A young girl grows up in the sooty shadow of the coal mines of West Virginia When the whistle blows, Christina knows her father is coming home. Every day he emerges from the pit with his skin caked in coal dust. He’s 50 now and he’s been working in the mines since he was 12 years old. It’s dangerous, backbreaking labor, but he does it because he loves his family. As far as Christina is concerned, there is no job in the world more honorable than digging coal. Danger is always close at hand in the mines. There are cave-ins, explosions, and diseases. But no matter what happens, Christina and her family always stick together. This meticulously researched look at life in a coal camp shows that no matter how dark the pit, love will always shine through.

Tucked into a remote canyon in northeastern New Mexico, Sugarite Coal Camp created a true melting pot for mostly immigrant miners slinging picks and shovels. The coal they labored to produce heated homes across several states for decades. In a bountiful place long used by native peoples and then by cattle ranchers, coal mining debuted in Sugarite (Sugar-eet') Canyon in the early 1900s. The St. Louis, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific Company quickly ramped up full-scale mining operations, building an orderly town of sturdy block houses perched upon canyon slopes. A store, school, post office, and clubhouse served camp residents, many hailing from Eastern Europe, Italy, Greece, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Mexico, and even Japan. With the rumble of coal cars as background music, poor mining families lived a rich life making wine, dancing, and playing sports. Today, visitors to Sugarite Canyon State Park tour ghostly remains of the camp, one of the few accessible to the public.

COAL CAMPWhen two young friends are caught up in the turmoil of changes in the coalfields in the middle of the twentieth century, they take extremely different routes to improving means of extracting coal from the earth--one through mechanization and the other through unionization--and become bitter enemies. But after years of conflicts, getting married and raising children, their friendship is rekindled when they are hopelessly trapped in a mine cave-in. This is the story of coal miners--their lives, loves, hopes, dreams and deaths.

In this fictionalized memoir based on the author's childhood, a six-year-old boy describes his life in a coal mining town in northern New Mexico during World War II.

Memories from old-timers in Southern West Virginia

Garcia's novel focuses on life and death in the coal mines and camps of 1930s northern New Mexico.

A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia.

A history of Eastern Utah's coal mining legacy.

In the early to mid-1900s, the coal camps of Reliance, Dines, Winton, and Stansbury emerged from the hillsides and desert in southwestern Wyoming due to the increased need for coal. The miners and their families who came to these coal camps were a true melting pot, bringing with them different races, religions, and customs from all over the world. They forged unique communities and worked and lived harmoniously, depending on one another for survival, entertainment, and camaraderie. Although distanced from one another, the camps were integrated by the mines and activities of the Union Pacific Coal Company, and unified by School District No. 7, which provided the educational foundation for their children. The people who lived in these camps contributed significantly to the development of southwestern Wyoming, the economy of the state, and the welfare of the United States during wartime.