The most impactful disaster that has happened in North Carolina to me would be the Coal Glen Mine Explosion. The Carolina Coal Company was formed with the intention of developing a mine near Farmville across the river from the Egypt Mine. The mining town that would arise was to be called Coal Glen. The Carolina Mine is often called the Coal Glen Mine, or the Farmville Mine.The Carolina Mine was the most ambitious mining operation ever begun on the Deep River Coal Bed. In 1923, its first year of full-scale operation, its output more than doubled the best of the Old Egypt Mine. Once again the future looked bright for a mine on the Deep River- Coal Bed. But the profits never came.At seven in the morning on May 25, the morning shift, numbering seventy-four miners, descended into the dark of the Carolina Mine. Two and a half hours later the first of three terrific explosions tore …show more content…
The story made front page news all across the country.Fifty-three men died that morning.The Carolina Mine closed four years later. Ironically, it was not a mine explosion that closed the mine, but water and human carelessness. Rains swelled the Deep River in 1929 and the mine began to flood through an air shaft. The water was pumped free, but no precautions were taken against subsequent flooding. The mine flooded again in 1930 putting an end to the Carolina Mine, after less than mine years of operation. The flood waters, the prohibitive cost of transportation, the accidents, and the market crash of 1929 had conspired to bankrupt the Carolina Coal Company. Another Deep River mine had closed in failure.The Carolina Mine was opened again between 1947 and 1951 but failed to turn a profit and was allowed to reflood. It has not been opened since.The entrance to the Carolina Mine can be found today in the parking lot of the General Timber Lumberyard off Farmville Mine Road. It has been incorporated into a garden near the company's office