In 1892 Neil Mathieson was chartered to open the Mathieson Alkali Works in Saltville, Virginia, run by his son Thomas Train Mathieson, producing soda ash, bleaching powder, and other alkaline products. While the facility was a beacon of industrial progress, its methods of waste disposal carried hidden risks. The byproduct of the chemical processing, a thick slurry known as muck, was stored in a holding pond that became known as the muck dam.<\/p>\n
Below this dam lay the Palmertown community, a cluster of company houses where workers and their families lived. On Christmas Eve one hundred years ago, disaster struck. The dam ruptured, releasing a deluge of chemical muck that swept through Palmertown. Houses were destroyed, trees were uprooted, and the once-thriving community was obliterated in moments.<\/p>\n
Nineteen people lost their lives in the flood, twelve of whom were children. Once the area was cleared of debris, Mathieson Alkali stepped in to rebuild, leveling the ruins and constructing new homes.<\/p>\n
The Saltville muck dam disaster was the deadliest dam failure in Virginia\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1892 Neil Mathieson was chartered to open the Mathieson Alkali Works in Saltville, Virginia, run by his son Thomas Train Mathieson, producing soda ash, bleaching powder, and other alkaline products. While the facility was a beacon of industrial progress, its methods of waste disposal carried hidden risks. The byproduct of the chemical processing, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,25,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disasters","category-holidays","category-the-roaring-20s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Muck-dam-headline-3-scaled-e1735042274335.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6TX4A-QT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3281,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions\/3281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}