Hawks Nest Tunnel tome

Though the Hawks Nest Tunnel was built more than 70 years ago and nearly 200 miles away, the Depression-era project– and the disaster it spawned– has Charlottesville ties. Now, a new book, The Hawks Nest Tunnel: An Unabridged History, tells the whole story. Or, more accurately, it gives other people the tools they'll need to tell the whole story.

Constructed in the early 1930s by Charlottesville-based firm Rinehart Dennis Construction (founder Hollis Rinehart is pictured at right), the Hawks Nest Tunnel stands as an engineering marvel– a three-mile tunnel dug through Gauley Mountain as part of a hydroelectric project that would reroute the New River in West Virginia. It also stands as one of the deadliest industrial disasters

of the 20th century. During the years it was constructed, hundreds of workers died of silicosis–- a devastating, deadly lung condition.

In addition to settling with victims' families for $130,000, Rinehart Dennis was accused of a cover-up for burying deceased workers' bodies rapidly without a medical examination or proper documentation. That allegation was never proven, and, in fact, according to Martin Cherniak's 1986 book, The Hawk's Nest Incident, it's unlikely Rinehart Dennis was aware of the risk of silicosis since neither its staff nor its workers wore respirators while working in the tunnel. Locally, the Rinehart family is still known for work in the construction industry, as well as for building several gracious homes that line Ivy Road.

The newest literary addition to the Hawks Nest topic makes no attempt to use narrative to tell the story. Instead, author Patricia Spangler, who self-published the book through Wythe-North Publishing, has simply compiled and archived news stories, depositions, letters and contracts from the time of the project. It's not easy reading. Spangler says in her foreward she'd grown too close to the subject to write an objective account, calling it "an epic saga quite capable of telling itself." It could also, one imagines, be a starting point for the right author to give the disaster a Perfect Storm-style treatment.