She got her name when she was used in the Ohio Power Company's mine that was situated in Muskingum Eastern Ohio.

Built in 1969 at a cost of $25 Million, Big Muskie was the worlds biggest excavating machine, it was a model 4250-W Bucyrus-Erie dragline and was the only one ever built.

It was the worlds biggest vehicle and had a maximum top speed of 1 tenth mph and it achieved this by walking along on hydraulic feet. It stood 22 stories high, a colossal size and a colossal feat of engineering.

In her life time she worked hard and earned her keep. She removed over 608 million cubic yards of material which has been estimated to be twice the amount that was excavated out of the Panama Canal.

Unfortunately Big Muskie has since been dismantled and cut up for scrap. This started on 17 May 1999 when her main boom cables were severed by explosives and the boom came crashing down.

Below is a 200Kb sequential animation of this event, it runs on a continuous loop.

The 230 ton bucket was saved from the cutters and will be preserved as a monument to all the people that worked at the mine. The only problem now, was transporting the 230 ton bucket...

A very close contender to Big Muskie was the Silver Spade stripping digger that was built in 1965 and worked in Cadiz Ohio USA.

It stood 220ft tall with a 200ft boom and weighed in at 7000 tons.  The 105 cubic yard bucket capacity of the Silver Spade had a 160 ton maximum load. The shovel was actually controlled by the 'ground crew' who sat on a lower level from the drivers cab , between the tracks.

The Silver Spade unlike Big Muskie didn't walk but rode on four sets of crawler tracks with each set at 34ft long and 8ft high.

The Silver Spade  traveled slow at 1/4 mile per hour powered by an AC 13,500hp engine and it could dig 315,000 pounds of earth in a single scoop and then drop the amount 390 ft away.  The bucket is suspended on four 2 5/8 inch diameter steel cables that are about 3000 ft in length.

From 1965 until recently, the Silver Spade dug 607 million cubic yards of earth at Ohio strip mines. By comparison, the Panama Canal required 405 million cubic yards of excavation. That's a lot of earth !

Sadly though The Silver Spade suffered a serious break down when 19  out of 100 of its huge cab support bearing rollers completely wore out and came away from their housings.  These roller bearings weigh about 800lbs each and to replace the damaged ones would be megga expensive in the millions of dollars range.  With new technology around it would not be a viable position to repair a 42 year old machine that was now wearing out, and fast !

So Silver Spade is now due to be scrapped where she stands as its impossible to move it. She has a $700,000 scrap value.  The cost of repair is estimated at 2½million dollars and this amount just cannot be raised.

The Silver Spade was finally dismantled and the last image of her is as an unrecognizable pile of scrap.