Coal Mining and Landscape Change: The Case of Harrison County, Ohio

The evolving landscape of Harrison County, Ohio illustrates the interaction between increasing coal demand and modern mining technology upon the available resource base, as modified by changing reclamation policies and practices. A subsistance production period (before 1915) and an early commercial period (1916-1940) were followed by the high, but fluctuating, coal demands of the current commercial period (1941 to present). Post-war technology has enabled less accessible and/or commercial reserves to be mined over larger areas. Mined landscapes created prior to the Reclamation Act of 1949 are generally composed of low conical hills or parallel ridges, revegetated by natural invasion or voluntary aforestation programs. Postlaw landscapes are largely graded, often benched or gently contoured, and more recently have been replanted in forage species. The concentration of extensive mining in the southeastern portion of this once productive pastoral Appalachian county has been concomitant with a 50% reduction of land in agriculture, a 70% reduction in number of farms and a shift to larger farms north and west of the mined area. OHIO J. SCI. 77(3): 113, 1977 Harrison County has traditionally been a major coal producing county of the eastern Ohio coal fields. Over the past century and a half, subsistence and commercial coal mining have profoundly affected both the physical and cultural components of the county's landscape. Studies of such an evolving landscape may enable the morphology of future mined landscapes within the region to be properly planned and managed so that the affected lands can be returned more quickly to acceptable states of productivity. The objectives of this paper are to trace the history of mining in Harrison County, to describe the impact of this activity on the evolving landscape and to discuss the implications of this upon local land use patterns.