The town of Beckley, West Virginia is firmly in the heart of coal country. Nestled into the South Eastern part of the state its ragged, worn mountains and maze of hollows exudes the vibe of the back woods and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road.” Like so many towns in the Appalachian and Allegany Mountains, its streets are painted up into labyrinthine hillsides that were slowly cut by creeks that feed the neighboring New River. Neighborhoods on the periphery follow twisting, steep roads that cling to hillsides, with the houses petering out as things get more vertical the higher you go.
This area is most about the outdoors and natural features. While there is lots of hiking and camping as well as other outside activities, there are a number of man-made things in the area to see including the New River Gorge Bridge, the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine and Museum, and further afield the Green Bank Observatory.
The Exhibition Coal Mine is worth a stop and the price of admission. It is a small collection of buildings situated around a former coal mine and setup to look like a coal town from the early part of the twentieth century. The structures including houses and a school are, with a few exceptions, historic buildings and were moved from nearby towns to the museum site. They are filled with an interesting assortment of artifacts of family life. Walking through them is an interesting immersion into a bygone world. But the main attraction at the museum is the coal mine tour.
The Mine tours are guided by retired Miners who takes you into the mine riding in a passenger wagon mining car pulled by an electric mining locomotive. The mine is laid out with exhibits of areas showing the history and technology of coal mining. The tour stops at each and the guide discusses and sometimes demonstrates what you are looking at.
Starting out with the basics of lighting and safety, you see what the inside of a mine is like with only wick and carbide burning lamps, as well as the tools miners used to protect against hazardous vapors like Fire Damp and Black Damp. The tour then goes deeper into the mine showing the evolution of mining tools for different types of coal from hand picks and hand drills to powered under cutting machines and roof bolters.
Any seat on the two cars will get a good view of the displays and our guide did a good job of making sure everyone got a chance to see everything down there. Also, while the Museum seems to be a partnership with Mining Unions the displays at the museum and our guide made a point of not getting into mine workers vs. mine owners conflicts. While the dangers of mining, and the often-sad life of miners and their families in company towns is present throughout the exhibits, it seems more a story of a very tough livelihood that was frequently the only option for people rather than a battle between good and evil. Our guide told us he worked in a number of different mines for different owners and while some jobs were better than others, I got the feeling that nobody, workers or management, got terribly wealthy.
Even if you’re not someone who played with Tonka Trucks in the dirt as a kid and kept an interest in big machinery like I have, this place is worth checking out. The people are all as friendly as can be and the experience is different than any other. To my mind, it is most similar to railroad museums, a place that delves deeply into a world revolving around a particular industry; and by doing so it illuminates a much broader part of the past.
All the drive back to the RV, I kept humming Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons.”