Many Kentuckians Mine Hills, Discover Fortune in Junk Cars

Years ago, as one mountain joke went, a wealthy eastern Kentuckian was a man with two cars on blocks in his yard. The joke took on a new twist, though, when communities discovered there’s gold in junk.

More than 35,000 abandoned vehicles have been winched from the undergrowth and streams of the mountain hollows since Kentucky organized a recovery program in 1973. Nearly $590,000 has been raised, officials said.

The project has seemingly endless potential, said Jim Denton, project manager for several counties this summer.

Vehicles, he said, are “like pop cans. They keep making new ones, people keep using them, and some people don’t dispose of them properly. There seems to be no end to it.”

Harlan County children use playground equipment purchased through the Jaycee-sponsored junk-car cleanup here. In Knott County, the Hindman Volunteer Fire Department used the funds to build a tanker truck. A Leslie County volunteer fire department bought a hydraulic “jaws of life” to free accident victims.

The Harlan Jaycees pry open the groaning hoods of car and truck remnants on back roads to find identification numbers for release forms that must be signed before the vehicles are removed.

“When you see a junked car you walk up to whoever’s around and say, ‘Hey, you know who this belongs to?’ If not, the state police can tag it,” said member Eddie Ray Huddleston.