Museum opens new floor Saturday
Visitors to the Coal Creek Miners Museum on July 4, 2024, check out the Memorial Brick Walkway, whose original dedication ceremony was held on that day. The next phase of the walkway will be revealed on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the museum, which is next door to the Rocky Top City Hall on North Main Street. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The ribbon cutting will take place in front of the museum at 201 S. Main St., and will also mark the unveiling of the next phase of the Memorial Brick Walkway, honoring the miners, families and friends who built the community, which originally was called Coal Creek.
Events will run until 3 p.m., and will include free refreshments and food.
Among the featured exhibits at the museum will be the Coal Company Store, the Company House, and the Briceville Opera House.
The museum unveiled the first phase of the brick walkway with a ribbon-cutting on July 4, 2024, with a second phase celebrated on Aug. 2, 2025. The walkway is part of a fundraising campaign for the museum.
It’s made up of commemorative bricks bought by donors, with most of the bricks engraved with the names of former Coal Creek-area miners and family members.
They have been designed with one theme in mind: memorializing those who lost their lives in two major mining disasters in the area in the early 1900s.
In October 2023, the museum began selling the bricks to donors to raise money for the additions and improvements to the facility.
The museum said it aimed “to raise funds through the sale of personalized bricks that will be used to construct a commemorative pathway at the museum,” according to a flyer explaining the campaign.
In December 2023, the museum was awarded a $50,000 grant from the state of Tennessee to help with the second-floor expansion.
The money from the state, awarded through a program of the Tennessee State Museum, has allowed the museum to add heating and air conditioning, along with ADA-compliant restrooms, to the second floor, according to an announcement by the state museum.
“The funding … provided through this grant will give us a jump start on remodeling the second floor of the museum,” Tim Isbel, an Anderson County commissioner and chairman of the Coal Creek Miners Museum’s board of directors, said at the time of the announcement.
“The HVAC and an ADA-compliant restroom are very important components in the remodeling project that will expand capacity, allowing us to display a more-extensive collection of artifacts and exhibits. This, in turn, enables us to offer a more comprehensive and immersive experience for visitors.”
Located in a former bank building next to City Hall in downtown Rocky Top, the museum is dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of coal mining in the Coal Creek area, with emphasis on the industry’s impact on the region, and the tragedies that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of miners.
Then-volunteer-curator Lisa Pebley said most of the money raised by the brick campaign would go toward finishing the second floor of the museum, which chronicles the local coal industry from the 1940s until its end in the early 2000s.
The main floor, which has been open several years, details the industry’s impact from its beginning in the 1800s when Henry Howard Wiley brought Welsh miners in to start mining in the area, through the war years in the 1940s, Pebley said.
The former bank vault on the main floor holds exhibits telling the story of the Fraterville mine explosion on May 19, 1902, which resulted in the deaths of 216 miners.
Bricks paid for by donors have been printed with information each one provided. They cost $100, $200, or $300 each, depending on the size (four by eight inches, or eight by eight inches).and the amount of text the donor chose.
