DEL.ICIO.US'They turned a coal mine into a gold mine'
Associated Press
Published on: 04/25/06
Beckley, W.Va. — The shuttle cars clatter forward, a metal-on-metal squeal bouncing off the rock walls of a passageway growing darker by the second. Then, abruptly, they stop. George Archibald hops off.
 DALE SPARKS/Associated Press | |||
| Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, which was last mined around 1910, is open from April to November. About 50,000 people tour the mine in that period, guided by seven ex-miners. | |||
 DALE SPARKS/Associated Press | |||
| Tour guide George Archibald, a retired coal miner, demonstrates a tamping rod inside the mine. | |||
 DALE SPARKS/Associated Press | |||
| Retired educator Buford Hartsog stands at the front of the 1924-built two-room schoolhouse on the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine grounds. | |||
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MOST POPULAR"This is our claustrophobia stop here," he bellows. "If anybody is apprehensive about being in here, I can take you back outside without disrupting our tour."
Satisfied fear is in check, Archibald returns to the driver's seat. The cars lurch deeper into the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, one of the few underground operations where tourists are not only welcome, but wanted.
From April to November, seven ex-miners guide some 50,000 people through 1,500 feet of underground workings that last produced coal around 1910. Fifty years later, the city of Beckley bought the mine.
"They turned a coal mine into a gold mine," Archibald says. "People come from all over the world to see this mine — from Sweden and England and all kinds of places."
More visitors since mining accidents
This year, there may be more than usual. Donna Totten, who arranges group tours, says inquiries have shot up since January, when two West Virginia mining accidents that killed 14 men dominated the nation's news coverage. So far, 18 miners have been killed in West Virginia mines this year.
A school from Upshur County, home of the Sago Mine where 12 men died, is sending students in May. But Totten says a school in Logan County, home of the Alma No. 1 Mine where two other men died, doesn't plan to allow children underground. Instead, they will tour a half-dozen historic buildings, play in the science museum and visit the 19th century frontier village.
Archibald's group has no such trepidation. They are eager to see the mine used to film episodes for The Discovery Channel and scenes in "Matewan," the 1987 movie about the bloody battle to unionize a coal mine.
At his second stop, Archibald explains the job of a fireboss, who walks every foot of a mine to make sure it's safe for a crew. A chalkboard this day shows Superintendent Melvin Polk cleared the first checkpoint at 8:11 a.m.
Tour guide suffers from lung ailment
Archibald demonstrates the tools of the old coal mining days, from the timbers that hold up the roof to a safety lamp that requires 16 percent oxygen to stay lit and can signal the presence of deadly methane gas. He points to dirty, yellowed cloth and explains how miners hang the canvas to block and divert bad air.
Occasionally, he pauses to catch his breath. He worked underground for 27 years, and his lungs are the worse for it.
Archibald dons a carbide light, an old-fashioned headlamp with an open flame, and explains how it works.
Then he turns it off. For a few seconds, the mine is pitch black. There is no light, no sound, no sense of direction. Then the flame pops back on, and several people let out their breath.
Archibald displays the round metal tags miners used to mark their carts. In the early days, they were expected to dig and load 10 cars a day, 20 cents each. "Back in 1890, that's not a bad piece of change," he says.
But at the next stop, he shows how hard they worked for it.
With a pick and shovel, miners dug rock and dirt from under a 36-inch seam, then sat on the ground with an auger, a metal bar pushing against their chests, to drill holes one at a time, by hand. Each was loaded with a gunpowder shot wrapped in waxed paper.
"Then you yell, 'Fire! Fire! Fire in the hole!' and you're gonna hustle on out of there. In fact you've got very, very little time to get out," Archibald says. "Most coal miners, they just take and fall down on their face right there — because they're gonna end up that way anyhow, and then you're gonna have to go find your hat."
Old ways of mining give way to new
At the final stop, steel plates and 4-foot rods called bolts have replaced timbers, and there are machines to help cut the coal. As mines modernized, Archibald says, companies stopped paying by the ton and started paying by the hour.
Tourists leave the mine with an appreciation for hard work. But Polk and Archibald say it's a window into the past, not to be confused with modern mines. Coal mines today are still dangerous, but highly mechanized operations.
"I can't imagine what it's like today," says tourist Becky Patterson, from Elizabeth City, N.C. "Now I want to see what it's like."
So does Anna Davis, of Orville, Ohio.
"In college, I studied history, so I know about the labor movement in the coal industry," says Davis, 38. "What this was is halfway between the historical way of mining and what I saw on 'Modern Marvels.'"
"It's one job I wouldn't want," says Patterson's husband, Chip, amazed by slow technological advances and practices like redirecting bad air with cloth. "How many times did a person get killed before they figured that out?"
Working on hands and knees
Polk, who spent 20 years with Westmoreland, Pittston and Maben coal companies before coming to the exhibition mine 16 years ago, says he can't imagine a job that wouldn't let him work underground.
"You miss it if you don't go," he says. "It's the smell of it, really. I can't explain it. A mine just has this smell."
At one mine, Polk had to lie on his stomach or back on a flat car, basically a metal sled with runners.
"Whatever position you started in, you had to stay in for 30 minutes to get back to the work area, then crawl out," he says. "We had machinery then, but you had to work on your hands and knees.
"The work is not easy," he says, "but if you run a piece of equipment or something, you know what you're doing and you're comfortable with it. And it's perfect weatherwise. Can't beat it."
Besides the mine, the 27-acre park in Beckley has a half-dozen antique-stuffed buildings, most of which were dismantled, moved, then reassembled board by board.
Historic building include miner's shanty
There's a three-room coal camp house, a 1922 church that rents for $150 for weddings and a 9-by-12 miner's shanty. A three-story superintendent's house took two years to reassemble, and 89-year-old retired teacher Buford Hartsog maintains order in a two-room schoolhouse, built in 1924 to educate black children before integration.
There's even an outhouse, now used only for fun.
"We got an old Sears & Roebuck catalogue in there, and we got hundreds of people who go in there, sit down and take their picture," Polk says. "They just think it's the funniest thing in the world."
IF YOU GO
Getting there
Beckley, W.Va., is about 470 miles from Atlanta, about a 7.5-hour drive. Take I-75 North for about 200 miles, then I-40 East toward Knoxville and later I-81 North toward Bristol for about 150 miles; then take I-77 North toward Bluefield for 70 miles to W.VA.-3/Harper Road exit toward Beckley. Then turn right onto W.VA-3 E/Harper Road and left onto Bradley Avenue and left again onto Wyoming Avenue and left again onto Ewart Avenue.
About the mine
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, 513 Ewart Ave., Beckley, W.Va.; www.beckleymine.com, 304-256-1747. Open April 1-Nov. 1, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Adults, $15; seniors, $13; children, 4-12, $10. Tours are 35-40 minutes. Take a jacket; it's a damp, constant 56 degrees underground.
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