Working For The Company

This is a continuation of the last post.

Photos from Cabin Creek, West Virginia

If you thought the graveyard would have been interesting - I was there to get photos of this bunker. The graveyard was a bonus and would have been hard to miss since you have to walk through it to reach the bunker.

I purposely kept the bunker out of the previous post. If you were to stand in front of the headstone in the last photo in the previous post - looking to the right you would be 30 feet from the bunker. I find that extremely interesting. Especially since this is a company bunker. When I say company bunker I mean like the people who were against the miners in the battle for Blair Mountain - the coal company.

This is why I love to learn about history. There are a few things I found interesting about this whole setup. First of all it is a company bunker in a mainly immigrant miner cemetery. It was obviously built in the graveyard on purpose. Some graves are older than the bunker. This date is on the top left hand corner of the bunker - March 1913.

I think it is kind of sad in one way because it was ultimately the company that caused the immigrants to be buried there, most likely - literally, and they have a company reminder watching over them for eternity.

Another thing I found interesting is the orientation of the bunker. It is about 45 degrees from facing down the hollow. You would think in order for this to be strategic it would need to be faced with an unobstructed view of the main hollow - the most likely point of entry. In this photo - I’m standing in the bunker and looking down the hollow. For this to make sense to me the ledge would need to be on the same line as the bottom of the photo which would put the opening facing in the logical direction. But there again it was the coal company and the coal companies have never been known for their logic and reasoning.

The bunker seems to be built to withstand a nuclear blast. The ceiling is constructed of a six inch slab of concrete with a row of four inch bricks braced up underneath by 1/2″ thick solid steel bars. The walls are 8 to 10 inches of concrete and brick - mostly concrete. I sure can’t think of a single weapon in that era that could touch this structure. Especially anything available for coal miners. Maybe the miners could pepper them with buckshot when the company men come out to relieve themselves.

To this day, the bunker sits quietly on the hill overlooking the entrance to the coal company property with a cemetery of immigrant miners and local residents at its back.

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If you add this post with the last post it kind of puts a whole new light on the story in making it even more mysterious. You couldn’t pry me out of this particular time in history at the moment.

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Adding -
It didn’t take much looking to find some answers. These links, relating to the 1912 -1913 mine wars, explain who the occupants of this bunker most likely were… Baldwin-Felts mine guards. This is an interesting story and like Blair Mountain it relates a very important time in history.

West Virginia’s Mine Wars
Paint and Cabin Creek Murders
Baldwin-Felts mine guards - Gun Thugs and Heroes