Anybody interested in expanding the use of "clean coal" as an energy source and all visitors to Beckley, West Virgina should make it a point to stop and visit the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine and the Youth Museum of Southern West Virginia. The exhibition coal mine shows the work and life of a miner.
The coal mine tour includes an amusement park style ride through an abandoned coal mine. The museum is housed in a 14,000 sq. foot modern building that serves as both coal museum and visitor center. The museum provides visitors with a great explanation of life in a West Virgina coal camp for both miners and the men that managed the miners. The museum gallery displays an extremely impressive collection of coal and coal mining artifacts, tools, geological specimens, photographs and other items reflecting the difficult life of miners in an early coal town in southern West Virginia.
The tour of the mine itself is unusual. Rather than walk through the mines, as in the tours of nearby Virginia and West Virginia caves, visitors ride 1500 feet below the hillsides of New River Park on a track in authentic "man cars." The tour begins at the mine entrance and proceeds to old working areas of the coal mine and back. A veteran coal miner serves as tour guide. The guide stops the man cars throughout the mine to explain both the history and process of low-seam coal mining. The guide describes important technological innovation in mining and its impact on miners individually as well as the economics of the coal mine. Both early hand mining tools and modern mechanics are shown.
The museum complex includes a restored coal camp that includes shanty housing for miners, the old coal company house, the mine superintendent's home, the Pemberton coal camp church and the Helen coal camp school. The well restored camp site gathers actual buildings from around West Virginia to provide museum visitors with an important impression of the social structure of a early 20th century coal camp life. It also shows just how difficult life is and was for the coal miners.
The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine and the Youth Museum of Southern West Virginia is about a five hour and twenty minute drive from downtown Washington, DC. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine is open daily from April 1 to November 1 from10:00 am to 6:00 pm. The last tour of the mine begins is at 5:30 pm. Visitors should bring a jacket since the mine is essentially a man made cave and so the temperature in the mine is always between 50 and 58 degrees. Underground tours of the mine usually last between 35 to 40 minutes. It takes most folks another 45 minutes for a tour of the restored coal camp.
After visiting the old mine, go eat, shop and explore at Tamarack. The cold war bunker at the Greenbrier is a short drive from Beckley.
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