Historic walking dragline to hit the road for Franklin

Feb. 2—On the web To see a video describing the project to move the Page dragline go to Franklin, Kan., at: https://www.minershallmuseum.com. For more information on the three donor funds accepting donations to support the museum and the continued maintenance of the dragline go to: https://southeastkansas.org/?s=miners+hall+museum.

A walking dragline will soon be moved from the spot where it has rested for the past five decades and turned into a historic landmark to honor coal mining in Southeast Kansas.

Derrek Tilton, with Tilton & Son's House Moving Inc., based in Carthage, is preparing to disassemble the Page 618 walking dragline and move it to Ginardi's Corner, the junction of Kansas Highway 47 and U.S. Highway 69 at the south end of Franklin, Kansas.

The Page dragline weighs about 500,000 pounds, or about 250 tons, with a boom that's 110 feet tall. It moves on two giant feet that lift the dragline's body up slightly and allow it to go forward or backward.

A dragline is an excavator that uses a large, heavy bucket suspended from a tall, trusslike structure called a boom. The bucket is maneuvered by wire cables and chains on the boom. Powered by diesel or electric motors, a dragrope is used to draw the bucket horizontally and scoop up large amounts of coal or whatever ore is being mined.

The move is probably the most dramatic step in a process that began about 10 years ago with a conversation between Phillis Bitner, trustee with the Miners Hall Museum in Franklin, Kansas, and Wendall Wilkinson, the owner of dragline and the land it sits on.

"It's been a year since we announced we had received the grants to move the dragline," Bitner said. "Everything seems to move slow when you're at this level. Once we were approved, we got excited, and then it took another six months to get the contracts and everything set up. So yes, we're beyond excited to see something really happening, something physical that you can say all right, it's really going to happen now."

Tilton said he's been working on plans to move the dragline for five years, and this is the time when those plans hit the road.

"It's going to be interesting, it's going to be a learning process," Tilton said. "There's no set of instructions on how to take it apart. It's kind of learn as you go. We moved smaller versions of something like this a couple of times. This is just the largest one we've ever moved. We moved a smaller machine to Big Brutus and then a smaller Insley dragline to the Miner's Hall Museum. I think that will help this. It's basically the same principle, just a bigger scale."

The dragline is smaller than the more famous Big Brutus shovel in western Cherokee County that weighs 5,500 tons and has a boom that's 160 feet tall, but Bitner said it will still be a sight for drivers on U.S. Highway 69.

The Page dragline is one of only two examples of this model of dragline left in the United States; the other is in an overgrown forest in Pennsylvania.

The Wilkinson Coal Co., established in 1917 by Wendell Wilkinson's grandfather, William Wilkinson, brought the dragline to Cherokee County in 1953. Wendell Wilkinson said his father, Jack Wilkinson, bought the machine from a mine in Louisiana and had it shipped by rail to Scammon and then moved it in pieces by truck to eastern Cherokee County.

It was used to mine first coal and then clay from 1953 to 1979. Because it was too big to move and too old to be useful, it was left parked in the spot where it pulled up its last shovelful of clay.

It was the third of three big shovels the Wilkinson Coal Co. purchased to mine in the area in the early 20th century. Wendell Wilkinson and his family have donated two of the shovels to the Crawford County Historical Museum in Pittsburg and to the Big Brutus Museum.

Tilton said he hopes to complete the move and reassemble the dragline by sometime in March or April.

Bitner said the museum received about $587,500 to move the dragline from the Kansas Department of Tourism, the Patterson Family Foundation and the local John U. Parolo Educational Trust. While that money is sufficient to move the machine, the museum still plans to restore it on-site, and that will take more donations from the public.

Bitner said interested donors can call the museum at 620-347-4220 or email at minershallmuseum@gmail.com.