaurants have connections to either this mine rescue or have been lifelong advocates for this museum,” Clement said.

A tour of the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum will begin at 1:30 p.m. At 2:30, participants will gather beneath the museum pavilion for a hands-on discussion of mining equipment.

Clement said she hopes the celebration encourages families with generational ties to mining to explore the museum and recognize that history as their own.

“There is so much mining heritage here in the community,” she said. “I find it shocking that there are people whose families were in mining for multiple generations and have never set foot in this museum.”

She said those families possess the same determination exhibited during the rescue a century ago.

“This is your heritage. This is what you come from,” Clement said. “They have grit for a reason. It’s in their DNA.”

Clement, Lola Guess and Cathy Poindexter helped lay the groundwork for the celebration and have spent years collecting and preserving its history. Archives compiled by the late B.J. May and others include a preserved interview with May and his father, who participated in the rescue. Organizers are also working on a book about the event, while Guess has pursued a historical marker.

Anyone with family stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, documents or other materials related to the rescue is encouraged to contact Clement or the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum.

The free celebration is co-hosted by the Livingston County Historical Society and the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum.