Manchin administration officials moved this week to have Blair Mountain - site of the landmark 1921 coalfield labor battle - removed from the National Register of Historic Places.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Manchin administration officials moved this week to have Blair Mountain - site of the landmark 1921 coalfield labor battle - removed from the National Register of Historic Places.
Randall Reid-Smith, director of the Division of Culture and History, wrote to the National Park Service to ask federal officials to take Blair Mountain off the register.
The move comes a week after "the Keeper," the Park Service official who oversees the historic register, made the listing. Labor advocates, historians and environmental activists had been promoting the listing for years.
Jacqueline Proctor, a spokeswoman for the Division of Culture and History, which oversees the state Historic Preservation Office, said the agency acted after a coal company lawyer raised questions about whether objections from area property owners were properly counted.
"There were some that were sent directly to the Keeper, and we may not have counted them," Proctor said.
Under federal rules, if a majority of property owners in an area proposed for the historic register object, that area cannot be listed.
Originally, state officials counted 22 objections out of the 50 landowners in the Blair Mountain district. But after reviewing the matter, the state discovered there were actually 30 objections out of those 50 landowners, Proctor said Monday afternoon.
Proctor would not immediately provide a list of the 50 landowners or of the 30 who objected. She said the state would not release them without a formal Freedom of Information Act request, which the Gazette forwarded to her Monday afternoon.
Blair Gardner, a lawyer for three coal companies - Massey Energy, Arch Coal and Natural Resource Partners - raised questions about the count of landowner objections.
Gardner's clients had previously objected to the historic listing, and raised questions about the way the state had drawn the map and whether the map allowed all proper parcels inside the historic district to be properly identified.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Manchin administration officials moved this week to have Blair Mountain - site of the landmark 1921 coalfield labor battle - removed from the National Register of Historic Places.
Randall Reid-Smith, director of the Division of Culture and History, wrote to the National Park Service to ask federal officials to take Blair Mountain off the register.
The move comes a week after "the Keeper," the Park Service official who oversees the historic register, made the listing. Labor advocates, historians and environmental activists had been promoting the listing for years.
Jacqueline Proctor, a spokeswoman for the Division of Culture and History, which oversees the state Historic Preservation Office, said the agency acted after a coal company lawyer raised questions about whether objections from area property owners were properly counted.
"There were some that were sent directly to the Keeper, and we may not have counted them," Proctor said.
Under federal rules, if a majority of property owners in an area proposed for the historic register object, that area cannot be listed.
Originally, state officials counted 22 objections out of the 50 landowners in the Blair Mountain district. But after reviewing the matter, the state discovered there were actually 30 objections out of those 50 landowners, Proctor said Monday afternoon.
Proctor would not immediately provide a list of the 50 landowners or of the 30 who objected. She said the state would not release them without a formal Freedom of Information Act request, which the Gazette forwarded to her Monday afternoon.
Blair Gardner, a lawyer for three coal companies - Massey Energy, Arch Coal and Natural Resource Partners - raised questions about the count of landowner objections.
Gardner's clients had previously objected to the historic listing, and raised questions about the way the state had drawn the map and whether the map allowed all proper parcels inside the historic district to be properly identified.
Efforts to preserve Blair Mountain date back to the early 1990s, when UMW officials and environmentalists teamed up to fight strip-mining proposed by non-union Massey Energy. More recently, Massey and several land companies filed suit to stop the state historic preservation office's support for the national site designation.
In 1921, armed union coal miners marched from Marmet toward Logan to confront Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, whose deputies and specialty commissioner guards were defending non-union coal mines from UMW organizers. Federal troops and airplanes eventually stopped the march. Many of the miners and their leaders were then prosecuted for treason.
The battle that developed along Spruce Fork Ridge on Blair Mountain was the largest armed labor conflict in U.S. history, a pivotal event often forgotten today.
A 1991 study had identified six critical historic sites covering about 30 acres, but preservation advocates expanded their nomination to include a much larger area.
Three years ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Blair Mountain as one of America's 11 most endangered historic sites.
The most recent nomination for Blair Mountain was presented by Barbara Rassmussen, a West Virginia University historian, and Harvard Ayers, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University. Ayers discovered 10 major battle sites along the 10-mile stretch covered by the designation, including hundreds of artifacts, especially along Crooked Creek near the crest of Blair Mountain.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com
or 304-348-1702.
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