Appalachian History Series – The Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster of 1970
On December 30, 1970, just after midday, a coal dust explosion ripped through the Finley Coal Company’s interconnected Nos. 15 and 16 mines on Hurricane Creek, a few miles east of Hyden in Leslie County, Kentucky. Thirty nine men were underground. Thirty eight died. Only one, beltman A. T. Collins, survived after the force of the blast hurled him out of the mine portal and into the road.
What happened at Hurricane Creek was not an isolated freak accident. It was the deadliest mine disaster in the United States since Farmington in 1968 and the worst in eastern Kentucky history. It also happened exactly one year to the day after the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 took effect, a law that was supposed to prevent precisely this kind of explosion.
The story of Hurricane Creek is a story of coal and poverty in Leslie and Clay counties, a story of a new safety law that existed on paper but not in practice, and a story of how families and communities have insisted that the names of the thirty eight men not be forgotten.
Finley Coal on Hurricane Creek
In the spring of 1970, Finley Coal Company opened two new truck mines, Nos. 15 and 16, on leased land along Hurricane Creek near Hyden. Later that year the workings were interconnected and operated as a single mine. Federal court records and later civil litigation describe the operation as a small, non union truck mine, part of a wider pattern of contract mining that fed larger coal companies while keeping individual operations lean and often poorly regulated.
The mines fell under the new 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. That law required regular inspections, better ventilation and dust control, limits on how blasting could be done underground, and the use of permissible explosives and equipment. In theory it gave federal officials the authority to shut down dangerous mines and levy fines. In practice the Bureau of Mines was badly understaffed and struggling to keep up.
Within months of opening, Finley’s new workings had already drawn official attention. Federal inspectors recorded dozens of violations in the first three months of operation and even shut the mine down for three days in June 1970 because of safety concerns. In November they issued an “imminent danger” order over blasting hazards, excessive coal dust, and electrical ignition risks. The company was ordered to correct the problems by December 22 and to expect a follow up inspection on or before that date. The follow up never came. The Bureau lacked inspectors, and the mine continued to operate with dangerous conditions underground.
On November 9, 1970, a miner had already died at Finley when an underground tractor crushed him, an incident that federal investigators later tied to the company’s failure to make required repairs. The operation on Hurricane Creek was running on thin margins and thin compliance, a point made again and again in later congressional hearings and scholarly work on coal mine safety during this period.
The Morning of December 30
The morning of December 30 was cold in Leslie County, with snow in the forecast. Day shift miners entered the low seam about seven o’clock, crawling in a space roughly thirty six inches high and traveling thousands of feet under the hillside to their work areas. Federal summaries and later reconstructions put the explosion at around 12:10 to 12:20 in the afternoon.
At that moment, investigators concluded, blasting was underway underground. The official Bureau of Mines report and the Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals investigation both found evidence that the ignition began when coal dust and possibly methane were set off in connection with explosives work. Primacord detonating cord and other banned or improperly used explosives were found at the site of the blast and at an earlier blast location in the mine. Rock dusting was inadequate, coal dust had accumulated, and ventilation did not dilute or remove combustible dust as the law required.
The result was a violent coal dust explosion that raced through the interconnected workings of Nos. 15 and 16. Thirty eight of the thirty nine men underground were killed almost instantly. One man, A. T. Collins, had stepped toward the portal near the belt line when the blast wave reached him. The force threw him out of the mine and down the slope, leaving him battered but alive. Outside, another miner, Harrison Henson of Clay County, had been sent to fetch tools and watched the portal erupt in front of him.
People miles away felt the shock and heard the rumble. Snow began to fall on narrow rural roads as word spread that there had been an explosion on Hurricane Creek.
Rescue, Recovery, and a New Year of Funerals
Within hours, local miners, state mine rescue teams, and federal officials converged on the site. Recovery was complicated by the winter storm, the steep hollow, and the damage underground. Stoppings and timbers were blown out, and the entries had to be resecured as rescue teams advanced. Nevertheless all of the bodies were recovered within about a day, and the mine portals were then sealed to preserve evidence for investigation.
Victims were carried out to waiting ambulances and taken into Hyden, where the grade school gymnasium became a temporary morgue. Family members and neighbors gathered there to identify husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Some of the bodies were so badly damaged that identification depended on Social Security numbers written on the belts miners wore underground. Ages ranged from teenagers in their late teens to men in their sixties. Most came from Leslie and Clay counties, two of the poorest in Kentucky at the time.
The thirty eight men left behind one hundred and four children. In those families, New Year 1971 would always be remembered first for funerals instead of celebrations.
Voices from Hyden, Frankfort, and Washington
The scale of the disaster guaranteed official attention. President Richard Nixon issued a public statement on December 31, 1970, expressing sympathy for the families and promising that the federal government would take every appropriate step to prevent similar tragedies. His papers and the Nixon Presidential Library preserve internal memoranda and correspondence about the explosion and the administration’s response.
In Kentucky, Governor Louie Nunn visited the site and met with families. The state Department of Mines and Minerals opened its own investigation and held public hearings, whose transcripts were later cited in federal reports. At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Mines convened a formal inquiry that produced a detailed accident report with diagrams, ventilation maps, and a full list of the dead.
Congress also stepped in. The House Committee on Education and Labor’s General Subcommittee on Labor held hearings in both Hyden and Washington. Widows, miners, union representatives, company officials, and federal and state regulators gave testimony. The subcommittee’s published report, Investigation of the Hyden, Kentucky, Coal Mine Disaster of December 30, 1970, concluded that there had been a nearly complete failure to enforce the new safety law at Finley and called attention to the chronic shortage of inspectors nationwide.
Members of Congress took to the floor to describe Hurricane Creek as a preventable disaster and to criticize the Bureau of Mines for allowing an “imminent danger” mine to continue production without a timely follow up inspection. These speeches appear in the Congressional Record through early 1971 and helped shape later debates over mine safety enforcement.
Accountability in Court
Public anger focused on both the Finley operation and the federal regulators who had not used the authority available to them. Federal prosecutors convened a grand jury, and in 1971 the partnership and co owner Charles Finley were indicted for willful violations of federal mine safety standards tied to the explosion. The case, United States v. Finley Coal Company, went before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and produced an opinion in July 1972 that interpreted key provisions of the 1969 act and the criminal liability of operators.
Appeals followed, and later decisions in the Sixth Circuit refined how courts understood the relationship between federal safety regulations and criminal enforcement. The litigation did not bring the kind of sweeping accountability many families had hoped for. It did, however, become a touchstone in legal and policy discussions about whether fines and prosecutions were strong enough to deter dangerous practices in the coalfields.
National Coverage and Cultural Memory
Hurricane Creek drew sustained national media coverage. Reporters for the New York Times, including George Vecsey and Ben A. Franklin, traveled to Hyden and published a series of articles through January 1971 that examined the explosion, the mine’s safety record, and the broader failure to enforce the new law. They described Finley as one of many small, non union truck mines where production pressures, weak oversight, and poverty combined to create lethal conditions.
Kentucky papers brought the story home. The Lexington Herald Leader and the Louisville Courier Journal ran front page coverage of the blast, recovery, and funerals, and followed the investigations through the spring. Courier Journal editor James D. Ausenbaugh later recalled his time at Hurricane Creek in his memoir At Sixth and Broadway, including an incident in which Leslie County Judge George Wooton physically confronted mine owner Chuck Finley at the site.
Local weeklies such as the Hazard Herald and The Mountain Eagle published detailed obituaries, photographs, and community responses that now serve as near primary sources for family and local history. Later anniversary stories, including a fiftieth anniversary feature in the Herald Leader, show how the disaster still shapes memory in Clay and Leslie counties.
Country music also carried the story far beyond the mountains. Loretta Lynn, then fresh from the success of “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” organized a major benefit concert at Louisville’s Freedom Hall on March 1, 1971, to raise money for the widows and one hundred and four children left behind. Contemporary accounts describe nearly fifteen thousand people in attendance and a lineup of more than forty country performers.
Later that year, Kentucky born songwriter Tom T. Hall released “Trip to Hyden,” a quiet, observational song about driving into the town and seeing the lingering grief of the disaster. Other songs, including “The Hyden Miners’ Tragedy” and “The Caves of Jericho,” would return to Hurricane Creek as a symbol of the human cost of coal.
Photographs, Oral Histories, and the Record on the Ground
Beyond official documents and newsprint, the historical record of Hurricane Creek includes powerful visual and oral sources. Photographer Phil Primack, then working in the eastern Kentucky coalfields, documented the mine site, funerals, and community scenes around Hyden in the months after the disaster. His photographs, now held in digital form at the West Virginia and Regional History Center, show everything from the portals themselves to family gatherings and the stark winter landscape that framed the tragedy.
Oral history collections at institutions such as the University of Kentucky’s Nunn Center for Oral History preserve interviews with miners, officials, and family members who remembered the conditions in small eastern Kentucky mines in the years when the 1969 act was new. These interviews, combined with congressional testimony and local recollections, give Hurricane Creek a human voice that does not appear in technical diagrams or legal opinions.
Together, these primary sources make it possible to reconstruct both the technical story of how the explosion happened and the lived experiences of the people who bore its consequences.
From Dirt Pile to Historic Site
For decades after the explosion, the mine site itself remained largely unmarked, remembered mainly by local families and a dirt mound near the old workings. That began to change around the fortieth anniversary, when relatives and community members pushed for formal recognition and used coal severance funds to plan a permanent memorial on Hurricane Creek Road.
In 2010 the Kentucky General Assembly designated the Hurricane Creek coal mine site as a state historic site through KRS 2.108. The Kentucky Historical Society installed marker number 2359 along the road into Hyden. The marker text summarizes the explosion, notes that it occurred one year after the federal safety law took effect, and places the disaster within the broader history of coal mining in the state.
The Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster Memorial itself was dedicated in 2011. Set on the former Finley property about four miles east of Hyden, it includes a bronze miner statue on a pedestal, granite walls inscribed with the names and ages of the thirty eight dead and the one survivor, and a series of symbolic gateways topped with hard hats that visitors pass through as they walk toward the central figure. Interpretive panels and plaques tell the story in concise form, and families still gather there on December 30 for vigils.
The site is both a cemetery of sorts and an outdoor classroom. School groups, genealogists, and travelers along the narrow road can stand where the portals once opened, read the names, and see how a local tragedy reshaped state and federal conversations about mine safety.
Why Hurricane Creek Still Matters
Hurricane Creek was not the largest mine disaster in American history, but it came at a crucial moment. It tested the promises of the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and exposed the gap between law and practice. The official Bureau of Mines report, the Kentucky investigation, congressional hearings, and later scholarship all point to the same core conclusion. This was a preventable disaster brought on by illegal or unsafe explosives practices, poor dust control, inadequate ventilation, and a regulatory system that failed to use the tools it already had.
For miners and their families in Leslie and Clay counties, the disaster was also intensely personal. It erased a generation of experience from small communities, left churches and hollows with multiple fresh graves, and plunged one hundred and four children into lives without their fathers. Songs like “Trip to Hyden,” photographs in regional archives, and oral histories preserved by institutions across Appalachia make sure that the story does not flatten into a single statistic.
For anyone who studies Appalachian history, labor, or environmental justice, Hurricane Creek stands at the intersection of federal policy, corporate decision making, and local survival. It reminds us that safety laws only matter when they are enforced, that miners often know long before an explosion that a mine is dangerous, and that the true cost of coal has always been measured in more than tonnage.
Sources & Further Reading
United States. Bureau of Mines. Official Report of Major Mine Explosion Disaster, Nos. 15 and 16 Mines, Finley Coal Company, Hyden, Leslie County, Kentucky, December 30, 1970. By J. Westfield, J. S. Malesky, and J. W. Crawford. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1971. Reproduced online by the United States Mine Rescue Association. https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/finley.htm
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Education and Labor. General Subcommittee on Labor. Investigation of the Hyden, Kentucky, Coal Mine Disaster of December 30, 1970: The Official Report, Minority, and Additional Views. 92nd Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971. PDF via United States Mine Rescue Association. https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/Investigation_of_the_Hyden_Kentucky_Coal.pdf
Nixon, Richard. “Statement on the Coal Mine Disaster in Kentucky.” December 31, 1970. In Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-coal-mine-disaster-kentucky
Homeland Security Digital Library. “Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster.” Timeline of Homeland Security Events and Milestones, January 3, 2018. https://www.hsdl.org/c/timeline/hurricane-creek-mine-disaster
“Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster.” ExploreKYHistory. Kentucky Historical Society, n.d. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/559
“Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster Memorial.” The Clio: Your Guide to History, entry created by Holley Snaith, February 17, 2020, updated June 26, 2020. https://theclio.com/entry/95001
Kentucky. “Hurricane Creek Coal Mine Site Designated as State Historic Site.” Ky. Rev. Stat. § 2.108 (effective July 15, 2010). For statutory context and summary see Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster entry at ExploreKYHistory. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/559
United States Mine Rescue Association. “Finley Nos. 15 and 16 Mine Explosion (Hurricane Creek Mine).” Mine Disasters in the United States, n.d. https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/finley.htm
“Mining Accident News No. 1001.” Mining Accident News, January 11, 2010. Institute of Quarrying New Zealand. PDF. https://ioqnz.co.nz/uploads/Mining%20Accident%20News%20No%201001.pdf
Vecsey, George. “All Bodies Recovered; All Bodies Found in Mine Disaster.” New York Times, January 1, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Franklin, Ben A. “Re-check Was Overdue; Mine Where 38 Died Had Record of Safety Risks.” New York Times, January 1, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Vecsey, George. “Miners: Death in the Pit Despite the Warnings.” New York Times, January 3, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Vecsey, George. “Blasting Is Focus of Mine Inquiry; U.S. and Kentucky Explore Accident That Killed 38.” New York Times, January 7, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Vecsey, George. “House Panel Ends Mine Blast Inquiry.” New York Times, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Vecsey, George. “Kentucky Community’s Scars Visible a Year After Mine Disaster.” New York Times, December 20, 1971. New York Times archive (subscription). https://www.nytimes.com
Eads, Morgan. “Families Remember Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster on 50th Anniversary.” Lexington Herald-Leader, originally published December 31, 2020, updated January 2, 2021. https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article247733570.html
Oppegard, Tony. “45 Years Ago, 38 Miners Were Sacrificed for Coal.” Lexington Herald-Leader, December 29, 2015. https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article52137230.html
Vecsey, George. “50th Anniversary of Horror.” George Vecsey (blog), December 28, 2020. https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/50th-anniversary-of-horror
Ausenbaugh, James D. At Sixth and Broadway. Louisville: Louisville Courier-Journal, 1978. (Includes recollections of the Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster.)
“Phil Primack, Photographer, Photographs of the Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster and Other Material.” A&M 4497. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, WV. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6636
“Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster, Congressional Hearing in Hyden, KY, Mine Visit, ca. 1970–1971.” Digital object 2933. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/digital_objects/2933
“Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster, Miscellaneous, ca. 1970–1971.” Archival object 148314, in Phil Primack, Photographer, Photographs of the Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster and Other Material, A&M 4497. West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/148314
“Phil Primack Photographs and Papers.” Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Berea College, Berea, KY. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/29
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) and WYMT-TV. News and documentary segments on the Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster and Richard Nixon’s later visit to Hyden, Kentucky. See station archives and online video collections. https://www.wymt.com ; https://www.ket.org
Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “December 31, 1970.” Daily listing of presidential activities and statements, including “Statement on the Coal Mine Disaster in Kentucky.” https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/research/almanac/december-31-1970
Flem. “The Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster.” In Flem, Born 1935, Mill Creek, Kentucky. First Edition Memoirs, ca. 2010. PDF. https://www.firsteditionmemoirs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Hurricane-Creek-Mine-Disaster.pdf
Bethell, Thomas N. The Hurricane Creek Massacre. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. (For library holdings see WorldCat.) https://www.worldcat.org
Foster, Jim. “Health and Safety versus Profits in the Coal Industry.” Monthly Review 35, no. 4 (1983): 1–15. Access via JSTOR or similar databases. https://www.jstor.org
Fry, Ronald. “Fighting for Survival: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Health and Safety in the United States, 1960–1980.” PhD diss., 2010. CORE repository. https://core.ac.uk
“Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster.” Wikipedia, last modified 2024. Used as a guide to primary sources and further reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Creek_mine_disaster
“Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Coal_Mine_Health_and_Safety_Act_of_1969
Lynn, Loretta, with George Vecsey. Coal Miner’s Daughter. Chicago: Regnery, 1976. (Includes discussion of the Hurricane Creek benefit concert and coverage.) https://www.worldcat.org
Author Note: This article is written from the perspective of an Appalachian historian committed to explaining not only how the Hurricane Creek Mine Disaster unfolded, but why such a preventable tragedy occurred under a supposedly stronger safety law. It weaves together official investigation records, news coverage, oral histories, and the present-day memorial to honor the miners and their families while highlighting ongoing questions about power, regulation, and sacrifice in the coalfields.