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Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia
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Item Title
Landform complexes produced at the Samples Mountaintop Removal Project on Cabin Creek. [Photo]
Author/Creator
Photographer: Eiler, Lyntha Scott
Created/Published
October 26, 1995
Notes
In the 1990s, mountaintop removal and reclamation became the mining method of choice for coal operators in central Appalachia. Mountaintop removal and reclamation entails blasting apart mountains in order to retrieve multiple seams of the low-sulphur bituminous coal, which came into greater demand following the passage of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Excess rock and rubble are then dumped into adjacent streams and hollows, forming what is known as "Valley Fill." Much of the coal mined in southern West Virginia is "steam coal," used in producing electricity, but some is used to produce steel as well. This photo offers a view of Catenary Coal Company's Samples mine, named for Eugene Samples, a company executive. Various stages of the mountaintop removal method are visible here, including the holes drilled for blasting, the valley fills in progress, and "Big John," a dragline with a 53-cubic yard scoop which loads rocks and mine spoil dislodged by blasting into rock trucks and then dredges out the coal.
Event: Helicopter tour of Coal River and Mountaintop Removal Sites.
Subjects
Fall
October
Big John, the dragline
Valley fills
Reclamation
Mountaintop removal
Samples Mine
Photo
Ethnography
Photographs
Samples Mine
Cabin Creek
Object Type
Medium
35 mm Color Slide
Language
English
Call Number
CRF-LE-C051-04
Part of
The Coal River Folklife Collection (AFC 1999/008)
Repository
Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
Digital ID
afccmns lec05104
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.lec05104