The Millfield Mine

Ohio · USA · Cemetery

Ohio's worst mining disaster, and the ponies that heard it coming.

On the fifth of November 1930, an explosion tore through the Sunday Creek Coal Company's No. 6 mine at Millfield in Athens County, southeast Ohio. Eighty two men were killed. It remains the worst mining disaster in the state's history. A cemetery at Chauncey had opened the week before, and it was filled in a single day.

The men were not alone underground. Mine ponies worked these seams, kept below for their whole working lives, hauling coal along the low galleries. They died too, and it is the ponies that the story here is about.

On the anniversary, if you know the ground and where to stand, people say you feel it before you hear it. A shiver comes up through the soles of your feet, out of the workings below. Then the sound arrives, muffled by the earth between: hooves, a great many of them, moving fast in the dark. The ponies are running. Behind them, coming up the gallery, is the fire. Listen and you hear them scream as it reaches them, and then the ground is quiet again and you are standing in a field in Athens County. Of every story in this archive, this is the one where the underlying event is best documented and the least in need of embellishment.

FAQ

Hvor ligger The Millfield Mine?

The Millfield Mine ligger i Ohio, USA.