Larry Gibson welcomes you to Kayford Mountain.

For the people who may hear this...go for a walk in the woods. Be real quiet. And listen. The wilderness will talk to you. And I guarantee you, come to see me and I'll put you on a mountain site and let you go for a walk and NOTHING will talk to you.

Larry Gibson

Welcome to Larry's home in Kayford Mountain, in the heart of the central Appalachians. His ancestors settled here more than 230 years ago. Before there was ever a coal company.

While Larry Gibson grew up on Kayford's beautiful slopes, the mountains rose upward in every direction from his home. He treasures some of the best memories of his life from those days. He recalls that "it wasn't the fast life then, it was the good life."

More than three hundred of Larry's relatives, including his father and grandfather (both coal miners) are laid to rest in the family cemetery, which sits atop the once mighty mountain.

Then, in 1986, mountaintop removal started. Over the next 20 years, "the slow motion destruction of Kayford Mountain has been continuous - 24 hours a day, seven days a week." Arch Coal Inc. and Massey Energy have flattened the mountains surrounding Larry's house into a 12,000 acre "pancake."

Larry's house now sits on a high terrace looking downward into the modern moonscape(interactive panorama of Kayford's "reclaimed area" requires high speed) that once rose into some of the most ancient and bio-diverse mountains on the planet.

The mine site comes to within 200 feet of the family cemetery, and the blasts shake the hallowed ground. In 2003, just adjacent to his property, the coal companies induced the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II on Kayford Mountain. Boulders the size of mini-vans were blasted on to Larry's property.

As one visitor noted, "gone is the peace and stillness that the old cemetery once harbored. For Gibson and other family members, mountaintop mining is practically raising the dead, while burying the living."

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