This episode of Big Blend Radio's Getting to Know You series was recorded back in April, 2026. Phyllis Bitner, Chair of the Miners Hall Museum Foundation in Franklin, Kansas, joins us to share the heart of Southeast Kansas coal mining history, the story behind the Page 618 Walking Dragline, and life along the Jefferson Highway — plus a fun round of our Lucky Seven Questions!

Miners Hall Museum is also featured on JeffersonHighwayTravelGuide.com, the digital travel guide Big Blend Media House produces in collaboration with the Jefferson Highway Association.

P.S. — Phyllis will be one of four storytellers at "Night at the Friendly Tavern" on September 3rd, part of Pittsburg, KS's 150th birthday celebration, and Miners Hall Museum is a featured stop on the Jefferson Highway Association's "Miner's Drive" caravan, September 17–19.

Watch the Podcast Episode Below or Listen to / Download the audio version on Podbean:

Miners Hall Museum opened in 2012, but its building traces back to 2003, when an F4 tornado tore through Franklin, Kansas and destroyed the community's center. Out of that loss, the community rebuilt — and a group of local historians, Phyllis among them, eventually merged two nonprofits to create a museum honoring not just the equipment of coal mining, but the immigrant families who shaped Southeast Kansas.

The museum's twelve exhibit categories walk visitors through early settlement, the coal camps, and daily immigrant life — social, educational, and religious. Phyllis says the equipment lovers get their fill too, but the heart of the museum is the people: the families who came from overseas and built a new life underground, including her own father, who went to work in the mines at just twelve years old.

One of only eighteen ever built, the Page 618 Walking Dragline is being relocated piece by piece into a new free public attraction, Dragline Park, on the Jefferson Highway corridor. The project — donated by the Wilkinson family — will eventually include a wildflower meadow and butterfly garden alongside the massive machine, drawing visitors who come for the flowers as much as the history.

Franklin is also home to a nationally registered historic sidewalk — 1.7 miles connecting Franklin and Arma, built in 1936. It runs right past the site of the 1921 Amazon Army March, a pivotal moment when coal miners' wives marched in support of their husbands, brothers, and sons.

The museum's research library regularly surprises visitors who stumble in and discover their own family history indexed on the shelves — proof, Phyllis says, that this story belongs to nearly everyone whose family came to America to build a new life.

In our signature Getting to Know You round, Phyllis shares her spirit animal, the life lesson her father taught her seventy years ago about never saying "I can't," and a bucket-list dream to drive a NASCAR car — before, as she puts it, "they tell me I'm too old to do this."

Have a Question for Phyllis? Ask us on our Contact Page.