New era of deep coal mining looms on Walden's Ridge - WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports

DAYTON, TN. (Times Free Press) -- Harry Hawkins lives a pasture away from the prospective site of the first deep coal mine to be part of Walden's Ridge life in nearly 100 years.

But it won't be new to him, or to many of his Dayton Mountain neighbors in Rhea County.

Hawkins and his family lost two ancestors to huge explosions in the last mines in the county -- the Nelson Mine and the Richland Mine.

"My great-great-grandfather Thomas Lane was killed in the Nelson Mine in 1895, and my great-great-grandfather Lowery Hawkins was killed in 1901 in the Richland Mine blast," Hawkins said. "They were both on my father's side of the family."

Read more on the story from our news partners at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.