Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine (Wednesday)

Today we visited the mine and had a wonderfully witty guide named Marvin!  He was such a sweetheart and so down to earth.  The mine showed us a lot about the early history of mining and what it was like for miners that mined this mine and before.  Then we toured the coal camp houses to see what it was like for a miner of the early 1900's to live.  It was very interesting to see the improvements of equipment over the years.  However, the mine does not show how modern mining is done.  That's what our next stop would do . . .

This is Marvin, our wonderful tour guide.

This is a picture of the "Bachelor house" that would have been typical in a mine camp in the early 1900's

Our second stop of the day was at a highwall mining equipment manufacturer.  What an awesome piece of machinary!  It was good to see that something used nationally was manufactured right in our own back yard!!  It stood three stories tall and can mine over 1000 feet underground by itself . . . no men underground.  Everything is run by computer on the deck!  Can't get much safer than that!  But . . . this type of machine makes it safer to mine, it also takes away jobs of miners and I find that a sad con to such a technologic piece of machine.

This is a picture of the machine . . . notice it is so large, it has its own deck on top!

This is the view from the upper deck.  Everything is ran from the control room in the middle of the picture . . . all computerized! 

We then drove to the Courthouse where Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were assassinated on the steps on their way to a court appearance.  I am absolutely loving the opportunity to see such historic places in my own home state. 

After that we drove to Matewan to inspect the site of the Matewan Massacre.  We spent some time here looking at the forensics behind the shootings, trying to determine . . . who really shot who?  We then drove to Williamson to look at the rail yard (it was HUGE) and see the coal house . . . a building made completely out of coal!  That was unique.

Here is an exerpt of the Matewan Massacre by Steve Beckelheimer and our guide, Mike Little.

We had a long late day but it was worth it to see the history in this part of the state.   Oh . . . I forgot the MOST important.  If you've been watching the "Coal" show on spike, we drove past the headquarters for Cobalt Coal!  We didn't even know we were going to.  I got a pic, but it wasn't very good.  AWESOME again!!