Unmarked graves, an 'ugly history': W.VA. weighs mine safety

HAVACO, W.VA. (AP) — Mayapple plants sprout in the sunken soil where the bodies lie, their leaves sheltering the unmarked graves like tiny umbrellas. The forgotten burial ground is overrun by four-wheel tire tracks near a path strewn with discarded bottles and other trash.

More than a century of overgrowth on this West Virginia hillside has erased any trace of the graveyard known locally as Little Egypt, the resting place for dozens of coal miners who died in a 1912 mine explosion. Most people living in Mcdowell County — a dwindling community that once was the world's leading coal producer — don't know this place exists.

“There are 80 people here that nobody has said a prayer over in a long, long time,” said Ed Evans, a state lawmaker and retired public school teacher as he side-stepped a patch of sunken earth on a rainy summer day.

For Evans the burial ground is a reminder of the sacrifices by workers who inspired safety regulations when the coal industry was rapidly expanding in the early 20th century, the deadliest era for miners in U.S. history. It's more important than ever now, he said, amid a push to undo regulations as the industry declines.

West Virginia's Republican supermajority has introduced multiple bills over the past year that would eliminate worker protections in an attempt to bolster the shrinking coal industry, including a sweeping overhaul of the state agency that inspects coal mines.

The bill, which would strip the state's power to cite coal companies for unsafe working conditions, failed to advance after union representatives and dozens of miners came to the Capitol to testify against it, as well as Democrats like Evans, who recalled Little Egypt in a Feb. 25 speech on the House floor. That same week, a miner was killed while working in a mine in Mcdowell County.

Evans said he worries about what will happen now that many advocates of mine safety regulations, himself included, were defeated in the Nov. 8 election.

In a state where the coal industry has been severely diminished by both market economics and a shift toward cleaner energy, coal interests still wield considerable power to push back against regulation. With Republicans gaining an even tighter grip on the Legislature, lawmakers are expected to make another run at further deregulating the agency that monitors mine safety.

The scars left by the mining industry are ubiquitous in West Virginia, nowhere more so than in the southern coalfields where abandoned mine tipples tower beside mountains disfigured by long gone coal companies. Less obvious are sites like Little Egypt, a silent monument to what Evans calls West Virginia's “ugly history,” where vulnerable workers were exploited for profit and forgotten.

There's a tendency to glorify the coal boom, he said, while the legacy of brutal exploitation of cheap labor in Appalachia is glossed over — forgotten or literally overgrown.

"And what do they get for their sacrifice? All these people have are the bushes that grow around them and the rattle of the coal trucks that drive by from an industry they passed away from,” he said.

Amid hollows crowded with houses darkened by coal dust, the unincorporated community of Havaco is nestled near a bridge on the Tug Fork River, across railroad tracks where trains still move tons of coal.

There are no active mines in Havaco now, but families who lived there for generations have passed down the story of Little Egypt. Their ancestors came to work in the mines, living in “coal camps,” rows of modest homes built by mining companies.

Buford Brown, a 73-year-old retired coal miner and Vietnam veteran, remembers seeing the graves as a child. Even then they'd started sinking into the earth.

“They didn't care about them people years ago,” he said.

The unkempt dirt path to Little Egypt begins at the end of a dead-end road, hidden by sugar maples.

On March 26, 1912, the site was a chaotic scene of hurriedly dug graves as bodies were recovered from the depths of the Jed Coal and Coke Company mine, placed in wooden coffins and carried down the mountain. The underground explosion was set off when a miner's open-flame lamp ignited methane gas — the cause of many mining disasters at the time.

Members of the community gathered around the mine shaft, desperate to know if their loved ones had survived.