This news story originally provided by The Daily Mail

April 29, 2005

Blair Mountain really should be saved

I don't know how they do it in other regions of the country, but here in West Virginia we tend to ignore and even fear our history.

Why? Maybe the reason can be found in a truism from my friend, Mike Perry, who says "Everything in West Virginia is political except politics. And that's personal."

It's sad that we have politicized everything, including our history, especially our amazing coal history. And that's why the idea of preserving Blair Mountain is sadly a political decision steeped in controversy.

I didn't learn about the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in my junior high school West Virginia history class.

In fact, I learned almost nothing important in that class. I learned about the mound builders, those mysterious pre-historical natives who inhabited this area before the arrival of the white man.

I learned a little about how and why West Virginia became a state, and some of it was true.

But I don't think coal was even mentioned in that class. And certainly not the miners union and how the county, state and federal governments in the early part of the 20th Century were on the side of the coal operators and broke the union and its strikes.

I had to wait until I was a university student before I learned about the battle (it should be called a war) on Blair Mountain in 1921 when union miners marched from Charleston toward Logan and Mingo counties where they were going to liberate the coalfields in the name of the union.

Instead, they met resistance in the form of federal troops and the army of Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin on Blair Mountain, the dividing line between Boone and Logan counties.

Some say it was the largest civil uprising since the Civil War.

No one knows how many people were killed in the battle, but the fact that it happened and that a union initiative was put down with federal troops is enough to make it a pivotal moment in the histories of West Virginia and America.

The town of Blair on the Boone side of the mountain is all but gone. Coal mining has eliminated the hamlet.

And now the extinction of the mountain itself is a real possibility. Coal companies want to strip mine the mountain and turn it into one of those vast mountaintop plains.

I have no doubt the coal companies would like to obliterate the mountain and its history. They would consider it a win in more ways than one.

Environmentalists and the UMWA want to save it. In doing so, they would win.

The State Historic Preservation Office of the Division of Culture and History will meet next week to decide whether to recommend that Blair Mountain should be declared a national historical site, and thus be saved or be forgotten and thus destroyed for the coal that lies underneath it.

There's no more powerful story in the history of American labor than the one that played out on Blair Mountain more than 80 years ago.

For the sake of that singular event, not only should Blair Mountain be preserved, a museum dedicated to those tumultuous times ought to be built on the site.

But it appears history is not a concern in this matter. It's all about politics and a wound so deep that it still hurts.

Everything in West Virginia is political, even history.

What a shame.

Dave Peyton can be reached at 522-0179 or at davepeyton@davepeyton.com.