Altering a Rural Landscape C&O Big Sandy SUBDIVISION Introduction The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad changed the appearance of the Levisa Fork of Big Sandy River watershed. Its construction saw mountains blasted away and/or tunneled, streams bridged, and family homesteads and farmlands divided. The most obvious changes, however, were additions which

Based on the eulogy delivered by his uncle April 26, 2026  It was 2001, and Sheldon Lee Compton needed a job. “Any dumb hillbilly can learn to operate a forklift in ten minutes.”  That’s what Steve, Parts Manager at the Caterpillar store, told my nephew Sheldon on his first and last

Appalachia’s Coal Miners Killed on the Job By Tabitha Wallen Something near and dear to my heart, a part of my very soul, are coal miners. My dad worked for McCoy Labs in Pikeville, testing water and soil samples on mining sites. His father drove a coal truck for the

Legend of Mathias Harman Storyteller is Mathias Harman The province on Mathias Harman is not of the usual story and is based on the 1787 contract with one John Preston, John Smith, Henry Skaggs, and me Mathias Harman to settle in what was then Mason County, originally Bourbon and then

Big Sandy is know far and wide for her rich and prolific coal beds, or seams, and numerous operations are now in progress mining this product to be shipped to citizens in a less fortunate portion of the country; where coal fields are unknown. Of the many mines that are