Chapter 1

December 30, 1970

The day shift had gone in that morning. The coal seam was low — reports describe miners working in a space only about three feet high, far back from the entrance.

The White House later recorded the time of the explosion as about 12:20 p.m. Snow was beginning to fall on the narrow mountain roads as word spread through the hollows.

It was the deadliest coal-mine disaster in the United States since Farmington, West Virginia, in 1968. No American coal-mine disaster in the half century since has killed more people.

Chapter 2

The One Survivor

A. T. Collins worked the conveyor belt. He was near the mine entrance when the explosion came.

According to the Kentucky Historical Society's account, the blast threw him some sixty feet out of the mine and into the road. The state historical marker puts it simply: "A lone survivor was blown out of the mine." He spent about two weeks in the hospital.

His daughter, Ramona Crawford, was 23. Fifty years later she told the Lexington Herald-Leader how she talked her way past state troopers to reach the mine and find her father alive — the only one.

Chapter 3

Who Were the 38?

They were fathers, sons, brothers, cousins and neighbors. According to a federal report cited by the Herald-Leader, the 38 men left behind 34 widows and 103 children.

Thirty of them were from neighboring Clay County; the rest were from Leslie. Some families lost more than one man: the memorial records brothers who died together and brothers-in-law killed side by side.

Their names, ages and families are recorded on the memorial wall at the mine site today. We have not reproduced the full list here until it can be checked against the official record.

Chapter 4

What Caused the Explosion?

The state historical marker summarizes the finding: an explosion "caused by coal dust that was ignited by explosives."

In plain terms: fine coal dust, when it builds up and is stirred into the air, can burn explosively. A blast underground can lift that dust, ignite it, and send a wave of fire and pressure racing through every connected passage — which is how one explosion reached every corner of the No. 15 and No. 16 workings.

Investigators found traces of dynamite and Primacord — a detonating cord — in the mine, materials not permitted for underground coal mining under the new federal law.

Chapter 5

What Was Known Before

The mines had opened in 1970. State and federal inspections during that year found potentially dangerous conditions, and the Kentucky Historical Society says safety recommendations made in November were "indifferently complied with or ignored all together."

Contemporary reporting, summarized in later accounts, said federal inspectors cited hazards on November 19 — including coal-dust accumulations and electrical spark hazards — and set a deadline of December 22. The understaffed Bureau of Mines did not get back to reinspect by that date.

That understaffing was widely reported at the time: the agency was said to need roughly 750 inspectors and to have about 499.

Chapter 6

The Law That Was Supposed to Protect Them

The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 was passed after the Farmington disaster killed 78 men in West Virginia. It was the strongest federal mine-safety law to that point: mandatory inspections, stricter rules on dust, ventilation and explosives, and federal power to order miners out of dangerous areas.

Hurricane Creek immediately became a test of whether that law worked in practice. After the bodies were recovered, an investigation described what ExploreKYHistory summarizes as a "nearly absolute failure" to enforce it.

Chapter 7

"The Hurricane Creek Massacre"

Tom Bethell, a writer who had covered the coalfields for The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg and later became research director of the United Mine Workers, investigated the disaster soon afterward. His work was published in 1972 by Harper & Row as The Hurricane Creek Massacre.

The choice of word was deliberate. Bethell argued that these deaths were not a freak accident but the predictable result of known violations, ignored warnings and a federal agency that was not enforcing its own new law.

Those are Bethell's arguments, not official findings. Some of them line up with the official record — the presence of non-permitted explosives, unresolved hazards, a missed reinspection. Others, including allegations about what the owners knew, were disputed.

In a House Labor Subcommittee inquiry in 1971, mine owner Charles Finley testified only under subpoena. He denied knowing about the illegal primer cord and denied an allegation, raised in testimony, that he had bribed a mine inspector.

Chapter 8

Coal and Leslie County

In 1970, coal was the backbone of work in Leslie and Clay counties. The New York Times wrote at the time that there was "little industry but coal."

Eastern Kentucky coal production had fallen to a low around 1960 and climbed again by 1970. Small mines like Finley's — non-union operations producing coal hauled out by truck — gave men steady paychecks close to home.

That was the hard bargain at the center of this story: mining supported families, and mining could take a family's father, son and brother on the same afternoon.

Chapter 9

The Aftermath

Rescuers recovered the men within about a day, working as a heavy snow fell. The bodies were brought to a school gymnasium in Hyden for families to identify.

President Nixon issued a statement the next day promising a full federal and state investigation. The mine was sealed until inspectors could enter on January 2.

Congress held hearings in 1971. What penalties, prosecutions or lawsuits followed, and how they ended, is something we are still verifying, so we don't describe them here.

Chapter 10

Did Hurricane Creek Change Mine Safety?

It is tempting to say the disaster changed mine safety forever. The record supports something narrower.

Hurricane Creek put a spotlight on enforcement of the 1969 law — on inspector shortages, on reinspection deadlines, on whether violations were actually being penalized. It fed congressional scrutiny of the Bureau of Mines at a time when miners and reformers were already pressing hard on the same issues.

Federal mine-safety oversight was reorganized in the years that followed, culminating in the 1977 Mine Act. Hurricane Creek was one of several pressures behind that change, not the only one.

Chapter 11

What Remains Today

In 2010, Kentucky designated the Hurricane Creek mine site a state historic site. The Hurricane Creek Miner Memorial opened there in 2011.

A walkway passes under 38 wooden gateways, each hung with a miner's hard hat. A bronze miner stands before walls listing the men and their families. Kentucky Historical Marker 2359, dedicated October 8, 2011, stands at the entrance at 1370 Hurricane Creek Road, near Hyden.