Ghosts of America's Worst Industrial Disaster  on West Virginia's New River Gorge

View of the New River from Hawks Nest State park in West Virginia

Captain Ron’s long ponytail stood straight out in the wind as he gunned the jet boat and turned the wheel of the craft hard to the right, sending up a spray of New River water and a yelp from his energized passengers.

Before the tour was over, the boat would effortlessly make its way past the site of the worst industrial accident in American history, and then meander upstream to the famous New River Gorge Bridge.

Captain Ron would tell us about the several lives lost on Bridge Day over the years when people legally and willingly jumped off the span with nothing but a nylon chute to save their lives, but never uttered a word about how scores of men died carving a three-mile tunnel through nearby Gauley Mountain.

Captain Ron maneuvers us under a hulking old railroad bridge.

“They used to give me a ticket for driving like this,” he yelled over the sound of the powerful engines. “Now they pay me for it.”

We were on a tour of the New River Gorge from the foot of Hawk’s Nest State Park near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. For the most part, Captain Ron kept us on a straight, gentle, leisurely paced course, careful of his wake so as to not disturb the occasional fisherman or unnecessarily jostle the fragile wooden docks that bobbed in front of the otherwise inaccessible fishing camp structures that dotted both sides of the wide river. He obviously knew this stretch of river and expertly maneuvered the powerful boat that had open sides and six rows of seats for paying customers.

We found our way to Captain Ron’s care after having descended from the Lodge at Hawk’s Nest State Park by way of a long, scenic, enthralling tram ride down a steep mountainside. The small tramcars only swayed a little as they conveyed passengers up and down the mountain.

Captain Ron took us over smooth waters to a point where the tunnel that had been cut through the imposing Gauley Mountain 86 years ago could be seen. He called our attention to the structure but did not utter a word about the haunting tragedy involved with its creation. Instead, he spun the boat around and headed upriver to the main attraction – the New River Gorge Bridge.

He kept the boat as stationary as possible just short of the white water that kept us from passing directly beneath the famous structure where, once a year, BASE jumpers – BASE stands for building, antenna, span and earth - are permitted to jump off the span of their own free will with special parachutes.

View of New River Gorge Bridge from
Captain Ron's Jet Boat.

“They jump on Bridge Day every October since 1980,” Captain Ron explained. “They’ve only lost three people in all that time and they say that up to 100,000 people walked the bridge on Bridge Day last year. Of course not all of them are jumpers.”

After giving his passengers plenty of time to snap pictures and take in the bridge view, Captain Ron gunned the boat to take us back to the dock and maneuver under a massive rusted railroad bridge that we thought for sure had been abandoned until a long noisy freight train passed right over our heads.

We docked, disembarked, and Captain Ron tipped his sweaty worn baseball cap in a farewell gesture. There was still no mention of the disaster that occurred just a few hundred yards downstream when desperate men risked life, limb and lung to feed families and work through the Great Depression.

It’s been called America’s worst industrial disaster and the tragedy carries ugly overtones of racism, disposable lives, and the traditional rape of West Virginia by out-of-state barons of industry.

Inside the tunnel through Gauley Mountain at Hawk's Nest

A company called Union Carbide needed more electricity for its operations at Alloy, West Virginia. It came up with a plan to divert the New River through Gauley Mountain so hydroelectric facilities could generate power to feed the needs of the industrial giant. It put out the call for men to work the drills and other machines that would cut a path through the mountain.

Workers in since the Gauley Mountain Tunnel

Men facing the challenges of finding work responded. Two thirds of them were African Americans. They joined others who were struggling in the dreadful economy. But they were never told that the mountain consisted of 99.44 percent silica and they were never given equipment to protect themselves against breathing the dust that would ravage lungs and kill indiscriminately.

They began to die from accidents first. They fell from scaffolding and were crushed by equipment and rock falls. Then, after about two months, the sickness cut through their ranks and the bodies began to pile up.

It took about two months for the men to begin dying from agonizing painful sickness. Fibrous nodules began to grow on their lungs from inhaling the silica dust. A company doctor told them they just had “tunnelitis” and gave them worthless pills. A nearby newspaper began to investigate and a local judge slapped a gag order to keep the situation quiet.

Most appalling was the handling of the dead, especially the African Americans. Betty Dotson-Lewis wrote an account of the situation on a site called “Tunnel Talk”:

Directly, a problem arose as black workers died. There was no "colored" burial site. Handley White, local funeral parlor owner in Summersville, located a field on his mother's farm and was given a contract to open a burial ground on the Martha White farm in Summersville. Handley was paid $50 per body with the promise of "plenty of business."

The dead workers were stacked in rows and strapped on the back of the flatbed truck. More of the dead black workers were put in an upright sitting position as if they were alive for their ride to their final resting place. For years rumors spread about workers buried in mass graves on the Martha White farm, but White family members deny this accusation.

The tunnel was eventually completed and has functioned as intended ever since. There are no books in the Hawks Nest Lodge gift store about the tragedy. There is no obvious marker at the site.  The amiable Captain Ron understandably focuses on entertaining tourists and keeps the mood light while on the water. There is just a brief historical marker that tourists speed by out on the main highway.

Meanwhile, like the memory of the estimated 750 men who died drilling that tunnel, Hawk’s Nest State Park seems to be fading away. Its lodge has become dingy and sparsely occupied; its trail down to the spectacular overlook of the mighty New River is broken, unkept and treacherous; and its state employees seem sullen and downcast.

“Isn’t nothin else goin on around here since the mines closed,” said one young man who helped us get ready for our tram ride. “This is all I got and it only pays minimum wage.”

West Virginia’s economy, once driven by a coal industry that many thought would never falter, has felt the sting of demise. The closure of mines that once kept the region’s economy humming has taken its toll on tax revenues and the state’s traditionally delicate budget. Clearly, the state is no longer investing in keeping this park in peak condition and there seems to be a cloud over the operation.

If there are ghosts of the workers who died here, they remain as silent about their fate as the dwindling number of people who work here. 

No doubt, the tram and the jet boat will continue as long as the tourists come and the profit margin remains attractive. But the fate of the site as a state park may be as in doubt as the survival rate was among the many men who once tried to support their families by drilling through a mountain of silica.

From Top Secret to Tourist Stop --"The Bunker" at the Greenbrier

A majestic gem of a historic resort, what lies beneath 

the Greenbrier is just as surprising. Photo from The 

Greenbrier

Between 1961 and 1992, if an enemy bomber looked like it was headed for the Nation’s Capital with intent to drop a nuclear device, all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 100 members of the Senate, and a few dazed and confused support staff, would have been herded onto trains and buses without their families; unglamorously showered, examined and dressed in lookalike clothing; sealed inside a mountain behind massive metal blast doors; and given refuge in cramped dormitory spaces tucked neatly below and behind one of America’s most luxurious resorts—the legendary Greenbrier in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia.

It was a great idea in 1958 when President Dwight Eisenhower coaxed the owners of the Greenbrier—CSX Railroad—to let the government hollow out the mountain behind the 200-year resort and install a 112,544-square-foot top secret facility: but in the 21^st Century, not so much. The theory was that if there was a viable threat that the capital city was about to be bombed, the legislative branch of the U.S. government could be saved and kept somewhat operational in the relative safety of “the bunker.”

There are at least two reasons why that would not work today. First, the era of intercontinental ballistic missiles has reduced the warning time to minutes, eliminating the window of opportunity for evacuating so many people from Washington, D.C. to a safe shelter 250 miles away. Secondly, today’s Congressional collection of hyper-partisan egomaniacs, bombastic showboats, sincere public servants, and nerdy tedious policy wonks would probably end up producing fistfights or worse in such confined quarters, further reducing the already diminished effectiveness of the once-great House and Senate. Too many citizens today would be tempted to ask: “Why bother?”

Today, because the government decommissioned the bunker and moved out lock, stock and barrel, this massive complex that somehow was kept secret not only over three decades of 24/7 ever-ready operation, but, more impressively, during what must have been an incredible construction phase, has been reduced to a tourist attraction.

On a recent spring afternoon, a middle-aged man, dressed in a “Wild and Wonderful West Virginia” tee shirt and cut-off blue jean shorts, shuffled along with the other 25 people on a tour of what had once been one of the government’s most protected and successful secrets. He and his wife had paid their $35 dollars each, had their cell phones confiscated and safely stored for the duration of their visit, and joined fellow visitors to learn more about the bunker. The group’s tour guide, a local retired car dealer who let loose with a pleasantly delivered barrage of facts at every stop, herded his charges into a fancy, well-lit but stuffy elevator in the West Virginia Wing of the Greenbrier.

“We’re going to go up one floor and see the entrance to the bunker,” the guide said. “That’s right, I said up one floor. That’s because the bunker is actually built 720 feet into a mountainside rather than completely under the hotel. Its entrance and its cleverly disguised blast door, is a floor above the main floor of the Greenbrier. It’s just one example of how this was all hidden in plain sight.”

President Eisenhower said he was holding a summit with the 

President of Mexico, left, and the Prime Minister of Canada,

right in 1958. But, he was really at the Greenbrier to close a deal

for the bunker with one of the CSX officials standing 

right behind them. Photo from The Greenbrier.

On one of the stops, the guide explained how, in the late 1950s, President Eisenhower started the whole bunker process when he convened a summit meeting at the Greenbrier with the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico. Unbeknownst to our duped neighboring heads of state, the summit was just a cover story. The President was really there to meet with the top man with CSX to pitch the idea of creating the bunker at the four star resort. This way, the meeting remained a secret. They called  the bunker idea “Project Greek Island.”

The deal Ike pitched was logical and convincing. First, the location was only 250 miles away from D.C. and there were adequate roads, rail connections, and even a serviceable airstrip nearby. Second, it was remote enough to avoid scrutiny during construction. Third, because the government already did business with and subsidized the railroad, which owned the Greenbrier, the money required to build and then lease the facility from CSX would be relatively inconspicuous. It was certainly less conspicuous than if the government were to suddenly funnel massive amounts of cash to a remote but famous playground to the wealthy.

Excavating both the bunker and the West Virginia Wing

of the Greenbrier in 1959. Photo from the Greenbrier

CSX agreed to terms and construction began in 1958. The Greenbrier announced it was building the West Virginia wing, which would accommodate exhibition halls and guest rooms. Contractors hauled in and poured 50,000 tons of concrete into the hole that workers carved into the shale hillside; imported from Ohio and installed four massive blast-proof doors from the Mosler Safe Co.; and even installed more than 110 urinals into what was described as exhibition hall space. Three years later and after having maintained an incredible degree of project secrecy, the bunker was finished. It contained: decontamination chambers; 18 dormitories for 1,100 people; a power plant and purification equipment including 25,000 gallon water storage tanks; three 14,000 gallon diesel fuel tanks; sophisticated communications equipment; a medical clinic with hospital beds and operating rooms; TV and radio broadcasting studios; and a cafeteria and meeting rooms.

One of the four blast doors at the bunker

made by Mosler Safe Co. in Ohio.

Photo from The Greenbrier

A company called Forsythe Associates was created under the guise of being the TV maintenance folks for the hotel. Their real job was to maintain the electronics and operate the security and machinery involved with keeping the bunker operational. The bunker was staffed and ready to go around the clock every day of the year with 60 days worth of food in stock at all times. The food buys raised no suspicion because it was bought in bulk by a hotel. It all worked smoothly for 30 years.

Then, a nosy reporter named Ted Gup spilled the beans in a story published in the Washington Post on May 21, 1992 called The Last Resort. Since the feasibility of the bunker was based on maintaining secrecy, the government figured the whole idea had been rendered useless. Decommissioning steps began the very next day and took three years to complete. 

No one knows how Gup found out about the facility or where he got so much information on it. There is a theory that the government leaked the information because the bunker was an obsolete drain on resources and it wanted to stop leasing the facility from the Greenbrier. Gup never wrote about how much the bunker cost to build and lease per year but it must have been quite a chunk of taxpayer cash.

“The Greenbrier was faced with what to do with this facility,” the tour guide explained. “That’s when a new company called CSX-IP was started up and they use the space now. Since this is such a secure facility, CSX-IP now uses it to store important documents for lots of clients. That’s why no cameras are allowed and every move we make while we are in the bunker is watched on security cameras.”

The tour guide admitted that after the bunker was decommissioned, the entire facility was gutted to remove asbestos so little of what remains on display for tourists is original. He said most of the bunk beds were recycled and are in use in military facilities elsewhere. However, there are old outdated pieces of equipment scattered about that were original like some medical and communications equipment—enough to give visitors an idea of what it would have been like to have to live in the bunker. The layout of the bunker and its tunnels and blast doors remain original and intact.

The Greenbrier, just as it did when the bunker was operational but hidden in plain sight, uses the massive room where staffs were to establish emergency offices as exhibition hall space. The tour guide did not show us the room where the Senate would have met but the theater-like room where the House would have convened was open for inspection.

How would today's lawmakers get along in the bunker's

dormitories? Photo from The Greenbrier

A reconstructed dormitory room remains on display. The room, one of 16 that once existed, is perhaps 25 yards long and 20 yards wide. Against the walls, there are rows of the original narrow Spartan bunkbeds and cold metal lockers. There was a common toilet facility next door along with a tiny lounge area. The tour guide explained that after every election, crews would reassign bunks to new members as necessary. This is where I can envision some tough moments for our sequestered lawmakers. It would, no doubt, be a stressful experience for folks used to life as members of Congress. Squabbles would surely occur and fists would most likely swing.

Much has changed since the bunker’s secret heyday. The hotel, once approaching bankruptcy, was bought by West Virginia coal executive Jim Justice, who is a candidate for Governor in the 2016 general election. Justice seems to have infused new life into the famous 200-year-old resort. There’s a growing and popular PGA event held there annually; the New Orleans Saints hold their training camps in modern new facilities on the grounds; and occupancy at the hotel is nearly always full.

Whether you stay there as a guest or just drop by for the day, a visit to the Greenbrier is worth the trip to at least see the bunker, learn about its history, and reflect upon the protective lengths our nation once went to for the legislative branch of government in the event of nuclear war.