Appalachian History Series April 5, 2010 Just after three in the afternoon at Montcoal, West Virginia, a methane ignition inside the Upper Big Branch South mine became an explosion that swept through the workings. Twenty nine miners were killed, and two survived with injuries. Federal investigators later said the disaster was preventable. What investigators found Federal and state teams reconstructed the blast and its causes.

Appalachian History Series A November evening that changed a town On November 14, 1970, a chartered Southern Airways DC-9 carrying the Marshall University football team, coaches, staff, boosters, and crew struck trees on approach to Tri-State Airport near Huntington, West Virginia. All 75 aboard were killed.

Appalachian Figures A strike comes to Brookside In the summer of 1973 miners at the Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside mine in Harlan County voted to affiliate with the United Mine Workers of America. When the company refused to sign a contract that matched area standards and included a meaningful right to strike, the miners walked out and set up pickets.

Appalachian Figures A Harlan County beginning Elbert Benjamin “E. B.” Smith was born in Benham, Kentucky, on May 1, 1921, the son of Elbert and Gladys Smith. Benham was a young company town in Harlan County when Smith arrived, and like many Appalachian families of his generation his early years unfolded in a landscape shaped by coal and community churches.

Appalachian Figures Pine Mountain Settlement School began with a local farmer’s gift and a plainspoken promise. William “Uncle William” Creech of Harlan County wanted a school where his neighbors’ children could learn without leaving the valley. In his own words he had “heart and craving that our people may grow better,” and he put land and effort behind the idea.

Appalachian Figures From Harlan to the Army Carl Henry Dodd was born in Harlan County and came of age in a coal camp world that sent many young men into uniform. Before his eighteenth birthday he worked for the Black Mountain Coal Company, then enlisted in the Army at 18, beginning a career that would stretch across World War II and the Korean War.

Appalachian Figures A Harlan County beginning Jerry Donald Chesnut was born in the railroad town of Loyall in Harlan County on May 7, 1931. Multiple primary records fix his birthplace and date, and they place him in the household of A. B. (Alvin Basil) and Ruby Chesnut in Loyall as a child.

Appalachian Figures Silas Harlan’s short life sits at the crossroads of early Kentucky settlement, George Rogers Clark’s western campaigns, and the last major battle of the Revolution in the Ohio Valley. Harlan helped build a Salt River station, scouted for Clark, wrote home about a plan to fortify the “Iron Banks” on the Mississippi, and fell at Blue Licks in 1782. In 1819, the legislature created Harlan County and named it for him.

Appalachian Figures Wallace Clayton “Wah Wah” Jones grew up in Harlan, Kentucky, and carried Appalachian grit onto some of the biggest stages in American sport. He starred at Harlan High, then for the University of Kentucky in basketball, football, and baseball, and in the summer of 1948 he helped the United States win Olympic gold in London.

Appalachian History Series Why Carter’s Station mattered In the fall of 1863 the railroad crossing at Carter’s Station (often called Carter’s Depot) and the Watauga River fords west of Jonesborough formed the hinge between East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. Whoever controlled the bridge and the river line could screen Knoxville, pressure Bristol, and menace the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad lifeline.

Appalachian History Series Setting the stage On October 10, 1863, Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Ohio cracked Confederate Brig. Gen. John S. Williams’s line at Blue Springs, between Bull’s Gap and Greeneville. Burnside sent infantry straight at the position while ordering a mounted column to slip to the rear near Rheatown, aiming to block the retreat route along the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad.