Aerial.America.S04E06.West.Virginia
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00West Virginia. The only state in America carved out of another by popular vote. A land of misty Appalachian peaks, small towns, and a dramatic gorge created by one of the oldest rivers in the world.
00:22But it's also a state that's known great conflict. It was in West Virginia that a famous raid in the name of freedom brought the nation one step closer to civil war.
00:36And where battles of that war still fire up passions on its streets today.
00:41Here, ancient rainforests left behind deep veins of buried treasure that men and machines have been ripping from the earth for more than 150 years and are now causing entire mountaintops to simply disappear.
00:59And where one former miner struggles to save his family's land from the same fate.
01:05In West Virginia, three of America's great mountain ranges converge, and almost every valley holds a different surprise.
01:14From a legendary resort that hid a top government secret for decades, to a futuristic facility where astronomers are discovering how the universe may have been formed, to a place known as America's Taj Mahal.
01:28For the mountaineers that climb its famous peaks, to the rafters that ride the Big Five, this is almost heaven, West Virginia.
01:58In 1943, a group of officers from the U.S. Army's elite mountain training group in Colorado arrived here in West Virginia.
02:24They needed a place to train World War II soldiers for their upcoming deployment to the rugged mountains of northern Italy.
02:35They chose one of West Virginia's most iconic landscapes, a series of jagged peaks that tower 900 feet over the valley, a place called Seneca Rocks.
02:48They set about creating a wilderness assault training school.
02:53For more than a year, soldiers clamored over this impressive formation, practicing how to muffle the sounds of their hammers, and to work as a team to master the rock face, while communicating only with hand signals.
03:07Some of the men would use skills learned here to scale the cliffs at Normandy on D-Day.
03:13Many of the steel pitons the soldiers hammered into the walls of Seneca Rocks are still here today, but to spot them can require climbing some of the toughest routes in the east.
03:24Thousands flock here every year to slowly ratchet themselves up to the summit, but at least 15 climbers have perished on these peaks over the last 40 years.
03:36Those who make it to the top embody one of West Virginia's state mottos, mountaineers are always free.
03:46Seneca Rocks was named after the Senecas, a Native American tribe that used this area as their hunting ground, before European settlers started pushing them off their land.
03:57West Virginia's rugged landscape makes it stand out from its neighbors.
04:02It's here where the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, and Appalachian Mountains all converge, and give West Virginia the highest average elevation of any state east of the Mississippi.
04:14And that can make for some pretty unique communities.
04:18At first, the tiny town of Greenbank, population 143, may look like many West Virginia towns.
04:25One main road, a few houses, and lots of trees.
04:29But there's something else going on here that's impossible to see.
04:34When these students at Greenbank Elementary Middle School go home, they won't be allowed to surf the internet on a Wi-Fi connection or text their friends.
04:42That's because this 21st century technology is strictly limited here, thanks to a futuristic facility that towers over the town.
04:54The Robert C. Byrd Greenbank Telescope.
04:57It's as long as a football field, and even though it weighs 17 million pounds, can pivot on command, which makes it the largest fully steerable telescope in the world.
05:06It's part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
05:10A collection of giant telescopes that help create images of outer space by using faint radio waves from distant galaxies.
05:18Radio waves that are helping researchers to unlock the mystery of how stars and the universe were formed.
05:25This site was chosen for the observatory because the surrounding Allegheny Mountains are known for being the best places to observe stars.
05:32This site was chosen for the observatory because the surrounding Allegheny Mountains act like shields to keep earthbound radio signals from television antennas and radio towers from interfering with the researchers' work.
05:45But even West Virginia's rugged mountains can't stop all modern technological signals.
05:52That's why the Federal Communications Commission has created a radio-free zone for 13,000 square miles around Greenbank.
05:59A zone the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.
06:05Today, astronomers may come to these mountains to explore outer space, but in the 1700s, it was European settlers who flocked here to explore West Virginia itself.
06:17But as these white pioneers paddled their way through this mountainous new land, they came into conflict with the Native American tribes that had lived here for centuries.
06:26Which is one reason the settlers built small forts for their protection.
06:32This is Prickett's Fort, a reconstruction of a settlement that was originally built on this spot in 1774.
06:40And was big enough to protect up to 80 settler families behind its 12-foot high walls.
06:46A practice known as forting up.
06:50Some families would stay here for weeks, defended by a local militia, until they felt safe to continue on in their search for land to farm.
06:59Today, Prickett's Fort is a museum, where re-enactors, dressed in period clothes, head out to tend the fields and do the kinds of chores that Europeans once did here more than two centuries ago.
07:11But as more and more settlers spread out across what's now West Virginia, conflicts with Native tribes continued to flare.
07:19Conflicts that would soon end in war, and lead to one infamous murder that spawned a famous West Virginia legend.
07:26It all started on what's now the state's border with Ohio, at a site called Point Pleasant, where the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers converge.
07:38Long before wagon trains were crossing the Great Plains to the American West, this was the wild frontier, where white settlers clashed with tribes like the Shawneens.
07:49Violence soon followed.
07:52Atrocities were carried out by both sides, including kidnappings and killings.
07:57By 1773, hostilities had reached a fever pitch.
08:02The next year, the governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, sent two armies with a total of 2,500 soldiers to subdue the Shawnee and other Native tribes.
08:12When one of those armies arrived here, at Point Pleasant, it was ambushed by 1,200 Shawnee warriors, led by their chief named Cornstalk.
08:23But he and his men suffered heavy losses and retreated across the river to what's now Ohio.
08:29Soon after, the Shawnee were forced to relinquish their claim to all of their land.
08:34Today, an obelisk stands on the site of the famous Battle of Point Pleasant, and marks not only one army's victory, but also how that battle cost the Shawnee hundreds of square miles of land that were then opened up for settlement.
08:49But despite his tribe's great loss, the Shawnee did not surrender.
08:53But also how that battle cost the Shawnee hundreds of square miles of land that were then opened up for settlement.
09:00But despite his tribe's great loss, the story of Chief Cornstalk wasn't over quite yet.
09:07Three years later, the chief returned, seeking to forge peaceful ties with the settlers.
09:13In 1777, he arrived at nearby Fort Randolph to warn the American soldiers in the fort that some members of the Shawnee had taken sides with the British and could pose a threat.
09:25What happened next is reenacted here in Point Pleasant each May, in a reconstruction of the original fort.
09:33As the reenactment begins, the chief, dressed in red, arrives to deliver his news.
09:39But his reception isn't what he expects.
09:44Inside, he's taken hostage.
09:50Later, outside, a Virginia soldier is killed while hunting.
09:56An angry local mob, seeking revenge, rushes into the fort, and enters the building where Chief Cornstalk is being held.
10:04Anyone nearby at the time would have had no doubts about what happened next.
10:15The Shawnee chief's peaceful mission ends with his own murder.
10:20At the hands of the settlers he had come to protect.
10:23One year later, in May 1778, hundreds of Shawnee and other Native American warriors seeking to avenge the chief's murder lay siege to the fort, starting with an all-out assault.
10:41Some of these reenactors are descendants of the original settlers and Native Americans who fought in the siege.
10:47Several return year after year to reprise their roles and slather their bodies with war paint.
10:56The battle lasted less than a week, and the American soldiers were able to repel the attack.
11:02But in the end, many believe that Chief Cornstalk had the last word from his grave.
11:10The story goes that as the great Shawnee chief lay dying,
11:14he placed a curse on the area, a curse that some believe led to a series of mysterious events.
11:23Beginning in the 1960s, residents claimed they'd seen a winged monster,
11:29an oversized humanoid with ten-foot-long wings and fiery eyes that they named the Mothman,
11:37and which went on to become the inspiration for a tale of war.
11:42And which went on to become the inspiration for a 2002 film starring Richard Gere called The Mothman Prophecies.
11:50The film is based on events in 1967 when, just days before Christmas, a bridge over the Ohio River collapsed at rush hour,
11:59sending 37 vehicles into the water below and killing 46 people.
12:05Investigators concluded that a cracked eyebar caused the bridge to fail.
12:09But at the time, some locals believed the curse of Chief Cornstalk was to blame.
12:20Long before supposed sightings of the mysterious Mothman,
12:25Native American tribes like the Shawnee inhabited what's now West Virginia for hundreds of years.
12:31But this state holds evidence of even earlier inhabitants too.
12:36Like this giant mound of earth in a town called Moundsville.
12:41Around 200 BC, a people known as the Adena were living here, in the Kanawha River Valley.
12:48To create a burial mound, they piled up 60,000 tons of earth, basket load by basket load, over a period of 100 years.
12:59Today, this landmark is known as the Grave Creek Mound.
13:03It's the largest remaining burial mound of the Adena.
13:07Inside, archaeologists discovered burial chambers, copper jewelry, shell beads, and even skeletons.
13:16Researchers still don't know why the Adena built a mound this big here in West Virginia.
13:23But there are some people right here in Moundsville who've had plenty of time to try and solve that mystery.
13:30That's because many of the windows in the cell blocks of West Virginia's infamous state penitentiary look right out on the Grave Creek Mound,
13:39and once offered convicts a perfect vantage point to contemplate the lives of these ancient Americans.
13:45The state pen was built in 1876 using inmate labor,
13:50but soon developed a reputation as one of the most violent correctional facilities in the nation.
13:55A thousand inmates reportedly died here from execution, illness, and suicide.
14:01Its cells are exceptionally small, even by prison standards, just five by seven feet,
14:08and were often shared by two or three inmates at a time.
14:12This facility closed in 1995 with a terrifying legacy that's caused some to believe it's one of the most haunted places in America.
14:21But doing time in West Virginia hasn't always meant being locked up in tiny cells with hardened criminals,
14:28especially if you're America's homemaking queen.
14:32In 2004, white-collar convict Martha Stewart served five months here at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp.
14:40First opened in 1927, Alderson was the first federal prison built exclusively for women.
14:46After Stewart started serving her time here, the media nicknamed this minimum-security facility Camp Cupcake.
14:54Forbes magazine called it one of America's ten cushiest prisons.
14:59With brick buildings and green open space, it looks more like a college than a prison.
15:05Stewart described her stay here as horrifying, but said she coped by imagining herself at Yale University.
15:12Before Stewart, Alderson's most infamous inmate was Lynette Squeaky Fromme, a Charles Manson follower,
15:19who was sent to Alderson after she tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.
15:25Like Stewart, Fromme served her time and was released.
15:32Those who come to stay at Alderson Federal Prison Camp pretty much know what they're in for.
15:37But not far away lies a West Virginia landmark that managed to hide a very deep U.S. government secret from its guests for almost half a century.
15:47Here in White Sulphur Springs, the Greenbrier Resort is one of West Virginia's most historic buildings.
15:54Founded in 1778, its high-profile guest list has spanned the history of the nation.
16:00From Andrew Jackson to Jessica Simpson.
16:04But until the early 90s, very few of those who checked in here knew of the secret that lay below them.
16:12It was only discovered by the Washington Post in 1992,
16:17when it reported that the U.S. government had built an enormous bunker under Greenbrier starting in the 1950s.
16:23to shelter the U.S. Congress and the President in the event of a nuclear attack on Washington.
16:30It was a top-secret facility called Project Greek Island.
16:35A vast 112,000-square-foot facility protected behind 20-ton steel blast doors.
16:42Entrances to the bunker can still be spotted today from the air.
16:45Inside, visitors can now get a tour of the facility that once held decontamination chambers,
16:51a television studio, dormitories, and meeting rooms where the House, Senate, and President
16:57could continue to run the country in the event of war.
17:03The resort was originally built here because of the area's healing Sulphur Springs.
17:08that fed the nearby Greenbrier River,
17:11just part of the nearly 40,000 miles of rivers and streams that flow through this Appalachian state.
17:18It was one of these waterways that inspired a famous American song,
17:23made its singer a star, and became a much-loved West Virginia anthem.
17:28Singer John Denver may be best known for his Rocky Mountain High,
17:33but it was a song about West Virginia that first brought him fame.
17:38The 1971 hit single, Take Me Home, Country Roads,
17:43was one of John Denver's most famous hits.
17:46It was a song about West Virginia that first brought him fame.
17:50The 1971 hit single, Take Me Home, Country Roads,
17:54A song that celebrates the beauty of this Appalachian state in its opening lines.
17:59Almost Heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
18:05Take Me Home reached number two on the Billboard charts
18:09and has been practically a state anthem ever since.
18:16It's the official theme song of West Virginia University here in Morgantown,
18:20where it's been played before every home football game since the early 1970s,
18:25helping spur the Mountaineers to victory,
18:28a team that's won eight Southern Conference and seven Big East Conference titles.
18:36But while Take Me Home caused many to think of the Shenandoah as a West Virginia river,
18:41only a small piece of this waterway actually flows through the state.
18:45And it's not the first river in the state.
18:48And it's not the first river that comes to mind for most West Virginians.
18:53That honor likely belongs to the New River,
18:56which cuts a path right through the Appalachian Mountains.
19:00Today, it's the heart of the New River Gorge National River,
19:04part of the National Park Service and one of West Virginia's natural treasures.
19:0970,000 acres of protected wilderness that hug this winding waterway
19:14as it flows north through the center of the state.
19:18The New River may have been new to the pioneers who named it,
19:21but geologically, it's believed to be among the oldest rivers on Earth.
19:26Today, the rocky cliffs that the New River sliced through millions of years ago
19:31tower over this waterway, offering views that draw more than a million people each year.
19:38In the 18th century, the waters of the New River and its northern neighbor, the Gully,
19:44were considered too treacherous to navigate,
19:45which is why early settlers walked along the river's banks.
19:50Today, thrill-seekers ride their rapids just for fun.
19:54This section of the Gully is considered a rafter's paradise.
19:59It's home to the Big Five.
20:02Five Class Five rapids that offer terrifying but thrilling rides.
20:08The deep canyons and swift-flowing waters of the Gully and New Rivers
20:12have always made it hard-going for travelers heading west.
20:16First, for those crossing the area on foot,
20:19and later, for others in horse-drawn carriages, and even cars.
20:24But that all changed in 1977, thanks to this West Virginia landmark,
20:30the New River Gorge Bridge.
20:33When construction began, its designers promised they would deliver an engineering marvel.
20:38They knew that stretching a 1,700-foot-long arch high over this gorge was going to be anything but easy.
20:45Engineers first had to string cables between towers on each side of the river.
20:50Then, trolleys running on the cables ferried in sections of the bridge, piece by piece.
20:56Holding it all up was a single, giant steel arch.
21:00An arch that relied on the walls of the gorge itself for its strength.
21:04It took three years to build, and when it was finally finished,
21:08West Virginia got the engineering marvel it had been promised.
21:12And a record that it holds to this day.
21:15The New River Gorge Bridge remains the longest single-arch steel bridge in North America.
21:22The New River may have been a hindrance to travelers in the 1700s and 1800s,
21:27but it was rushing water from this and other rivers across the region
21:31that fueled West Virginia's early development.
21:34More than 500 mills once lined West Virginia's waterways,
21:39grinding everything from flour to animal feed.
21:42It's hard to find old mills still in operation, but many would have looked like this one.
21:48Glade Creek Grist Mill.
21:51It's a reconstruction built in 1976 as a working monument to the mills of the past.
21:57It's powered by a giant overshot waterwheel, and only used today to grind cornmeal for tourists.
22:04And offer visitors a chance to imagine what West Virginia was like during its early days of settlement,
22:10before giant industry started reshaping the land and creating boom towns,
22:15like the one that stood here, along the New River's banks.
22:20This is Thurmond, West Virginia, population 5.
22:25But it wasn't always like this.
22:28Thanks to rich deposits of coal in the area's mines, Thurmond's banks were once full of cash.
22:34Coal barons walked its streets, and hotels here were booked solid,
22:39as scrappy miners and businessmen arrived to cash in on the new boom in coal.
22:45And that also made Thurmond as rough a town as any in the Wild West.
22:50At the time, it was said that the only difference between Thurmond and hell
22:55is that a river runs through Thurmond.
22:58In those days, the only way to get here was by train.
23:01And it was a town without streets.
23:04Its buildings downtown face right out onto the train tracks, just as they still do today.
23:10Freight trains still ride these rails,
23:13and provide images of what Thurmond might have looked like more than a century ago.
23:19In an age when railway lines were the engineering marvels of the day,
23:23especially here in the mountains of West Virginia.
23:27Building paths for train tracks through these hills required tough machines,
23:32and even tougher men,
23:35one of whom has become a West Virginia legend.
23:40When the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad started laying down a new rail line
23:44through West Virginia in the 1870s to carry out Appalachian coal,
23:49the new tracks ran right into Big Bend Mountain.
23:53Eight hundred men were soon deep inside,
23:57chiseling their way through more than a mile of rock,
24:00and inhaling tiny particles from clouds of dust that would end up killing many of them.
24:07To speed up the work, the CNO reportedly brought a new machine
24:12called a steam-powered drill into the tunnel.
24:15A machine that's tied to one of West Virginia's great folktales,
24:19the legend of the steel-driving man, John Henry.
24:24The story goes that Henry, an African-American hammer man,
24:29claimed that he alone could break rock faster than the CNO's new drill.
24:34Pitting himself against this then-new technology,
24:38Henry hammered his way through the mountain,
24:41and succeeded in beating the drill,
24:44but collapsed and died almost as soon as he was finished.
24:47No one even knows if John Henry actually existed,
24:51but he lives on as a West Virginia folk hero,
24:54and one that country singer Johnny Cash famously sang about
24:58in his much-loved version of The Legend of John Henry's Hammer.
25:02John Henry said to his captain,
25:04a man ain't nothing but a man, Cash sang,
25:07but if you bring that steam drill round, I'll beat it fair and honest.
25:11I'll die with my hammer in my hand.
25:17Today, the railroad is still the heart of West Virginia's economy.
25:23Trains still crisscross this state,
25:26hauling coal just as they have for more than a century.
25:31But these days, another source of energy is transforming the land,
25:36just like the railways once did,
25:39but this time, it's crossing over, not through, the mountains.
25:43Building a new natural gas pipeline
25:46across a mountainous state like West Virginia
25:49is a giant logistical challenge.
25:51Pipeline companies have to negotiate deals with landowners,
25:54cut down trees, dig trench,
25:57lay in miles of pipe, piece by piece,
26:00and then cover it all up again,
26:02and make it look as if nothing is there.
26:05Playing new pipeline can cost hundreds of millions of dollars,
26:09but it's an investment that pays off.
26:12That's because West Virginia
26:15sits atop one of the largest natural gas deposits in the world,
26:19the Marcellus Shale Formation,
26:22that runs for nearly 600 miles under New York,
26:25Pennsylvania, Ohio, and nearly all of West Virginia.
26:29After energy companies dig test wells
26:32and locate concentrations of gas,
26:34they build drilling pads like this one,
26:37and then pump water, sand, and chemicals into the earth
26:39with enough force to crack open the shale deep below
26:42and release the natural gas,
26:45which is then sucked out into the pipeline.
26:48It's a controversial process
26:51known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
26:55Environmentalists claim that fracking chemicals
26:58pollute the groundwater
27:00and are harming nearby rivers and streams,
27:02but energy companies refute the claims.
27:05And meanwhile, the drilling continues.
27:07Over the last 10 years,
27:10hundreds of these shale wells have sprung up across West Virginia,
27:13and natural gas drilling has made many landowners here rich,
27:17even ones that already have a palace of gold.
27:23This is not your typical West Virginia mountaintop.
27:27It's a place that's been called America's Taj Mahal,
27:31a permanent home for a group of spiritual devotees
27:34that many of us think of as wanderers.
27:37This is New Vrindaban,
27:40named after a holy city in India
27:43and the home of the largest Hare Krishna community in America.
27:47When they're not standing on street corners singing in saffron robes,
27:50some followers of this religious group come here to New Vrindaban.
27:54It was completed in 1979
27:57as a shrine to the late founder of the Hare Krishna movement,
28:00a man called Srila Prabhupada.
28:03Unpaid devotees built this palace on top of an old garbage dump,
28:07and claim they developed their building skills
28:10by using their Krishna consciousness.
28:13Its dome is covered with 22-carat gold leaf.
28:16Inside, its floors and walls
28:19are made of dozens of different kinds of marble from 17 countries.
28:23But controversy plagued New Vrindaban from the start.
28:27In the 1990s, its leader, a New York State native
28:31who went by the name of Swami Bhaktapad,
28:34was sentenced to 12 years in jail for racketeering,
28:37which revolved around his selling of fake souvenirs
28:40of Snoopy and other cartoon characters,
28:43and accusations that he engaged his followers
28:46to murder two other Hare Krishna devotees.
28:49Once, money from sales of tickets to the palace
28:52flooded New Vrindaban's coffers.
28:55But these days, this Hare Krishna community
28:58is striking it rich from a boom
29:01that lies right under their dancing feet.
29:04New Vrindaban sold the natural gas rights
29:07to go to refurbishing its Palace of Gold.
29:11West Virginia may not be well known for this hilltop palace,
29:15but it is often remembered for the cascading waters
29:18of its Blackwater Falls,
29:21the jagged peaks of its Seneca Rocks,
29:24and for the hundreds of hills and hollows
29:27that are home to most West Virginians today.
29:30But 150 years ago, these iconic landmarks
29:33and the people that lived here
29:35were still part of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
29:38West Virginia was not yet a separate state.
29:41When it comes to the story
29:44of why and how the people of this mountainous region
29:47broke away to create their own independent state,
29:50there's no greater catalyst than the Civil War,
29:53a war that many say almost got its start
29:56right here in West Virginia,
29:59on the state's northeast border with Maryland.
30:02In October 1783,
30:05Jefferson arrived here to Harper's Ferry,
30:08a then trading post at the confluence
30:11of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers.
30:14Standing here and looking east,
30:17Jefferson described the view
30:20as one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.
30:23But this peaceful spot
30:26would become the site of a deadly siege
30:29on the eve of the Civil War.
30:32In 1794, President George Washington
30:35built a military armory
30:38that would also manufacture arms and munitions
30:41for the U.S. Army.
30:44He knew that the Shenandoah River's currents
30:47could power the mills necessary to make weapons.
30:50The remains of those mills still line the river
30:53just below this historic town.
30:56But as the Civil War edged closer in the mid-1800s,
30:59Harper's Ferry proved that it might not be
31:02the safest place for a U.S. armory.
31:05And so did their troops.
31:08It came as a surprise ambush
31:11from a now legendary abolitionist,
31:14a man some say was America's very first terrorist.
31:17On the night of October 16, 1859,
31:20a white man named John Brown
31:23and 18 of his anti-slavery supporters
31:26approached Harper's Ferry from Maryland to the northeast
31:29and captured the town's bridges.
31:32Their mission was to launch an assault on the U.S. armory,
31:35purchase a bunch of weapons,
31:38and use them to arm runaway slaves
31:41so they could launch their own attacks on slave owners
31:44and foment a rebellion.
31:47When Brown and his men arrived in Harper's Ferry,
31:50they were all armed and ready to die
31:53for their abolitionist cause.
31:56They quickly stormed the armory
31:59and started taking hostages.
32:02But almost immediately,
32:05Brown's men stopped it,
32:08but then decided to allow it to continue on.
32:11When the train later arrived in Baltimore,
32:14passengers alerted authorities
32:17that Harper's Ferry was under attack.
32:20By then, Brown had moved his hostages here
32:23to this brick building, the armory's fire engine house.
32:26The next morning, as the sun rose over Harper's Ferry,
32:29townspeople and local militia began firing on Brown's men.
32:32Four of them tried to escape
32:35and were shot dead in the water.
32:38And the worst was yet to come.
32:41About 24 hours after the siege began,
32:4490 U.S. Marines arrived from Washington by train.
32:47Under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee,
32:50the Marines stormed the engine house,
32:53freed the hostages, and captured Brown and his men.
32:56When it was over,
32:59John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry cost 17 lives,
33:02including 10 of Brown's men,
33:05and the mayor of Harper's Ferry.
33:08John Brown was convicted of treason
33:11and sentenced to death.
33:14But his anti-slavery speeches during the trial
33:17inspired many across the country
33:20to sympathize with the abolitionist cause,
33:23which helped spur the nation closer to civil war.
33:26After the war broke out,
33:29battles were fought right here in West Virginia's streets,
33:31and the town of Lewisburg soon became a flashpoint.
33:36Today, reenactors depict a battle
33:39that happened here 150 years ago on May 23, 1862.
33:44At the time, Lewisburg was under northern control
33:47when Confederate forces arrived,
33:50armed with artillery,
33:53and began firing on a nearby Union camp.
33:56The battle that followed pitted 2,200 Confederate troops
33:58against a much smaller Union force of 1,600.
34:01But despite the odds,
34:04the Union soldiers succeeded in capturing the Confederate artillery.
34:07Historians estimate that up to 80 Confederate soldiers
34:10died in the battle, which lasted just an hour.
34:13The victorious Union side lost 13 men.
34:19The war also divided some West Virginia families
34:22right down the middle.
34:25Here in the town of Weston,
34:28on the state's West Fork River,
34:31stands a building known as Jackson's Mill.
34:34It was the childhood home
34:37of famous Confederate General Thomas Stonewall Jackson
34:40and his sister Laura,
34:43who were sent here to stay with relatives
34:46after their father died of typhoid.
34:49Growing up, the siblings were said to be close
34:52and wrote frequent letters to each other
34:55right up to the Civil War.
34:58This was the home for the Confederate Army,
35:01famously leading troops during the First Battle of Bull Run
35:04in 1861, the first major land battle of the war.
35:07But Laura sided with the Union
35:10and soon opened up her home here in Beverly
35:13as a hospital for Northern troops.
35:16One Union soldier who had recovered here
35:19under Laura's care later wrote,
35:22with her own tender hands,
35:25she soothed the aching temples of many a dying soldier boy
35:28in her home.
35:31On May 10th, 1863, Stonewall Jackson died
35:34after sustaining injuries from friendly fire.
35:37Though saddened by her brother's death,
35:40Laura, so committed to the Union cause,
35:43reportedly said at the time
35:46that she would rather know her brother was dead
35:49than leading the rebel army.
35:52But while many in Northwest Virginia remained divided
35:55over the war, by 1861 it was clear
35:58that West Virginia was the place to be.
36:01And if West Virginia has a birthplace,
36:04it's here, in the northern city of Wheeling,
36:07right on the Ohio border.
36:10The building in which political leaders
36:13drafted West Virginia's new Constitution
36:16still stands downtown.
36:19At the time, it was called the Wheeling Custom House,
36:22but today it's known as Independence Hall.
36:25Over the next two years,
36:28it would become a state and a constitution
36:31that would include the gradual emancipation of slaves.
36:34By March 1863,
36:37residents overwhelmingly voted in favor
36:40of the state's new Constitution.
36:43In April, President Abraham Lincoln declared
36:46that West Virginia statehood had been approved.
36:49And finally, on June 20th, 1863,
36:52a newly elected governor named Arthur I. Borman
36:55proudly stood before the county delegates
36:58and announced the birth of America's 35th state.
37:01The new state's border
37:04was determined by the counties that had voted to be free.
37:07Years in the making,
37:10West Virginia had become the only state in the nation
37:13to be carved out of another by popular vote.
37:18Wheeling, the West Virginia state capital,
37:21thrived after the war.
37:24Iron and steel mills sprang up along its riverbanks,
37:26turning out a product that was much needed
37:29by those rebuilding after the war, nails.
37:32In fact, Wheeling's factories turned out so many nails,
37:35it was called the nail capital of the world.
37:38By the turn of the century,
37:41Wheeling had become the richest city per capita in America.
37:44Chances are, many here celebrated their good fortunes
37:47by lighting up cigars.
37:50That's because the city was home
37:53to America's oldest cigar manufacturer.
37:56The Marsh-Wheeling Company,
37:59which dates back to 1840,
38:02when it began making special cigars called stogies,
38:05which are longer and thinner than regular cigars.
38:08Stogies were the preferred cigars
38:11of covered wagon drivers in the 19th century,
38:14wagons called conestogas,
38:17which is where stogies got their name.
38:20In 1870,
38:23Wheeling lost its title as the state capital
38:26to a much smaller town in the south called Charleston,
38:29whose population at the time was just 3,000.
38:32Today, it's the state's biggest city,
38:35home to 50,000 people
38:38and West Virginia's beautiful statehouse.
38:41But Charleston hasn't always had an easy ride.
38:44Between 1807 and 1885,
38:47the capital was moved back and forth
38:50between Wheeling and Charleston three times,
38:53thanks to political tensions
38:56and thanks to the Civil War.
38:59As the sun sets,
39:02the new capital's gold dome sparkles on Charleston's skyline,
39:05thanks to its 23 1⁄2-carat gold leaf.
39:08But West Virginia's story
39:11has little to do with gold
39:14and a lot to do with an ancient black rock
39:17that powers not just West Virginia, but much of America
39:20and has caused hundreds of mountains to disappear.
39:27When the lights come on in Charleston, West Virginia,
39:30it's a good bet that their bulbs are powered
39:33by West Virginia coal,
39:36just as houses, factories, airports, and state capitals are
39:39all across the country.
39:42Americans still get almost 50 percent of their energy
39:45from coal.
39:48And a lot of that coal comes from West Virginia,
39:51which has the second biggest coal reserves in the U.S.,
39:53thanks to some pretty fascinating
39:56ancient geological history.
39:59Hundreds of millions of years ago,
40:02the land that's now West Virginia
40:05was actually located near the equator
40:08and covered by tropical rainforests,
40:11plants that decayed and became bogs of carbon-rich peat.
40:14Over time, that plant material
40:17was compressed by sand and clay
40:20and transformed into coal.
40:23When the American continent had been formed,
40:26the land that would become West Virginia
40:29was lined with deep veins of this carbon-rich fossil fuel,
40:32fuel that people have been digging out of the ground here
40:35for hundreds of years.
40:38In fact, West Virginia has so much coal
40:41that there's now active mining in 43 of its 55 counties.
40:45The coal industry is also the state's biggest employer,
40:48providing more than 22,000 jobs
40:50that offer salaries of about $70,000 a year,
40:53more than three times the average income in the state.
40:56Thousands of miners across West Virginia
40:59have been mining these hills for generations.
41:02But many argue that the story of West Virginia coal
41:05isn't as clean as many coal companies
41:08would like them to believe.
41:11Most big mining companies ship the coal dug by West Virginia miners
41:14and the profits out of the state.
41:17Miners have been fighting for a fair shake of the coal
41:20ever since they first descended into the mines.
41:23That's because it can be a deadly job.
41:26Since 1883, 21,000 miners have died while working in the mines,
41:31and even more from black lung,
41:34a slow disease brought on by tiny coal particles
41:37that lodge in their lungs,
41:40others from disasters that struck without warning,
41:43sometimes on an unimaginable scale.
41:46That's what happened in one West Virginia town
41:48This is the town of Monongah.
41:51It lies in a coal-rich valley
41:54just south of the Pennsylvania border,
41:57on the West Fork River.
42:00It's also the site of the worst mining disaster in U.S. history.
42:03Today, there's just one active coal mine outside Monongah,
42:07but just over a century ago,
42:10mines surrounded this town,
42:13worked by more than 1,000 men,
42:15came from Europe with the promise of steady work and good pay.
42:19But that promise was shattered mid-morning,
42:22on December 6, 1907,
42:25when an explosion tore through two mines at the base of town.
42:29The blast was so powerful that streetcars were knocked off their rails,
42:33and houses were blown right across the West Fork River.
42:38By the time the smoke cleared on that cold December day,
42:42362 miners had lost their lives.
42:45Leaving more than a thousand mothers,
42:48wives and children without husbands,
42:51fathers and sons.
42:54And by the following summer,
42:57Monongah was still grieving for its loss.
43:00During a church service in nearby Fairmont,
43:03the idea of holding an annual day
43:06to remember Monongah's lost fathers was born.
43:09This black-and-white marker
43:12commemorates America's very first Father's Day,
43:1524 years before President Richard Nixon
43:18made it an officially recognized holiday in 1972.
43:23For much of the 20th century,
43:26most coal in West Virginia was mined by men working deep underground.
43:30But by the 1970s,
43:33a new kind of mining was starting to transform West Virginia,
43:36on a scale that can still be hard to comprehend,
43:40unless you see it from the air.
43:43At first, coal-rich Mingo County
43:46looks like many other forested areas of the Appalachians.
43:49But when the fog clears,
43:52you'll soon discover that many of the mountains themselves
43:55are gone.
44:03This is the land of mountaintop removal,
44:07a mining technique so powerful and efficient
44:09that companies can simply carve off the tops of entire mountains
44:13to get to the coal buried below.
44:17This mine is one of the biggest mountaintop mines in the state.
44:21It's called Hobet 21.
44:24Not long ago, this area was blanketed with trees and hills.
44:28Now, it's a 12,000-acre dig site.
44:32It can take just a few men
44:35and a few monster machines
44:37to destroy an entire Appalachian mountain.
44:40Once the trees are clear-cut,
44:43geologists locate the seams of coal below.
44:46Then, the company drills holes,
44:49stuffs them with powerful explosives,
44:52and blows them up to loosen earth and rock.
44:55Next, excavators move in to rip the mountain apart,
44:58scoop by scoop.
45:01Hobet 21 is home to one of the most famous mining machines in America,
45:04an infamous dragline excavator called Big John.
45:09It's as tall as a 20-story building
45:12and can claw out 100 tons of earth in a single pass,
45:16all with just one worker at the controls.
45:20Big John has been ripping apart West Virginia's hills since 1983,
45:25and it's still going strong.
45:28But even Big John isn't big enough to do the job alone.
45:33All across this mine, men and machines are busy at work.
45:37For every ton of coal produced in a mine like this one,
45:41the company has to remove 16 tons of earth.
45:44The best way to grasp the scale of this operation
45:48is to watch it from the air.
45:51The machines are equipped with a high-speed radar
45:54to watch it from the air.
45:59It looks like a giant sandbox with enormous motorized toys.
46:08The state of West Virginia has issued hundreds of permits
46:11for mountaintop removal mining, but there are some restrictions.
46:15Here, mine operators could remove all the earth around this mountain,
46:20but they were required to leave the mountaintop intact.
46:23That's because a Civil War cemetery stands on its peak.
46:28It's one of the oddest sites in the state,
46:31an historic landmark left standing high in a tuft of trees,
46:35while everything around it below has been completely destroyed.
46:40All this activity has one singular purpose,
46:44to uncover valuable seams of coal like this one,
46:48and then dig it out and ship it to market.
46:51Surface mining is much safer for West Virginia's miners,
46:55since they don't have to work underground in potentially dangerous tunnels.
46:59But it comes with a huge environmental cost.
47:05500 mountains have already disappeared,
47:09along with the habitats for hundreds of species.
47:12And lives are impacted too.
47:15When a mining company carves off a mountaintop,
47:17it has to put that earth somewhere,
47:20and so it dumps it into nearby valleys.
47:233,200 local streams have been destroyed,
47:27and entire communities have been forced to relocate
47:30when the mining companies buy up the land.
47:36But not everyone in West Virginia has been willing to sell,
47:40and it took just one man
47:43to bring one of West Virginia's biggest mountaintop mines
47:45to a grinding halt.
47:49It happened here in Pigeon Roost Hollow,
47:52and is why this house is still standing.
47:55It's the home of Jimmy Weakley,
47:58a retired miner who battled the coal companies here for years,
48:01refusing to sell his piece of the valley
48:04so a company could turn it into a dump site,
48:07land that's been in Weakley's family since the 1700s.
48:10Almost all of Weakley's neighbors here in this hollow sold out,
48:13and the mining company finally raised Weakley's offer
48:16to $2 million, but he still turned them down,
48:20a refusal that triggered a series of lawsuits
48:23and brought the company's operations to a halt.
48:26Weakley once claimed he'd stay in this house until he dies,
48:30which is why he was once called
48:33the last man on the mountain.
48:36Jimmy Weakley's story is evidence
48:39of the complicated relationships that West Virginians have
48:41with the coal that lies beneath their feet,
48:44around their houses, and all across their communities.
48:48It's provided jobs for generations,
48:51but has also forced many to suffer
48:54from black lung, pollution, and operations
48:57that have destroyed entire mountains and valleys.
49:06But whatever damage coal mining has done,
49:08it hasn't put an end to West Virginians' love of their state,
49:12and the communities they're proud to call home.
49:15Communities like Fairmont.
49:18It was here that Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton
49:21was born in 1968, the granddaughter of a coal miner.
49:25Retton left West Virginia in 1982 to train in Texas,
49:30and chose not to return after vaulting her way to gold
49:34in the 1984 Olympic Games.
49:36Settling down in Houston instead.
49:39But in 2009, Mary Lou decided it was time to come back home,
49:44and moved her family back to Fairmont.
49:47I just love the simplicity of West Virginia life, Retton said.
49:52And Mary Lou Retton isn't the first
49:55to feel that way about West Virginia.
49:59A place where towering peaks beckon hardy mountaineers,
50:03and a fiercely independent spirit
50:06forged during a time of war
50:09is still alive on its streets today.
50:12And all across the state,
50:15from the tops of its hills to the bottoms of its hollows,
50:19and on every river in between.
50:33♪♪♪