| Chapter 1: | Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood |
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Many of Buffalo Creek’s people had worked their way out of the hardships their parents had known in the old coal camps, and the poverty their grandparents had known in the remote mountains of Appalachia. One of them said, “Looking back, the men and women of Buffalo Creek remember it as a secure, honest, comfortable life.” The expansion of federal social welfare programs also had helped Appalachia and Buffalo Creek in the 1960s. In fact, President John F. Kennedy had visited Buffalo Creek during his campaign for the presidency. So Buffalo Creek already had some name recognition in the national press and some of its people were proud of the fact.4
If there was a sense of security, however, it was not held by all of Buffalo Creek’s people. And, if there was a sense of security, it was about to be sorely tested as a consequence of a series of decisions and events that began at least as far back as 1947. (A brief chronology of some of these events is presented in table 1.1.)5 It was in that year that Lorado Coal Company opened mine #5 on a steep hillside about one mile above Three Forks. It created a gob pile for the mine waste on the hillside adjacent to one of the tributaries of Buffalo Creek. Additional gob piles were created as needed. In the 1960s, the pace and scope of coal mining operations above Three Forks grew rapidly. In 1964 Buffalo Mining Company (BMC) purchased the mines and equipment of Lorado Coal Company and expanded mining operations all along Buffalo Creek, especially at Three Forks. It built a dam (#1) across Middle Fork and created a gob pond behind the dam.6 As coal production accelerated at the mine, another dam (#2) and a second gob pond were built in 1966.