In the heart of West Mineral, Kansas, stands a giant unlike any other: Big Brutus. This colossal orange machine, weighing millions of pounds, isn’t just an old piece of equipment; it’s the biggest attraction in Southeast Kansas, a true testament to American grit and innovation. Once a mighty workhorse of the region’s vital coal mining industry, Big Brutus offers a remarkable window into a past where human ambition and engineering marvels reshaped the very landscape.
Its incredible story traces back to the ingenious spirit of local inventors, whose early designs paved the way for this massive mining shovel. Tasked with moving millions of tons of “overburden”—the dirt and rock covering precious coal—Big Brutus completed its vital cycles in less than a minute, a feat of power that once helped fuel a growing nation. Today, as a beloved museum piece, it stands as a hopeful reminder of what can be achieved with vision, hard work, and the drive to tackle the biggest jobs.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American Stories. Up next, a story from West Mineral, Kansas, about something that can best be described as a pretty big deal. Here’s Joe Manns with the story.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: What’s orange, weighs about eleven pounds, and is literally the biggest attraction in Southeast Kansas? Well, if you guessed Big Brutus, you are exactly right. I’m Joe Manns, the general manager at Big Brutus. It is the most amazing job I’ve ever had. Obviously, I have the biggest boss I think that anybody has ever had. So, let’s talk a little bit about Big Brutus and how it came to be. But we’re going to go back in time just a little bit. Mining in Southeast Kansas actually dates back to the eighteen seventies. What was done was below-surface mining, and it required a lot of people, so they hired people
00:01:30
Speaker 3: from all over the world.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: A lot of them were concentrated in the Balkans Area of Southeast Europe. Now, the Balkans Area: It’s Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, England, Wales, Scotland, France, and Belgium, just to name a few. So, they were brought here because the mining underground was pretty much a thankless, dirty job, and it gave opportunities for the immigrants to come to the United States and make money. Below-surface mining peaked in nineteen twenty-six, Kansas miners playing a key role in supplying lead, zinc, and, of course, coal that were needed during World War One and Two. Above the surface was much safer, but to get to it, it was anywhere from twenty to forty feet below surface to get to the coal. How did they get to it? Well, they needed bigger machineries, and there was a rather ingenious fella in West Mineral, Kansas, who invented his own machine in the late nineteen twenties to help that happen. That little shovel is called the Markley shovel, and it was an amazing piece of machinery, considering there were no welding machines, barely any electricity. But the man designed this machine, and, of course, fabricated it, and it went to work. Mister Markley was a rather amaze man in that he had a fifth-grade education, no formal engineering training, but he dreamt up the idea of there’s got to be a better way to do this.
00:03:11
Speaker 3: When the machine was completed.
00:03:13
Speaker 2: It was actually operated by two Studebaker car engines. Bigger became better because, well, there’s got to be a more efficient way.
00:03:27
Speaker 3: How do you do that? You make a larger machine.
00:03:31
Speaker 2: And when they got ready to design Brutus, what came in mind was the Markley shovel, which was literally operating about four or five miles northwest of where Brutus currently sits. And they went and talked to the family, and, you know, wanted to know if they could maybe buy the design and the family—
00:03:51
Speaker 3: Said, “No, it’s, it’s not for sale.”
00:03:55
Speaker 2: Literally tried to buy the machine, and they said, “No, it’s not for sale.” Literally offered the designer and builder a job to help design and build Big Brutus, and he said, “No, not interested in that either, because you don’t…”
00:04:12
Speaker 3: Really want me.
00:04:13
Speaker 2: “You want my machine, and it’s not for sale.” The engineers then went back to South Milwaukee, which was where Brutus was designed and fabricated, and got to checking in the design. The man that designed the Markley shovel and builder had not got a patent on his machine.
00:04:36
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, that’s the way it was.
00:04:38
Speaker 2: And in the early nineteen sixties, they came back to West Mineral, Kansas, and set across the section, literally, from the little Markley shovel, and sketched it all out, took it back to South Milwaukee. Bucyrus Erie basically copied it and enlarged it, and voilà, Big Brutus was born. Now, at the time it was born, it was literally the largest coal shovel of its size that was electric-operated, and, of course, the ninety-cubic-yard bucket. Now, Brutus’s job was to take the overburden off of the top of the coal. The overburden is the dirt and rock that lie on top of the coal. To cycle, which is to grab a scoop, turn, dump it, and come back. That is one cycle. It could complete a cycle in less than one minute, which is rather amazing considering you’re picking up one hundred and fifty tons of dirt. By the way, the equivalent of one hundred and fifty tons is roughly eighteen full-size African elephants. I think that’s kind of an amazing factoid in itself. This itself is rather an amazing machine. Under peak operating conditions, you’re talking about fifteen thousand horsepower. Fifteen thousand horsepower would power a normal city of about fifteen thousand people. The primary operating crew for Big Brutus and eleven million pound machine was three men. The three men to operate the machine were the groundmen, the oiler, and the operator. So, Brutus in his career dug about eleven square miles, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you’re digging forty to sixty feet deep and piling the dirt beside you, you know the equivalent of that. So, if you could start out Brutus from where he’s at now and say, “Okay, head east, Brutus,” and just dig as far as you can dig, “I want you to dig me a pit forty feet,” and just keep going as long as what Brutus actually ran. Where would run you out is on the other side of the Mississippi River. Now, understand, Brutus is about thirty miles from the Kansas-Missouri state line, and imagine it going well past that all the way…
00:07:22
Speaker 3: Over to the Mississippi River.
00:07:25
Speaker 2: The Big Brutus Museum, which, of course, is where Brutus is located. He actually sits just behind the last pit that he dug. When they backed him up there, they knew that Brutus was going to get shut down. Brutus is a significant part of mining history in Southeast Kansas, a part of history which is all too easily forgotten because people, a, don’t realize that it was here and actually a part of what went on, and, b, it’s such a behemoth machine that people need to know. It’s literally an engineering marvel in itself. We’re very fortunate that we have a lot of the miners around that are still around that come out and share with people. And when we have visitors, they’re just totally in awe of how big the machine is and just try to wrap their mind around what it took to operate the machine. And when you tell them it literally only took three people to operate the machine, they’re just totally awestruck. You cannot believe it with the machine this big. So, it’s very important for us to keep the mining history of Brutus alive because of what he did. But also, we celebrate at the Big Brutus Museum the mining history for the men who toiled underground as well, the guys that had really, really dangerous jobs because they’re digging underneath. They would have collapses and such as that, and that’s one of the primary reasons why above a surface coal mining became so important. So, Brutus played an important part in preserving those faults as well.
00:09:23
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Faith Buchanan for the pre-production, Joe Manns for telling the story, Katrina Hine for collecting the audio, and Monte Montgomery for the post-production. And what a story we just heard about a massive machine that cranks out fifteen thousand horsepower! It’s eleven million pounds in weight, and yet only three men are needed to operate it. And by the way, Big Brutus has dug eleven square miles of territory, and that’s at forty to sixty foot depths. It’s staggering to think that one machine could do that much work. And by the way, what it did was help power the industrialization of modern America, no small task. The story of Big Brutus here on Our American Stories.
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