Taylorville: Christian County Coal Mine Museum
1324 E. Park
TEL: 217-526-4408

In 2003 two retired Lithuanian-American miners, William A. Stone and Ron Verbiski, created the first iteration of the Christian Country Coal Mine Museum, which was located on Taylorville’s town square. The museum mission was passed on to Charles E. Martin who secured the much larger shed building in which the museum is now located. He is the museum’s Director and Curator and has created an excellent exhibition script covering one hundred years of coal mining to when Peabody Mine #10 closed in 1995.

The museum displays photographs, documents, newspaper articles, mining artifacts (of miners, the two unions, the mining companies), and large maps from the Illinois State Geological Survey showing the location of coal and the mines. The museum’s photographic collection reveals the work of miners underground. There is a replica coal tunnel with miner mannequins, giving a sense of the work and risks.

A particular strength of the museum is its representation of the violent labor dispute that took place in this immediate area between the United Mine Workers of America and the breakaway Progressive Miners of America in the 1930s.

A particularly moving section of the museum is devoted to the mine tragedies that happened in central Illinois at Moweaqua and Centralia and other mines, by means of the newspaper articles at the time.

BADGES OF THE UMWA

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The museum includes modern art and craft works related to coal mining. 

The museum has been featured in an episode of Mark McDonald’s “Illinois Stories”, shown on television on July 14, 2017 and again on December 9, 2021: CLICK and CLICK and CLICK