Environment and Natural Resources Special Collections

This project documents the lives of immigrant coal miners in eastern Kentucky. In the early twentieth century, people from Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Scotland, Russia, and Yugoslavia settled in Hazard, Himlerville (now Beauty), Jackson, Lynch, and other eastern Kentucky towns. Immigrants and their descendants discuss schools, prejudice and other problems they have experienced, the roles of women in mining camps, social activities, ethnic clubs, moonshine, World War II, housing, coal mining, mechanization, union activities, the United Mine Workers of America, Miners for Democracy, United States Steel, wages, mine safety, company stores, scrip, and mine bosses.

The purpose of this project is to document efforts to preserve environmental quality in northern and central Kentucky and to explore the sources of residents' commitment to environmental protection. People representing legislative, bureaucratic, nonprofit, and grassroots efforts discuss air and water quality, waste management, protection of prime farmland, the preservation of scenic resources and wildlife habitats, government and private organizations and agencies concerned with the conservation of natural resources, state and federal laws dealing with conservation, coal mining and other Kentucky industries, nature preserves, wildlife, acid rain, landfills, broadform deeds, water and dam projects, hazardous waste dumping, and wetlands destruction.

This collection of interviews focuses on writers whose work often dwells on the relationship between people and land. The poets, essayists, and novelists included in the collection have been significantly influenced by Kentucky's agrarian traditions.

In this collection, people discuss their involvement in Kentucky PRIDE (Personal Responsibility in a Desirable Environment). PRIDE was launched in 1997 to help clean up counties in Southern and Eastern Kentucky. The PRIDE initiative is coordinated by Eastern Kentucky PRIDE, Inc., a nonprofit organization founded by General James Bickford and Congressman Hal Rogers. Discussion about environmental activism and what lead to interviewees getting involved is given. Also discussed is how General Bickford and Congressman Rogers got involved with the initiative despite their political differences.

A collection of interviews with Hurricane Sandy survivors.

This project consists of interviews concerning women coal miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Topics include coal mining, coal camps, unions, Great Depression, sexism, poverty, Native Americans in Appalachia, economic conditions, political activism, and environmental pollution.

This project focuses on the history of Teges Creek in Clay County, a small, rural, eastern Kentucky community. Residents and former residents give a history of the area from the turn of the century, showing how it has changed, not from rural to urban and not from farm to coal camp, but from one kind of rural community to another. They also discuss their personal histories, road building in the 1930s, the coming of electricity in 1950, taking corn to mills for grinding, raising sheep and sending the wool away to be made into blankets, cutting timber and building rafts to ride downriver to sell, going to square dances and bean stringings, putting away enough food to last all winter, and making homemade caskets and laying out the dead. Some discuss working in coal mines or going to Ohio to work in factories.