Stover Cemetery Desecration Aided by State Agency’s Repeated Inaction

Stover Cemetery is in the middle of an active mountaintop removal site on Kayford Mountain.

The morning of July 17, 2007, the cemetery looked like a little green promontory that stuck up in the middle of a bizarre desert – much of the mountain around the cemetery had been blown to bits.

Even on July 17, the cemetery wasn’t intact. Years ago, it had been violated by a logging skidder. Gravestones were knocked over and pushed aside which made it difficult to identify where the graves were located.

Larry Gibson had contacted folks whose kin lay buried there and worked with them to determine that 21 people, possibly more, have their final resting place there.

For about a year and a half, Larry had been trying to summon help from State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) personnel.

He wanted them to accompany him there so he could point out additional gravesites beyond the 11 graves they had recorded.

By July 20, the cemetery was further desecrated. The coal company, Magnum, apparently bulldozed inside the cemetery, as evidenced by before and after aerial photos.

Rows of blasting charges are visible inside the cemetery in the "after" photo.

Lois Armstrong, who has (had?) family buried there, says that during the last year and a half before the cemetery was desecrated, the families and friends planned to clean up the cemetery, but they were never even allowed to get onto the site.

After the July desecration, Larry Gibson tried repeatedly to get onto the cemetery, but all of his attempts were futile until he got a lawyer.

How did such an outrage happen? Was the apparently illegal coal company refusal to grant access to the cemetery a deliberate attempt to prevent documentation of all of the graves?

Is nothing sacred? How can this sacrilege be stopped from happening again?

A team of OVEC volunteers and a Sierra Club staffer are working to find the answers.

With mountaintop removal, even the dead can’t rest in peace!