The Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Tragedy: The Forgotten Victims of America’s Worst Industrial Disaster [Photo Gallery]
It’s been called America’s worst industrial disaster. The construction of a three-mile-long tunnel to carry the New River through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia cost as many as 2,000 workers their lives.
At least 764 of the 1,213 men who worked underground at Hawks Nest for at least two months died within five years of the tunnel’s completion, having contracted silicosis as the result of drilling through miles of rock to build a hydro-electric plant for Union Carbide, which owned the tunnel.
