Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

For a time, Missouri boasted of a prosperous coal mining industry, especially in Henry County. The Tebo coal field, located between Knob Noster and Appleton City, was one of the six major deposits within the state that fueled both the trains and the industrial demands of western Missouri, and eastern Kansas and Nebraska.

Lewis (Katy trail milepost 259.9) was established as a small railroad community and exporting center for the Tebo coal in 1871. The following year, three mines near town were being heavily worked with nearly 500 carloads of coal shipped from Lewis that winter.

Coal is extracted by two methods: underground (pit or shaft) mining and surface or strip mining if the coal bed is located within 30 feet of the surface. Both types of mining were employed commercially in the Calhoun-Lewis area between 1869 and 1987.

The Tebo Coal Co. was the largest shaft mining operation in Lewis. According to an 1877 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the company operated a shaft 40 feet deep to mine a bed of coal 4½ feet thick. It employed 103 workers, and had a daily output of 125 tons of coal.

The Peabody Coal Co. bought all coal operations in Henry County, which at that point had become primarily surface operations. Two of the last mines to play out were the Montrose and Tebo mines of Calhoun.

Evidence of surface mining can still be observed at several points along Katy Trail State Park, especially between mileposts 256.7 and 262. Although much of the landscape was reclaimed, elongated mounds and ponds give evidence to this once-thriving industry.

[Coal Pit photo: From the ground, evidence of strip mining for coal is often subtle, but from the air the landscape effects are unmistakable.]
Used by permission, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.

[Upper left photo: This coal bed was formed from plants that once grew in ancient swamps. Thick layers of sediments covered the partially decayed plant material called peat. Over geologic time, pressure and heat, caused mostly by the weight of the overlying sediments, changed the peat into coal.]
Department of Natural Resources file photo.
[Upper right photo: When coal veins occur near the surface, strip mining becomes more economical than shaft mining.]
Used by permission, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.
[Lower left photo: Though the land recovers, the once-thriving strip mining industry remains evident.]
Department of Natural Resources file photo.
[Lower right photo: William O'Dell (right) drills a hole to prepare for the explosives in an underground mine near Calhoun in 1908.]
Photo courtesy of the Clinton Daily Democrat.

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