Big Brutus, a gigantic electric coal shovel that’s become a side trip for Route 66 travelers in Kansas, was designated to the National Register of Historic Places.
According to an email from the National Park Service, the designation became effective Jan. 5. Big Brutus sits at 6509 NW 60th St. in West Mineral, Kansas, about 30 miles from the Route 66 town of Riverton. Big Brutus has its own souvenir shop and museum dedicated to the landmark and southeast Kansas’ mining heritage.
Big Brutus is a Bucyrus Erie model 1850B that’s the largest surviving electric shovel in the world. It stands nearly 16 stories tall and can be seen for miles. It weighs 11 million pounds. The boom measures 150 feet long. Its dipper capacity was 150 tons and was equivalent to three railroad cars.
More from the Kansas Sampler Foundation website:
A three man crew ran Big Brutus with the support of electricians and roller operators. The coal shovel ran 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, from 1963 until 1974 at a speed of .22 miles per hour (less than 1/4 mile per hour) and moved approximately one square mile per year. Big Brutus did not dig coal. The huge bucket removed the overburden (dirt and rocks covering the coal seams) and with one scoop could fill three railroad cars. Huge coal strippers moved in on the coal seams after Big Brutus exposed them.
Big Brutus cost $6.2 million when purchased in 1962, and it required 150 rail cars to be shipped in pieces for assembly in Kansas. The shovel was retired when coal mining in that region became uneconomical. The Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Co. donated Big Brutus in 1984 to the mining museum in West Mineral.
According to its website, Big Brutus needs a paint job, which is probably why officials sought the National Register designation so it could become eligible for historic tax credits for such preservation efforts.
It’s unusual for a machine to be named to the National Register. But Big Brutus is so massive and unusual, it’s become a destination in its own right.
(Image of Big Brutus in West Mineral, Kansas, by Kansas Tourism via Flickr)
As an ardent enthusiast of industrial buildings, machinery, equipment and sites, it gives me great satisfaction to see the preservation of this excavator was considered worthy of being designated to go on the National Register of Historic Places. Even if the wording is somewhat wrong. Does that not show up the lack of interest in keeping for posterity the machinery that enabled the change of the USA from what it was at the start of the 19th century to what it is today? Think of all the factories, power stations, railway works, etc that just get demolished, losing the link with the past. My step-father worked in a quarry, driving what today is called a front-end loader: just an ordinary Fordson tractor with a bucket at the front and, at the rear, a winch to wind in the wire that lifted the bucket. A miniature compared with Big Brutus. And there were countless Ruston Bucyrus (the British arm of Bucyrus Erie) machines at work around the UK through much of the 20th century. Well done.
Visiting Big Brutus every summer when I stayed with my adopted grandparents in Cherryvale, Kansas was a rite of my childhood. My adopted grandmother took pictures every summer of me and her nephews standing against the toes of the shovel to mark how we’d grown until the boys were about 16 and protested. (They were twins.).
I have not been able to see Big Brutus as much as an adult. But it has done my heart good to see the museum there evolve and I would jump for joy if I could over this news about it being named to the National Register! I echo Eric’s comments above about more industrial things needing to be preserved. For anyone out there reading this – if you’ve never visited Big Brutus – add it to your next Rt. 66 travel plans for SW Missouri/SE Kansas/NE Oklahoma. It is well worth the effort!
Go Brutus!