Black Mountain Elegy

Big Black Mountain is a ridge of the Cumberland Mountains and is the highest mountain peak in Kentucky, towering 4,145 feet in elevation. Scotia Coal Company operated four coal mine openings inside and beneath Black Mountain, one of which experienced two devastating methane gas explosions on March 9 and 11, 1976, killing 26 miners. The author, a retired Scotia coal miner, describes his experiences of helping to recover the bodies of eleven of the miners who were killed in the second explosion. The eleven miners were sealed inside the mine for over eight months before they were successfully recovered. He also recounts his participation in helping to clean up and ventilate the shattered Scotia #1 mine where the two explosions had ripped through the mine.