1889-1892 progress seem plausible?

[polymath]

This town was built as an English company town beginning in/around 1889 with most buildings completed very quickly and an initial town investment of 2 million USD at the time from "London backers". I won't bore you with the official history or what else I find odd but this town was built in the middle the Appalachian mountains with no rail line into the valley intiially.

The images are from a tent city in 1889 to a finished product 2 years later. Most of the photos are lithographs despite the large investment and availability of photography during the construction phase. I am trying to understand the rubble, the very wide street (official story is to replicate the avenues of Europe) and the architectural style.

We see lots of quick builds or things that don't make sense on this forum. Does the last photo look to be a newly constructed building? The date stamp on the facade is 1890. The photo is said to be taken soon after.

Some of these buildings do still exist bust most were built in 1890 and gone by 1990 or sooner.

This was the King's Daughter hospital. Built ca. 1890 with that pointed metal dome (like a certain helmet) and in ruins by the 1950's

 

[trismegistus]

Guthrie, Oklahoma has a similar timeline.

Getty Images

From tents to a full on city in 4 years.

From Wiki:

Guthrie was established in 1887 as a railroad station called Deer Creek on the Southern Kansas Railway (later acquired by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) running from the Kansas–Oklahoma border to Purcell.[6] The name was later changed to Guthrie, named for jurist John Guthrie of Topeka, Kansas. A post office was established on April 4, 1889.[7]

In 1889, some fifty thousand potential settlers gathered at the edges of the Unassigned Lands in hopes of staking a claim to a plot. At noon on April 22, 1889, cannons resounded at a 2,000,000-acre (810,000 ha; 8,100 km2) section of Indian Territory, launching president Benjamin Harrison's "Hoss Race" or Land Run of 1889. People ran for both farmlands and towns.

During the next six hours, about 10,000 people settled in what became the capital of the new Territory of Oklahoma. Within months, Guthrie was developed as a modern brick and stone "Queen of the Prairie" with municipal water, electricity, a mass transit system, and underground parking garages for horses and carriages.

 

[polymath]

Guthrie, Oklahoma has a similar timeline.

Getty Images

View attachment 30362​

From tents to a full on city in 4 years.

From Wiki:

Good point! Very similar timeline, construction style and wide avenue. Guthrie, the Queen of the Prairie and Middlesborough (misspelled from its namesake Middlesbrough England) was called the Magic City. Middlesborough was built in a bowl, a supposed meteor crater, and it has very moist environment with the Yellow Creek repeatedly flooding the town.

I wonder how many more of these boom towns are out there? And share similar qualities?

ETA: I believe the water/flooding and wide street design may be an indicator that there was once a waterway there that wants to return. Just a wild theory, though.

 

[monkwee]

Incredible timeline for a city to be built, surely, but let me play devil's advocate here by reminding ourselves of the huge labor movement (purportedly) happening at that time:

In 1869, Uriah Smith Stephens, James L. Wright, and a small group of Philadelphia tailors founded a secret organization known as the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor. The collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873 left a vacuum for workers looking for organization. The Knights became better organized with a national vision when, in 1879, they replaced Stephens with Terence V. Powderly, who was just 30 years old at the time. The body became popular with trade unions and Pennsylvania coal miners during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, then it grew rapidly. The KOL was a diverse industrial union open to all workers. The leaders felt that it was best to have a versatile population in order to get points of view from all aspects. The Knights of Labor barred five groups from membership: bankers, land speculators, lawyers, liquor dealers and gamblers. Its members included low skilled workers, railroad workers, immigrants, and steel workers. This helped the workers to get an organizational identity. As one of the largest labor organization in ninetieth century, Knights wanted to classify the workers as it was a time where large scale factories and industries were rapidly growing. Even though skilled workers were prioritized at the beginning 1880s but slowly later by the time of 1886, million workers were enrolled. [7]

As membership expanded, the Knights began to function more as a labor union and less of a secret organization. During the 1880s, the Knights of Labor played a huge role in independent and third-party movements. Local assemblies began not only to emphasize cooperative enterprises, but to initiate strikes to win concessions from employers. The Knights of Labor brought together workers of different religions, races and genders and helped them all create a bond and unify all for the same cause. The new leader Powderly opposed strikes as a "relic of barbarism", but the size and the diversity of the Knights afforded local assemblies a great deal of autonomy.

In 1882, the Knights ended their membership rituals and removed the words "Noble Order" from their name. This was intended to mollify the concerns of Catholic members and the bishops who wanted to avoid any resemblance to freemasonry. Though initially averse to strikes to advance their goals, the Knights did aid various strikes and boycotts. The Wabash Railroad strike in 1885 saw Powderly finally adapt and support an eventually successful strike against Jay Gould's Wabash Line after C. A. Hall, a carpenter and Knights member, was fired for attending a meeting in February. The strike included stopping track, yard, engine maintenance, the control or sabotage of equipment, and the occupation of shops and roundhouses.[8] Gould met with Powderly and agreed to call off his campaign against the Knights of Labor, which had caused the turmoil originally. This gave momentum to the Knights and membership surged. By 1886, the Knights had more than 700,000 members.

The Knights' primary demand was for the eight-hour workday. They also called for legislation to end child and convict labor as well as a graduated income tax. They also supported cooperatives. The only woman to hold office in the Knights of Labor, Leonora Barry, worked as an investigator. She described the horrific conditions in factories employing women and children. These reports made Barry the first person to collect national statistics on the American working woman.[9]

This may very well be made up too, but we might speculate as to how quickly a city could be built by those intending on living there upon completion. I've never worked construction so I can't really speak to this point. Very interesting in either case.

 

[ViniB]

View: https://youtu.be/UOMfZy98wxs?si=FTCm5KHHyUKSmmbp


Just finished watching another masterpiece by these amazing researchers, it correlates with the op a lot! Can't recomend it enough!

 

[polymath]

Incredible timeline for a city to be built, surely, but let me play devil's advocate here by reminding ourselves of the huge labor movement (purportedly) happening at that time:

This may very well be made up too, but we might speculate as to how quickly a city could be built by those intending on living there upon completion. I've never worked construction so I can't really speak to this point. Very interesting in either case.

Very good point. This very well could have been a labor intensive situation with imported labor. According to records from and to the English company they did employ large numbers of men evidenced by an early payday queue photo:

Source for all photos in this thread: Middlesborough history

One thing to note of additional curiosity. This photo is aid to have been taken in the middle of the Appalachian mountains in/around 1890. The sign behind the men advertises oysters I live by the sea and I am quite picky about my oyster source and timing. Even if brought by train it was quite an undertaking. Maybe they were actually mussels being called oysters, who knows?
ETA: From brief research it seems oysters were packed in ice and sent westward in the 19th century. Who knew? Still a hard pass for me. However it seems the new immigrants to this boom town were familiar with eating oysters. Northeastern USA maybe?

I do know the Masons were immediately present as well as the Improved Order of the Red Men. I haven't seen any reference to the Knights of Labor in the old newspaper clippings and official history but I will definitely check it out.

 

[Otto_Didactic]

Oh boy, I love investigation requests
Compartmentalization is one of the most damaging mental barriers, treating everything as disconnected and random prevents us from seeing the bigger picture, thats why timeline history is drilled into kids in public education camps...
Sometimes the part you are looking at is only one small piece and you need to step back and take in the surrounding region. Its all about location, location, location. Thats probs the biggest i can offer right now.
Middlesboro is prime real-estate, Im guessing thats how they got the name, being where KY, TN, and VA all converge, this is a good example of compartmentalizing an area by splitting it up into 3 invisible borders makes it difficult to track the history when each place is its own isolated entity.
The only other place i have seen with more here is Harpers Ferry, which is the junction of 3 States, 2 major rivers, the Appalachian Trail, the B&O RR, and the C&O canal.
Most importantly with Middlesboro, i think you will find the most help with researching the history of the Cumberland Gap, which is literally right across the street. Forget what you learned about savage indians and fur trapping pioneers, the infrastructure was already in existent.
Before the repopulation the appalachains served as a network of industrial centers, raw ore could be harvested from the mountains and then shipped out to manufacturing areas closer to the coast via the canal grid or railroad.
After the people started showing back up most of these hamlets were burned down in a series of fires meant to break up the bottom level in the supply chain. In the case of Harpers ferry they parked a few hundred pound cannons across the river and klobbered the industrial center to smithereens, using the Civil War as a cover story and turned the place into a living open-air museum.
I notice there is a major coal plant on the edge of town,... and its in Bell county. Bells are a notorious generational Spook family.

By "London financial backers" they are talking about the City of London, not London City, more wordplay tomfoolery, the City of London is like Wash D.C. or the Vatican that exist as their own entity, their own compartment within a compartment, with their own poilice force and governing body and coats of arms sigil.

Interesting they plug europes wide streets as a model. I have been working on a thread for a few years now that says the Olde World was run on canals, as petrol is a modern parameter; oil, asphault, gasoline... The canal grid in America was there too but nowadays the remenants are less obvious. Most were filled in and the railroad built on top.

The railroad already existed, its an olde world relic but some places had to be repaired or rerouted, any new construction was that so be wary of anyone that has RR construction in their bio, theyre a Spook.

The tent city could have easily been, and most likely was, a staging area. Its little more than a movie set. Look at the pics of supposed Civil War camps, or any Red Cross areas, they set up tents but theres no signs of habitation bc nobody lives there, its for the cameras.
I can leave some links of similar places I have researched that can be used as templates, the name on the town hall is different but the circumstances are the same, theyre called representatives. Remember this is a system or network of locations, not a string of random clusters independant of each other as his-story would have you think.
Hopefully this will help!
Harpers Ferry Great Fires of Shenandoah Valley Grafton, WV, Milton, PA

 

[Deleted member 1432]

Your entire theory is based upon speculation and the specific frame of reference you use for interpreting events and photographs, which is totally biased and dedicated towards promoting both yourself and your own version of 'history'.

But, hey dude, we all do it to a certain extent, you more than most, but chill bro-ski, it's cool... but it ain't research it's entertainment.

 

[RedNeckGoober]

Very good point. This very well could have been a labor intensive situation with imported labor. According to records from and to the English company they did employ large numbers of men evidenced by an early payday queue photo:

If this is your idea of the 'large number of men' required to build an entire city in an impossible time span then perhaps you should change your alias...

 

[polymath]

If this is your idea of the 'large number of men' required to build an entire city in an impossible time span then perhaps you should change your alias...

Maybe I should use "...." when referring to the official narrative. Given that the area's population was sparse pre "boom" that queue is a large number of men...relatively. This photo was labeled as a payday queue for laborers, proof for how a town popped up in the middle of nowhere very quickly. Do I believe it? No...but I presented it since it is the official story. Also it's more likely these guys built it that the handful of families that lived in the valley previously.