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The Road to Blair Mountain
The other civil war you’ve never heard of.
It’s not an ordinary battlefield.
There are no open patches of land, no fortifications, and no manicured pathways directing visitors to historical markers. Instead, a dirt road disappears beyond a metal gate into the West Virginian wilderness.
Purple paint runs down the middle of the barrier; a warning for trespassers not to venture further. I hear elsewhere that it also means the landowner has the right to use deadly force if this law is violated.
I do not test the boundary.
Save for the occasional passing vehicle, this little spot off WV-17 — Blair Mountain Highway — is deathly silent. Forgotten, in a sense.
There isn’t much to see, but I still take my time. In all my years of schooling, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War escaped every history book.
Standing here now, the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921) becomes real, and certainly unforgettable.
