As you approach Grundy, large industrial compounds appear along the roadside, each with its own rail spur and a windowless, square-sided tower sheathed in corrugated metal. These are the shaft mines where miners work far below the surface, raised and lowered in cages attached to a cable. The mine on your left in Vansant, just east of Grundy, is Consolidated Coal Company's Pocahontas Mine No. 3. Its shaft descends some fifteen hundred feet straight down to the Pocahontas seam, which runs beneath much of Buchanan County. Once the seam is reached, tunnels spread out in many directions, following the rich deposits of coal.
Some tunnels run for miles, with a maze of side tunnels as well.
The mountain whose insides are now being devoured by Pocahontas No. 3 is not even visible from the mine entrance in Vansant. The shaft mines of Buchanan County are among the deepest and most dangerous coal mines in America. Because they release so much deadly and explosive methane gas, they require exceptionally strong air circulation, so that working in them is like working in a wind tunnel. Even so, the miners who work the deep shafts have two advantages over those who work the drift mines that tunnel into the mountainsides of nearly every hollow in Buchanan County. One is that the deep shaft mines are unionized, while United Coal and most companies that own drift mines are not.