My wife's grandfather grew up in Tracy City in the 1920, 30's and early 40's. We sat for hours and talked about growing up there. Nothing was easy. He talked about taking a man's mule and plowing several acres of bottom land for less than 50 cents a day during the depression. There were no jobs and at times no money or food. What you grew or hunted was about it, a lot of days. He also talked about going with his father to hear John L Sullivan talk to the coal miners about joining the Mine Workers Union. They finally did and months later most all of the union support stopped and mining support went to West Virginia and Kentucky because much more coal was coming out of the ground. More mines and miners meant more dues so he dropped them like a hot potato. The people in Tracy City didn't have many good things to say about him. Interesting enough her grandfather stayed strong in his faith in God and moved later to an area that had better jobs and he lead a pretty good life. At no time in his life good, honest, hard work was never a problem.

This is the town I grew up in, spent quite a a lot of time walking around right where you were in this video

Very cool! Didn't know the history of this! Thanks for sharing!~

Excellent video. We traveled through there when I was a kid and saw those ovens. Had no idea what they were at the time.

Still quite a few of these collapsed ovens in northern West Virginia. I'll bet they can get quite "snakey" in the warmer months. Into the 1970s there were unused but intact oven batteries along State Route 7 just east of Morgantown.

There were operating coke ovens in Rockwood, Tn that you could see from above as you went up I40 on the mountain.

Impressive video. Amazing how many ovens they had at one location. Had to have been a hot place to be in the summer.

There's a batch of the along I-75 in Kentucky or Tennessee IIRC. Thanks for the video!