Stone was a small unincorporated community in Pike County, Kentucky. It was named not for any rocks or boulders found there; instead, it’s named after the Chairman of the Pond Creek Coal Company, Galen Stone, when the company established the coal camp in 1912.
Galen Stone was also a Massachusetts businessman and partner in a Boston brokerage firm.
In the early 1920’s Stone entered into negotiations to sell Pond Creek Coal to Henry Ford, who was looking to obtain a source of good coal with which to run his Rouge Steel Mills, producing the steel to build his cars. That brokerage firm assisted with the negotiations, sending down a young broker to help Stone. This broker helped Galen Stone get a good price for his coal company. In the process, he also secured shares of Pond Creek Mining stock prior to the sale becoming public, through the help of Stone, then sold the stock to Ford after the sale for a profit of $675,000, or over $7,000,000 today. That broker, Joseph P. Kennedy, used the money from that little bit of insider trading to build a fortune, which helped him launch a family political dynasty that included a president, as well as two senators and several congressmen.
Ford’s new company was known as the Fordson Coal Company. In 1936 the mine at Stone was sold to the Eastern Coal Company.
Eastern Coal Company began marketing their particular coal as “Red Robin” coal. The operators were so proud of their brand that they placed a huge sign out for everyone passing by to see, on the company recreation building, which is what you see in this picture, taken in 2019.
Eastern Coal was acquired by the Pittston Coal Group in 1966; it sold the Stone property to Massey Energy in 1993, which later abandoned this building. In 2001 Massey transferred title to it and two other buildings adjoining it to a community-based non-profit group dedicated to preserving them for historical purposes.
These buildings at Stone are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
