Saturday, December 18, 2010
Coalfields As A Tourist Attraction
WEST VIRGINIA...
West Virginia's southern coalfields, known to many outsiders for recent mining disasters, are also rich with American labor history and tales of bravery that Doug Estepp believes will rivet the tourists he plans to take there next summer.
Estepp, a Mingo County native, has launched a company that could be the first to share the rugged region's history with tourists. Coal Country Tours LLC is planning at least two tours for the summer of 2011, including a three-day West Virginia Mine War Tour in June.
In 1920, a shootout between unionizing miners and coal company security guards left 12 men dead on the streets of Matewan, in the county where Estepp was raised. The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, an armed union uprising in adjacent Logan County, eventually required the intervention of federal troops.
"Blair Mountain was the second largest insurrection in U.S. history after the Civil War - the only time the U.S. has deployed air power against its citizens," Estepp said. "But you have to seek this history out."
West Virginia's southern coalfields, known to many outsiders for recent mining disasters, are also rich with American labor history and tales of bravery that Doug Estepp believes will rivet the tourists he plans to take there next summer.
Estepp, a Mingo County native, has launched a company that could be the first to share the rugged region's history with tourists. Coal Country Tours LLC is planning at least two tours for the summer of 2011, including a three-day West Virginia Mine War Tour in June.
In 1920, a shootout between unionizing miners and coal company security guards left 12 men dead on the streets of Matewan, in the county where Estepp was raised. The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, an armed union uprising in adjacent Logan County, eventually required the intervention of federal troops.
"Blair Mountain was the second largest insurrection in U.S. history after the Civil War - the only time the U.S. has deployed air power against its citizens," Estepp said. "But you have to seek this history out."
# posted by Homer Owens @ 8:27 AM 
