Kenneth King
A June 2011 march protesting mountaintop removal and the threat to Blair Mountain, site of a labor uprising.
Editor's note: On June 27, 2018 the Blair Mountain Battlefield site was re-listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Ron Soodalter's complete update on this story can be found here.
In late August 1921, some 10,000 armed miners marched toward Mingo County, West Virginia, following decades of blatant and officially sanctioned abuse. For years, miners had been fighting in vain for safety regulations, reasonable hours, better living conditions, a decent wage, and union representation, while the mine operators fought to maintain total control of their workforce.
Up against the operators’ hired “gun thugs,” the United Mine Workers of America responded in kind. Frank Keeney, the charismatic president of the union’s District 17, told an assemblage of impassioned miners earlier that year, “The only way you can get your rights is with a high powered rifle!” And so the miners—local mountain folk, eastern European immigrants, and migrant southern blacks—grabbed what weapons they could and marched, united in common cause.
When he learned of the march, Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin assembled a 3,000-man army consisting of his deputies, West Virginia state police, hired gunmen, and a large local militia. They built barriers and dug trenches along a twelve-mile perimeter along the border between Logan and Boone Counties. These “defenders,” as they were called, were armed with rifles, machine guns, and three biplanes donated by the governor of Kentucky—whose sympathies, like Chafin’s, were with the operators. The largest group was stationed between the two 1,800-foot peaks defining Blair Mountain.
The resulting fight, which history records as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the nation’s single largest armed uprising since the Civil War and its most violent labor insurrection. It lasted four days, led to dozens of deaths, and ended only after President Warren G. Harding sent troops to disarm the miners. While no members of Chafin’s army were detained, more than 500 miners were arrested and charged with treason and murder. Although most were acquitted, the cost of their defense broke the union. It was not until the mid-1930s that Congress passed legislation ensuring the basic rights for which the miners had fought so long and hard.
But the Battle of Blair Mountain is not over. Today, the subject is not miners’ rights but the survival of a mountain that has stood for nearly a century as a symbol of workers’ resistance to overwhelming opposition. For years, Blair Mountain has been under assault by such corporations as Natural Resource Partners L.P. and Arch Coal, Inc.—large absentee conglomerates that own most of the battlefield’s nearly 1,700 acres.
These companies have in turn leased the land to Alpha Natural Resources and its subsidiary Aracoma Coal Company, who have obtained permits to extract coal from the area using the mountaintop removal system of mining. This is a form of surface mining in which coal companies clear-cut trees and blast away the mountain in layers from the top down, dumping rock and other waste byproducts into nearby valleys, until the site’s coal has been completely removed.
The biggest threat may be to what Blair Mountain represents.
Journalist John McQuaid, writing in Smithsonian magazine, called it “devastation on an astonishing scale.” The damage to the mountain, as well as to the forests, streams, and delicate ecosystems existing on and around it, is irreparable.
The toll in human life is also significant. Mountaintop removal has been linked to elevated rates of mortality from lung cancer and chronic heart, lung, and kidney diseases in the local communities where it takes place.
And mountaintop removal is accomplished using large, sophisticated equipment. Only a small number of miners draw paychecks from it, relative to underground mining.
But the biggest threat may be to what Blair Mountain represents.
Nearly three decades ago, a soft-spoken, unassuming resident of Logan County began gathering artifacts from the Blair Mountain Battlefield. Kenny King is a contract laborer who tests and samples coal for large extraction companies in southern West Virginia. His grandfather had fought alongside his fellow miners in the 1921 battle, and King has always felt a strong connection to his family history.
Determined to literally unearth the story of the event, he walked the slopes and hollows along the twelve-mile ridge that defined the battle line, metal detector in hand. “The more I looked,” he tells The Progressive, “the more I found, and the bigger it got.”
King found countless shell casings of various calibers—reportedly more than a million rounds were fired during the battle—as well as two loaded pistols that had been lost or abandoned by the miners. His digging confirmed that the rugged Blair Mountain itself was the site of some of the most intense fighting.
With its heavy undergrowth, jutting rocks, and precipitous sides, the mountain presented tough going, often concealing significant finds, but King persisted. He located several defensive trenches and wagon roads, and over time was able to plot out the advances and maneuvers of the vastly outgunned miners.
Brandon Nida
Map of the Blair Mountain Battlefield, showing the extent of the battle, the areas where mountaintop removal is taking place, and the parts of the battlefield on which mining permits are currently held.
In 1991, determined to save the mountain and its historical significance from destruction, King joined with West Virginia University in conducting a survey of the area. The survey concluded that the Blair Mountain Battlefield “maintains a high degree of integrity and would be considered of primary significance to the overall interpretation of the battle,” and recommended its preservation as a park.
King then met with representatives of both the United Mine Workers of America and Ashland Coal (now Arch Coal), giving them a tour of the land he had explored, to safeguard the battlefield site. Ultimately, the mining company and union merely agreed to create an eight-acre park on the mountain’s north ridge.
“I felt that this was completely inadequate,” King later wrote in the Blair Mountain Journal, “as the eight acres represented less than one percent of the battlefield.” Ultimately, the agreement fell through; the park was never built.
In 1993, despite the preponderance of physical evidence presented by King, the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office granted the coal interests a land-use permit to build a power line on the site, which he says led to the destruction of several battlefield trenches.
King next attempted to have the battlefield classified on the National Register of Historic Places, part of the National Park Service. The process is lengthy and complex. A form—part fill-in-the-blanks, part essay—is filled out, by either the site owner or an interested party who can document its historical significance. It is then submitted to state officials, who decide if the nomination meets the National Register’s criteria, and then on to the National Register, whose director, or “Keeper,” makes the final decision.
The West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office rejected King’s application in 1999, claiming there was “no historical or archaeological integrity remaining on the mountain.” Afterward, King began working with Bill Price, a senior organizing representative with the Sierra Club, which made a long-term commitment to save Blair Mountain, for both environmental and historical reasons.
Aaron Isherwood, the Sierra Club managing attorney who has been at the forefront of the fight for more than a decade, sums up the group’s position: “Our focus is the threat of mountaintop removal mining taking place on the mountain. We are very concerned about the environmental impact. We also feel that it’s a very important part of American history that’s been erased from the history books.”
Agrees Price, “It would be a disaster to blow up a mountain of such significance. It would be like blowing up Gettysburg.”
In 2008, following yet another positive survey and confronted with what King calls an “ironclad argument”—including a list showing that a majority of landowners on the nomination site favored the listing—West Virginia state officials approved the application and sent it to the Keeper in Washington, D.C.
On March 30, 2009, the Keeper finally listed 1,669 acres of the Blair Mountain Battlefield on the National Register of Historic Places. The area stretched over a ten to twelve-mile span and included the entire mountain, save a section known as Adkins Fork that had already been permitted for mining. For a brief moment, it appeared as if the battle to save Blair Mountain had been won.
But it was a short-lived victory. The coal companies, who held mountaintop removal mining permits on much of the battlefield area, were barred from extracting coal on the now-listed site. They were not long in responding. According to historian James Green,“All the state officials who had supported the National Register nomination were sued by lawyers representing coal industry executives.”
These included Don Blankenship, coal operator and then chief executive officer of the huge Massey Energy Company, who later went to federal prison for his role in twenty-nine miners’ deaths. (Blankenship, released after serving a year, is now running as a Republican for U.S. Senate.)
Further, states King, residents near the battlefield site were warned by officials, including Natural Resource Partners vice president and chief engineer Greg Wooten, that they would lose their land if the battlefield were listed. While this was not true, King says it had an impact: “People around here have really strong feelings on their land, and they played into that.”
Wooten did not respond to a request for comment. Also ignoring interview requests or otherwise declining to comment were Shelley Capito and Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s two U.S. Senators; John McDaniel, Arch Coal’s director of engineering and technical services, eastern operations; Wendy Radcliff, former environmental advocate for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); and Harold Ward, director of surface mining for DEP.
The coal companies pushed back, since the listing would interfere with their plans to mine the land. The West Virginia Coal Association, represented by one of the nation’s foremost law firms, appealed the decision, presenting the names of landowners who they claimed objected to the listing. State officials submitted these to the Keeper, though King says it was without affidavits of ownership and well after the deadline for appeals had expired. Exactly nine months after its inclusion on the National Register, Carol Shull, the interim Keeper, delisted the Blair Mountain Battlefield.
A judge later said the delisting was done “at the urging of coal companies owning land on Blair Mountain.”
In fact, two of the people named on the new list were deceased, and others were “life-estate holders”—residents who did not own the property on which they lived. Nonetheless, the state agency remained firm. Shortly after the delisting, when questioned by a journalist for HuffPost regarding the dubiousness of the new list, West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office director Susan Pierce responded, “We cannot confirm or deny that there are no deceased on the SHPO list dated May 21, 2009.”
In September 2010, the Sierra Club, along with Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Labor History Association, and the newly formed Friends of Blair Mountain, filed a lawsuit against the Keeper, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interior to have the delisting annulled.
The decision from the District Court in Washington, D.C., would not come for another seven years. Meanwhile, the surface mining that had begun around Blair Mountain years earlier continued. In 2011, based on extensive legwork performed by the Friends of Blair Mountain, a coalition of groups petitioned DEP to declare the nomination site’s 1,669 acres “lands unsuitable for mining.”
Tom Clarke, director of the department’s division of mining and reclamation, deemed the petition “frivolous,” adding, “A declaration that the lands you have identified are unsuitable for mining would not effectively protect the historic integrity of these lands because it would have no effect on oil and gas and logging operations.” He refused to hold a public hearing.
The Sierra Club, Friends of Blair Mountain, and others sued the department, alleging that its decision was “arbitrary and unlawful.” Argued Price of the Sierra Club, “DEP can’t just skip the public hearing because it’s more convenient for them to do so . . . Blair Mountain belongs to all West Virginians, and all West Virginians have a right to weigh in.”
More than six years later, the case is still pending in state court. When asked recently if the agency’s position has changed since the 2011 “frivolous” ruling, Jacob Glance, DEP's chief communications officer, responded, “This matter is still in litigation, and it is the policy of the [department] to not comment on pending litigation.”
Based on past history, it is unlikely that the Blair Mountain preservationists would find a sympathetic ear among West Virginia state officials. The current governor, Jim Justice, is a lifelong coal operator, and in 2016 reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the federal Environmental Protection Agency for environmental violations at several of his mines. Justice recently appointed Austin Caperton as secretary of DEP. Since 1976, Caperton has held high-level positions at many of the state’s major coal companies, including the Massey Energy Company.
“The history of politics within our state has always been entangled with the coal companies,” says Pam Nixon, who worked for DEP for sixteen years. “That’s how the state was originally formed, by the political rise of people who extract our natural resources. There’s a long history of [department] secretaries who were coal operators, leading right up to the present. Unfortunately, it seems to be the culture.”
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Courtesy Kenneth King
One of the miners explaining the battle to a soldier.
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Courtesy Kenneth King
Miners surrendering their weapons and ammunition to the army after the fight.
In June 2011, various preservationist agencies, inspired by the locally based Friends of Blair Mountain, organized a march to save Blair Mountain, and to protest mountaintop removal. For a solid week, hundreds of concerned citizens followed the fifty-mile route the miners had taken in 1921, culminating in a hike to the top of Blair Mountain’s south crest. The march was a popular success; nonetheless, despite positive nationwide feedback, it failed to affect the landmark’s delisting from the National Register.
That same year, a new presence appeared to threaten the Blair Mountain Battlefield. The West Virginia National Guard had earlier approached Alpha Natural Resources and its subsidiary Alpha Coal with a proposal to build an airstrip on land that the coal companies had surface mined, and was slated for mandatory reclamation. According to West Virginia Adjutant General James A. Hoyer, the runway “would allow units to practice combat landings and insertion training” on topography and in conditions similar to those found in Afghanistan and other military theaters. The proposed area, known as Camp Branch, lies only a short distance from the mountain, and a section of it is designated as part of the battlefield.
The deal was struck, and in early 2011 the coal companies built the National Guard a 4,800-foot airstrip on the part of Camp Branch that lies outside the battlefield. Within the past year alone, more than forty training events have been staged, some involving foreign military personnel, Hoyer confirms.
To protect the historical site, the Army Corps of Engineers has established a 1,000-foot-wide buffer zone that separates it not only from the airstrip, but from mining activities as well. Hoyer supports the barrier, as well as the ongoing efforts to preserve the battlefield.
“We do not impact the site at all,” he says. “With anything relating to our history, we must preserve our understanding of it. To learn from the past keeps us from repeating our mistakes.” So long as the National Guard’s training activities maintain the prescribed distance from the battlefield area, neither the Sierra Club nor the other preservationist groups object to its presence.
Since the delisting, no active surface mining has yet occurred on the battlefield site. But the coal companies have clear-cut trees and destroyed entrenchments, foxholes, and other earthworks. “Because of the delisting,” wrote Charles Belmont “Chuck” Keeney III in an email to the National Register of Historic Places, “portions of the battlefield, and of our own history, have been permanently destroyed.”
The coal companies have clear-cut trees and destroyed entrenchments, foxholes, and other earthworks.
Keeney, the former chair of Friends of Blair Mountain, is the great-grandson of Frank Keeney, one of the West Virginia miners’ leaders during the clash. He believes the mining companies are determined to eradicate any sign of the long-ago miners’ war. “Because the historical significance of this battlefield is tied to labor history and the United Mine Workers of America,” he’s written, “the coal industry has worked to stifle the preservation of this acreage and has taken active steps to erase this history from the American popular consciousness.”
Over the years, the preservationists’ efforts have been met with silence from the state government. In 2011, a 50,000-name petition to save the battlefield was delivered to the governor’s office; there was no response, Keeney says. The following year, a petition was sent to each member of the West Virginia House of Delegates and the state senate, this time outlining plans for a historical park; again, according to Keeney, not one official responded.
The Friends of Blair Mountain lobbied the state legislature in 2013 and 2014, once again without success. Comments former Friends of Blair Mountain president Barbara Rasmussen, “We have tried to negotiate with the governor’s office, the Department of Environmental Protection, the [State Historic Preservation Office], and the coal industry, but they are absolutely intransigent.”
Then, on April 11, 2016—nearly seven years after the Keeper removed it from the National Register—U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton vacated the delisting of Blair Mountain Battlefield, declaring it to be both “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of federal law. Lacking the authority to place the site back on the National Register’s list, he referred the matter back to the Keeper’s office for reconsideration.
The decision on whether to relist the Blair Mountain Battlefield on the National Register of Historic Places, removing the shadow of surface mining from the mountain’s future, now rests with Paul Loether, the current Keeper. As of press time, in late January, no decision had been announced. (For updates, see this story on progressive.org.)
The historical and ecological preservation of Blair Mountain might seem of little concern to Americans living outside the hills and hollows of southern West Virginia. It is not. In a troubled time when we are re-examining our country’s foundations, what happened on this site represents a classic struggle of a powerful few against the many, and the combined forces of industry and politics arrayed against the average citizen. In the end, it calls to question where our most basic values lie.
Ultimately, saving Blair Mountain will cost the extractors little beyond a few tons of coal, easily made up in the mountaintop removal mining currently blasting its way across the state. The dividends, however, are great, ensuring that Blair Mountain’s rich history and rugged beauty will resonate for generations.
Ron Soodalter is an award-winning author, folklorist, and historian who has authored two books and is featured in five others.
Learn More About It:
Recommended reading:
James Green, The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners andTheir Battle for Freedom
Charles Belmont Keeney III, The Road to Blair Mountain, forthcoming in 2018
Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920-21
Robert Shogan, The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America’s Largest Labor Uprising
Recommended viewing:
Blood on the Mountain, A film by Mari-Lynn Evans
The Mine Wars, American Experience Films
Matewan, A 1987 independent film by John Sayles
Recommended destination:
West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
336 Mate Street
Matewan, WV 25678