Appalachian History Series – Leeco Coal Company: Jeff, Vicco, and the Stacy Branch Fight
If you drive north out of Hazard along Kentucky 15, the road climbs and curls through Perry and Knott counties past places that once lived by the coal check. Tucked in those bends are Jeff, Vicco, Sassafras, and the Lotts Creek valley. For much of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, one company name kept appearing on mailboxes, mine portals, and regulatory filings there: Leeco.
On paper, Leeco Incorporated was one operating arm in James River Coal Company’s web of subsidiaries. In practice, it tied together underground mines like No. 68 at Jeff, earlier sections at Maces Creek and Slemp, and a controversial mountaintop removal proposal at Stacy Branch. The record left behind includes production tables, accident reports, black lung appeals, and federal court opinions that together trace how one mid sized Appalachian operator shaped both jobs and landscapes in this corner of the coalfields.
This is the story of Leeco as it appears in that paper trail and in the communities around Jeff, Vicco, and Lotts Creek.
A small Kentucky operator in the pre boom years
Leeco emerges in the federal mine safety record in the late 1970s as a fairly typical eastern Kentucky underground operator. A 1980 decision by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, dealing with Leeco Mine No. 3, describes a non union bituminous coal mine working a room and pillar section with fewer than fifty underground employees. The mine produced roughly 460,918 tons in 1978 and 489,679 tons in 1979, which placed it solidly in the mid sized tier of central Appalachian producers.
That early case turned on roof control. Inspectors found that miners were working under unsupported draw rock and that the company’s roof plan had not been fully implemented, a pattern that would recur in later Leeco operations. The decision describes the now familiar balance in Appalachian mines: production pressures on one side and a federal code of required support, ventilation, and examinations on the other.
By the early 1990s, federal production tables from the Energy Information Administration list Leeco Inc. at a London, Kentucky office address, shipping hundreds of thousands and in some years more than a million and a half tons of coal annually from its Kentucky mines. The company had moved beyond a single small section into the networked world of multiple mines, leases, and contracts that defined the pre boom years in central Appalachia.
Becoming part of James River Coal
Leeco’s story changed course in the mid 1990s when it became part of James River Coal Company. In a later restructuring document, James River described Leeco and Bledsoe as operating companies that it acquired through Transco Coal Company in June 1995. The purchase folded Leeco’s eastern Kentucky mines into a growing corporate portfolio that also included firms like Blue Diamond Coal and other surface and underground operations across central Appalachia.
James River organized its holdings by region. Leeco’s mines fell into the Central Appalachia segment, centered on Perry, Knott, Leslie, and surrounding counties. They fed coal to utility and industrial customers but also served as part of the company’s reserve base, backing the promises made in James River’s securities filings. In those filings, Leeco does not appear as a colorful historical character or a coal camp town. It appears as tonnage, seam thickness, and recoverable reserves.
On the ground, however, Leeco still looked like an eastern Kentucky company. Business listings in later years place its addresses at 100 Coal Drive in London, 14 Logan Drive in Jeff, and Leeco Road in the coal camp of Sassafras, just across the Knott County line. For miners and their families, the company was not a line on a New York prospectus but the operator that signed the paycheck and controlled the portal.
Maces Creek and the problem of the roof
One of Leeco’s best documented late twentieth century operations was the Maces Creek Mine in the Hazard No. 4 seam near Viper in Perry County. In the late 1990s, the mine employed about forty underground workers and produced around 2,100 tons per shift on two production shifts and one maintenance shift, according to a mine fatality investigation by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
On June 12, 1998, a roof fall at Maces Creek killed a miner on the night shift. MSHA’s investigation described fractured roof rock and inadequate support in the working place, the sort of conditions that miners throughout the region recognized immediately. The company revised its roof control practices, but the record suggests that roof conditions were a continuing problem.
That same summer, Leeco petitioned for a modification of certain federal safety standards at the mine, asking permission to alter the required method of weekly examinations because of “adverse roof and rib conditions.” The petition, documented in the Federal Register, lays out in official language the reality that miners already knew underground: the roof was bad and needed constant attention.
Maces Creek shows how Leeco’s operations sat at the intersection of high production expectations and the persistent hazards of underground mining in thin Appalachian seams. Roof falls did not just threaten individual workers. They also triggered a chain of inspections, citations, and modifications that helped define the company’s regulatory reputation.
Remote controls, No. 74 Mine, and a new kind of hazard
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Leeco and many other operators were adopting remote controlled continuous miners as a way to keep machine operators away from the unsupported face. The technology was supposed to save lives. It also created new ways to die.
On January 21, 2000, at Leeco’s No. 74 Mine near Slemp in Perry County, a 40 year old miner was fatally injured while operating a Joy 12CM12 continuous miner by radio remote control. MSHA’s fatal accident report describes the machine tramming in a crosscut when the victim became pinned between the coal rib and the cutting head. He died from crushing injuries.
In a later national “Remote Control Fatal Accident Analysis” covering the years 1995 through 2000, MSHA used the No. 74 accident as one of several case studies. The analysis noted that in many of these deaths, operators put themselves in hazardous positions between the machine and the rib or stood too close to moving equipment, often in low seams with poor visibility.
The report’s lessons are sobering. Remote controls moved miners back from the immediate face, but they also allowed powerful machines to move quickly in tight entries where a misstep or a momentary loss of orientation could be fatal. For Leeco, the No. 74 accident added another entry to a growing list of deaths and serious injuries tied to its mines.
Mine 68 at Jeff and Vicco
If there is a single operation that defines Leeco’s early twenty first century history, it is the No. 68 Mine near Jeff and Vicco in Perry County. State licensing records from the Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing for 2008 list “LEECO INC 68 (67), P.O. Box 309, Jeff, KY 41751” as an underground bituminous coal mine in the Hazard District, with local contact Joseph G. Evans.
By 2007, the Global Energy Monitor database shows Mine 68 as one of the large underground producers in the area, reporting roughly 790,000 tons of coal in a single year and employing well over one hundred miners. The mine worked central Appalachian coal using continuous miners and shuttle cars, feeding conveyor belts that carried coal to the surface and on toward blending and preparation plants.
In practical terms, that meant regular paychecks for families in Jeff, Vicco, Sassafras, and the surrounding hollows. Business directories from the period place Leeco offices on Logan Drive at Jeff and along Leeco Road at Sassafras. The company name was stamped on helmets, lunch buckets, and the vinyl decals on pickup truck windows. For many miners, working at 68 meant a chance to stay in the region instead of driving long distances to nonunion mines in West Virginia or farther west.
The regulatory record suggests that Mine 68 was also a troubled operation. MSHA’s enforcement history for the mine shows a steady stream of significant and substantial citations for ventilation, methane monitoring, and other core safety duties in the late 2000s. One 2014 FMSHRC decision reviewing a ventilation citation and order at the mine notes that inspectors were conducting a special “ventilation blitz” in February 2010 and that Leeco’s violation history included multiple serious ventilation violations in the fifteen months before that inspection.
Bobby Smith and the 2010 fatality underground
On June 24, 2010, a 29 year old continuous miner operator named Bobby L. Smith Jr. was killed at Leeco’s No. 68 Mine. National memorial lists compiled after the Upper Big Branch disaster record his death simply: “Bobby L. Smith, Jr., 6 24 10, 29, Leeco 68 Mine, James River Coal.”
MSHA’s accident investigation, summarized in mining trade press and local news coverage, reported that Smith was operating a remote controlled continuous miner when he was pinned between the machine and the coal rib on a section at the mine. The story echoed the earlier No. 74 accident and other remote control fatalities across the country.
Regional reporting by outlets such as the Lexington Herald Leader and analysis by worker centered publications like the World Socialist Web Site placed Smith’s death in a broader pattern. They noted that his was one of multiple fatalities in Kentucky mines that year and that Mine 68 already had an extensive history of serious safety citations.
In the months that followed, Mine 68 became one of the early targets of the “impact inspections” MSHA launched nationwide after the Upper Big Branch explosion. In April 2011, an unannounced impact inspection at Leeco 68 produced thirty citations, the most of any mine inspected that month. MSHA’s own summary shows that inspectors issued citations and orders for failures in ventilation, methane monitoring, and roof control, among other issues.
A second impact inspection in August 2011 resulted in twenty more citations. An FMSHRC judge later described impact inspections as concentrated efforts aimed at “troubled mines with a history of violations,” a description that clearly applied to Leeco 68 by that point.
The record does not preserve every conversation in the mine office or on the section phone after those inspections. What it does show is a mine that relied on remote controlled machinery and high production, struggled to stay in compliance, and lost at least one young miner in the process.
Dust, disease, and black lung cases
Leeco’s presence in the coalfields extends beyond active mines and accident reports into the slower, quieter history of occupational disease. In the federal black lung system, operators are named as “responsible employers” when former miners seek benefits for coal workers’ pneumoconiosis.
Indexes of unpublished decisions from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Benefits Review Board show Leeco as a party in multiple black lung appeals in the late 1990s and 2000s. Cases such as Asher v. Leeco, Inc., Combs v. Leeco, Inc., and P.S. v. Leeco, Inc. list the company, sometimes together with James River Coal Company as the insurer, on the employer side of claims brought by former underground workers or their survivors.
The details vary from case to case, but the pattern is clear. Men who had spent years in Leeco mines later developed disabling lung disease and turned to the federal program that has long been one of the only ways Appalachian miners can seek compensation for black lung. Those claims, and the appeals that followed, are part of Leeco’s story just as much as the production numbers in EIA tables.
Stacy Branch and the fight over the streams
Leeco’s most visible conflict with local residents and environmental advocates did not involve an underground section at all. It centered on a high ridge above Lotts Creek and the small communities around Sassafras, at the Perry Knott County line, where the company proposed a large mountaintop removal project known as the Stacy Branch Surface Mine.
In the mid 2000s, Leeco applied for coverage under Kentucky’s coal general NPDES permit for discharges from the proposed Stacy Branch operation. An Environmental Protection Agency review of Kentucky’s permitting practices later listed “KYG046177, Leeco Inc., Stacy Branch Surface Mine” among the general permit notices of intent and noted that coverage for the mine was granted in 2007 with a socioeconomic justification.
By 2010 and 2011, local and national groups were sounding alarms about what that permit and related approvals would allow. Earthjustice, representing clients that included Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, summarized the proposal this way: the Army Corps of Engineers had issued a Clean Water Act section 404 permit allowing Leeco to bury about 3.5 miles of headwater streams in Knott and Perry counties under valley fills and waste from the Stacy Branch mine. Hundreds of people lived within a half mile of the proposed operation, and the project would overshadow Lotts Creek Community School, also known as Cordia School, which served about 325 students from kindergarten through high school.
Residents and advocates argued that the Corps and Kentucky regulators had approved the mine without fully considering the growing scientific evidence on health impacts from large scale surface mining, including elevated rates of cancer, birth defects, and cardiovascular disease in communities near mountaintop removal operations.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth documented local organizing against the permit, including community meetings, trips to escort Environmental Protection Agency officials through the affected region, and campaigns focused on protecting Lotts Creek and the school below the proposed mine. For residents, Stacy Branch was not an abstract case about administrative law. It was about whether blasting, dust, diesel traffic, and valley fills would reshape their watershed and their children’s daily lives.
In 2012, Earthjustice and its partners filed suit in federal court challenging the Corps’ decision to issue the Stacy Branch permit, arguing that the agency had failed to account for public health and cumulative impacts as required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The litigation unfolded in several stages. In 2013, a federal district court initially upheld the Corps’ permit. Later that year, however, Earthjustice won a preliminary injunction that blocked Leeco from beginning valley fills and other major work in the streams while the appeal went forward.
In January 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld that injunction, rejecting Leeco’s request to start mining in the streams before a final decision. Earthjustice called it a “small victory with potentially big implications,” because it prevented the company from rendering the lawsuit moot by destroying the contested streams before the courts ruled.
On the core legal question, however, the outlook was different. In its summary of the case, Earthjustice notes that the Sixth Circuit ultimately upheld the Stacy Branch permit itself, holding that the Army Corps could treat public health concerns as beyond the scope of its decision when issuing section 404 mining permits.
Even beyond Stacy Branch, Leeco figured in broader fights over Kentucky’s coal general permits. Petitions filed in 2010 and 2015 asking the EPA to withdraw Kentucky’s delegated NPDES authority cited effluent data from Leeco operations that showed selenium levels above chronic water quality standards, yet still received coverage under the general permit. Those filings placed the company among several others as examples of what petitioners described as a systemic failure to enforce water quality protections in coal country.
Leeco after the boom
Leeco’s mines did not stand apart from the larger economic tides that swept through central Appalachia. As the coal market weakened in the 2010s, nearby operations saw layoffs and closures. Regional news outlets reported in 2016, for example, that more than 150 workers were laid off from Pine Branch Mining along Leeco Road, part of a broader downturn affecting Perry, Knott, and Leslie counties.
James River Coal Company, Leeco’s corporate parent, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2014, listing its subsidiaries, including Leeco, in detailed creditor and asset schedules. Those court records show Leeco not only as a coal producer but also as a bundle of mineral leases, surface tracts, and equipment whose fate would be decided in a Richmond courtroom far from Jeff or Sassafras.
Business directory entries and mapping sites suggest that Leeco’s office addresses in Jeff and Sassafras lingered in public databases even as mines idled or changed hands, a reminder of how long corporate names can live on in records after the last load of coal leaves the tipple.
Reading Leeco’s history from the record
Leeco never became a household word outside the Appalachian coalfields, but its paper trail tells a familiar regional story.
In the underground record, it appears as an operator that pushed significant tonnage through thin seams and contended with the same roof falls, methane hazards, and remote control accidents that plagued many eastern Kentucky mines. fatalities at Maces Creek, No. 74, and No. 68, along with the pattern of serious violations that drew impact inspections, show how safety lapses and production demands intersected at particular portals and on particular sections.
In the health record, Leeco surfaces in black lung cases where former miners and their survivors tried to prove years of exposure underground and to secure modest benefits in the face of legal opposition.
In the environmental record, it stands as the company behind a mountaintop removal proposal that would have buried miles of streams above a small Appalachian school, and as one of several examples in petitions criticizing Kentucky’s coal permitting practices.
Taken together, those threads show how a single operating company can link underground work, surface mining, water quality, and public health in one corner of the mountains. For communities along Kentucky 15, Leeco was jobs, risk, controversy, and court cases. For historians, it is a reminder that the history of Appalachian coal is not only written in camp photographs and company brochures, but also in accident narratives, petition numbers, docket captions, and the lives of miners and neighbors who rarely appear in corporate reports.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Final Report Fatality #39 June 24 2010.” 2010. https://www.msha.gov/data-reports/fatality-reports/2010/fatality-39-june-24-2010/final-report. Mine Safety and Health Administration
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Coal Mine Fatal Accident Investigation Report Fall of Roof Leeco Inc. Maces Creek Mine Hazard No. 4 Seam Perry County Kentucky June 12 1998.” 1998. https://arlweb.msha.gov/FATALS/1998/FTL98C07.HTM. MSHA
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Coal Mining Fatalgrams and Fatal Investigation Reports 2000.” Includes “Leeco Inc. Mine No. 74 Fatal Investigation Report Fatality 1 January 21 2000.” 2000. https://arlweb.msha.gov/fatals/indices/fabc2000.htm. MSHA
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Impact Inspections Results August 2011.” Table includes Leeco Incorporated Mine No. 68 Perry County Kentucky. 2011. https://www.msha.gov/sites/default/files/News_Media/Impact_Inspections/MSHA-Impact-Inspections-August-2011.pdf. Mine Safety and Health Administration
Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. “2011 Mines Licensed.” 2011. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Mines%20Licensed/2011%20Mines%20Licensed.pdf. Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
Kentucky Office of Mine Safety and Licensing. “2000 Annual Report.” 2001. https://eec.ky.gov/Natural-Resources/Mining/Mine-Safety/safety-inspections-and-licensing/Annual%20Reports/2000%20Annual%20Report.pdf. Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
U.S. Energy Information Administration. “1998 Coal Production coalpublic1998.xls.” 1999. https://www.eia.gov/coal/data/public/xls/coalpublic1998.xls. U.S. Energy Information Administration+1
U.S. Energy Information Administration. “1999 Coal Production coalpublic1999.xls.” 2000. https://www.eia.gov/coal/data/public/xls/coalpublic1999.xls. U.S. Energy Information Administration+1
United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Coal Mine Fatal Accident Investigation Reports Index.” Entry for Leeco Inc. Mine No. 74 Hazard District Perry County Kentucky. 2000. https://arlweb.msha.gov/fatals/fab00/c07.pdf.
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. “Leeco Incorporated.” Docket KENT 2004 65 ALJ decision January 21 2005. 2005. https://www.fmshrc.gov/sites/default/files/decisions/alj/kt2004-65.htm. Mine Safety Review Commission
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. “Leeco Inc.” Commission decision March 25 2004. 2004. https://www.fmshrc.gov/sites/default/files/decisions/commission/kent20045003252004.html. Mine Safety Review Commission
“Petitions for Modification.” Federal Register 75 no. 51 March 17 2010. Entry for Leeco Coal Company P.O. Box 309 Jeff Kentucky 41751 Mine No. 68 MSHA I.D. 15 17497. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/03/17/2010-5786/petitions-for-modification. Federal Register
“Petitions for Modification.” Federal Register 66 no. 198 October 12 2001. Entry for Leeco Inc. No. 64 Mine Perry County Kentucky. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2001-10-12/pdf/01-25691.pdf. GovInfo
U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board. “Asher v. Leeco Inc.” Black lung benefits appeal listing. 2004. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/brb/decisions (search results for “Asher v. Leeco Inc.”). DOL
U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board. “P.S. v. Leeco Inc.” Survivors’ black lung claim listing. 2009. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/brb/decisions (search results for “P.S. v. Leeco Inc.”). DOL+1
Good Jobs First. “Violation Tracker Agency Summary Leeco Incorporated.” Corporate Research Project Violation Tracker database Kentucky MSHA penalties. https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org. Violation Tracker+1
United States House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Reducing the Growing Backlog of Contested Mine Safety Cases. 111th Congress 2nd sess. Hearing held April 27 2010. Washington D.C. Government Publishing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov (hearing record). Earthjustice
U.S. Department of Labor Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Six Kentucky Coal Mines Forced to Halt Production during MSHA Impact Inspections.” News release May 6 2010. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/msha/msha20100506. DOL
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Sierra Club v. United States Army Corps of Engineers and Leeco Inc. 746 F.3d 698 6th Cir. 2014. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/commonwealth-v-u-s-888235760. vLex
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth v. United States Army Corps of Engineers. 963 F. Supp. 2d 670 W.D. Ky. 2013. https://nationalaglawcenter.org/aglaw-reporter/case-law-index/climate-change summary and opinion text. National Agricultural Law Center
Earthjustice. “Stopping Destruction at Kentucky’s Stacy Branch Coal Mine.” Case overview page on Leeco Inc. Stacy Branch mine. n.d. https://earthjustice.org/case/stopping-destruction-at-kentucky-s-stacy-branch-coal-mine. Earthjustice
Earthjustice. “Judge Halts Destruction at Kentucky Coal Mine.” Press release September 19 2013. https://earthjustice.org/press/2013/judge-halts-destruction-at-kentucky-coal-mine. Earthjustice+1
Earthjustice. “Citizen Groups Win Temporary Halt to Destruction at Kentucky Coal Mine.” Press release September 3 2013. https://earthjustice.org/press/2013/citizen-groups-win-temporary-halt-to-destruction-at-kentucky-coal-mine. Earthjustice+1
Earthjustice. “Community Members Fight to Save Schoolchildren and Families from Mountaintop Removal.” Press release February 11 2014. https://earthjustice.org/press/2014/community-members-fight-to-save-schoolchildren-and-families-from-mountaintop-removal. Earthjustice
Earthjustice. “Citizen Appeal to District Court Decision on Leeco Inc. Stacy Branch Mine in Kentucky.” Appellate brief PDF. 2013. https://earthjustice.org/document/citizen-appeal-to-district-court-decision-on-leeco-inc-stacy-branch-mine-in-kentucky. Earthjustice
“Complaint Leeco Lotts Creek Permit.” Kentuckians for the Commonwealth Sierra Club and allies v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Leeco Inc. Civil complaint challenging Corps issuance of Stacy Branch §404 permit. 2012. https://www.scribd.com/document/110409818/Complaint-Leeco-Lotts-Creek-Permit. Scribd+1
Appalachian Citizens Law Center. “ACLC and Partners Win Injunction in Leeco Mines Case.” News release January 28 2014. https://aclc.org/2014/01/28/aclc-and-partners-win-injunction-in-leeco-mines-case. Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center
Appalachian Citizens Law Center. “ACLC and Co Counsels Tell Federal Appeals Court Proposed Eastern Kentucky Mine Poses Health Environmental Dangers.” News release February 18 2014. https://aclc.org/2014/02/18/aclc-and-co-counsels-tell-federal-appeals-court-proposed-eastern-kentucky-mine-poses-health-environmental-dangers. Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “Corps of Engineers Challenged for Failing to Look at Human Cost of Valley Fill.” Press release October 17 2012. https://kftc.org/press/releases/corps-engineers-challenged-failing-look-human-cost-valley-fill. KFTC 40th Anniversary+1
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “Lotts Creek.” Issue and campaign page on Stacy Branch and Lotts Creek community organizing. n.d. https://archive.kftc.org/issues/lotts-creek. Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
United States Environmental Protection Agency. Review of Clean Water Act Section 402 Permitting for Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia. Program Evaluation Report 2010. Includes NPDES permit data for Leeco Inc. Stacy Branch mine. https://www.epa.gov (Appalachia CWA §402 permitting review). nawm.org
“Kentuckians for the Commonwealth v. United States Army Corps of Engineers.” Environmental Law Reporter Case Summary 44 ELR 20054 2014. https://www.elr.info/litigation/44/8/kentuckians-commonwealth-v-united-states-army-corps-engineers. Environmental Law Reporter
Dori Hjalmarson. “Vicco Man Killed Thursday by Mining Machine Officials Said.” Lexington Herald Leader June 26 2010. https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article44037831.html. Kentucky
Naomi Spencer. “Another Kentucky Coal Mining Fatality.” World Socialist Web Site June 26 2010. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/06/kent-j26.html. World Socialist Web Site
“Judge Temporarily Blocks Work at Planned Surface Mine in Eastern Kentucky.” Lexington Herald Leader September 4 2013. https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article44442384.html. Kentucky
“Proposed Eastern Kentucky Mine Poses Health Dangers.” Lexington Herald Leader February 11 2014. https://www.kentucky.com/news/special-reports/fifty-years-of-night/article44471046.html. Kentucky
Erica Peterson. “Two Kentucky Mines Cited in MSHA Inspections.” Louisville Public Media June 1 2011. https://www.lpm.org/news/2011-06-01/two-kentucky-mines-cited-in-msha-inspections. Louisville Public Media
Global Energy Monitor. “Leeco 68 Mine.” GEM.wiki article last updated April 30 2021. https://www.gem.wiki/Leeco_68_Mine. Global Energy Monitor
Global Energy Monitor. “Stacy Branch.” GEM.wiki article on proposed Leeco Stacy Branch surface mine. https://www.gem.wiki/Stacy_Branch. Global Energy Monitor
Global Energy Monitor. “Kentucky and Coal.” State overview page. https://www.gem.wiki/Kentucky_and_coal. Global Energy Monitor
Global Energy Monitor. “James River Coal.” Company profile including Leeco 68 Mine. https://www.gem.wiki/James_River_Coal. Global Energy Monitor
“Jeff Kentucky Business Directory.” US Business Directory listing for Leeco Inc. 14 Logan Dr Jeff KY 41751. n.d. https://us-business.info/directory/jeff-ky. US Business Directory
“Leeco 14 Logan Dr Jeff KY 41751.” MapQuest business listing. n.d. https://www.mapquest.com/us/kentucky/leeco-482872864. MapQuest
“Leeco Jeff Kentucky.” Yelp local business listing. n.d. https://www.yelp.com/biz/leeco-jeff. Yelp
McIlvaine Company. “MSHA Coal Mines 2008 Kentucky.” Industry listing of MSHA registered coal mines including Leeco Incorporated PO Box 309 Jeff KY and Leeco Inc. 458 Village Ln Hazard KY. 2008. https://www.mcilvainecompany.com/industryforecast/mining/MprosDB/state2.asp?pdlocsort=KY. mcilvainecompany.com
No Fossil Fuel Money Coalition. “Company List.” Spreadsheet and HTML list of fossil fuel firms including “Leeco Coal Coal Mining.” 2019. https://nofossilfuelmoney.org/company-list. nofossilfuelmoney.org+1
Author Note: As a historian who writes about coal, law, and landscape in the central Appalachian region, I am drawn to the places where technical reports, court records, and neighborhood memories meet. I hope this piece helps you see Leeco not just as a company name on mine permits, but as a set of mines and legal battles that reshaped streams, jobs, and daily life around Jeff, Vicco, and Stacy Branch.