Staff at the Miners Hall Museum in Franklin, Kansas are well on their way to bringing a new tourist attraction to the area.  The museum has acquired and plans to move a walking dragline to the corner of US-69 and K-47 in Crawford County.  Dr. Chris Childers says a dragline is a large piece of equipment used to remove overburden during surface mining. 

The Page 618 Dragline was used for coal mining from the 1950s until the 70s, has a 110-foot boom and is only one of 18 ever built, and will be the largest dragline on public display in the country.  The dragline was donated by Wendell and Lynda Wilkinson and enough funding has been secured to move it to the new location.  Childers says once the dragline is open to the public, it will be a bookend on the once thriving coal industry in southeast Kansas.

The museum hopes to have the dragline in place this fall and restoration efforts can begin at that time.  The Miners Hall Museum in Franklin is open Monday - Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and you can find more information here. Listen to the full interview with Dr. Childers here.