Ken Fowler
In the hills of West Virginia, the past never stays buried.Beneath the mist-covered ridges and deep Appalachian hollers lies a history shaped by coal, conflict, catastrophe, folklore, and extraordinary resilience.In Tall Tales of the West Virginia Hills, Dr. Ken Fowler journeys into the stories that helped shape the Mountain State, preserving the history and storytelling traditions of a region where memory clings to coal seams, creek roads, abandoned towns, battlefields, and family names. The book explores the coal camps and company stores that shaped generations, labor wars that divided communities, disasters that transformed entire valleys, and folkways that survived because forgetting them would mean losing part of Appalachia itself. From the rise of West Virginia’s coal industry and the realities of company-town life to the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud, the Battle of Blair Mountain, and the struggles of miners and their families, Fowler examines a region forged as much by hardship as by loyalty, pride, and endurance. The journey continues through some of West Virginia’s most devastating chapters: the Buffalo Creek Flood, Monongah mining disaster, Farmington Mine Disaster, Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster, Marshall University plane crash, and the collapse of the Point Pleasant Bridge. These are not presented merely as dates and statistics, but as human stories of loss, survival, accountability, and remembrance. Then the mountains grow stranger.The book ventures into West Virginia’s enduring legends and mysteries, including the Mothman of Point Pleasant, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the Ghost of Mamie Thurmond, Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, haunted Camden Park, and other stories where documented history and Appalachian folklore meet. Along the way, the familiar voices of Uncle Amos and Cousin Spence bring warmth, humor, and personality to the journey, providing a light narrative framework around the book’s documentary-style historical storytelling. Rich with coal-country history, labor struggles, disasters, Civil War history, mountain legends, haunted places, remarkable West Virginians, and the unmistakable character of Appalachia, Tall Tales of the West Virginia Hills is both an entertaining journey and a tribute to the people whose stories remain written into the mountains.Some stories are told. Others still walk the hills.
