Coal miners are transported into one of the few remaining mines operating along Route 52, or the King Coal Highway as it’s locally known, in West Virginia.
After over a century of coal mining, production in the state is slowing, and the industry has been hit hard. Job losses and business closures are creating virtual ghost towns along the route.
22 May 2014 . GILBERT, UNITED STATES. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
In a mine locker room Rodney Blankenship, left, and his colleagues arrive early to get ready for the start of their afternoon swing shift.
Blankenship has been a coal miner for more than 30 years and plans to keep going as long as he can.
"I wonder, if this stops, what's next for me?" he said. "I'm scared. This is all I've ever done."
He said the attitude among miners has changed in recent months, with many becoming concerned about their future - holding off on making purchases and planning vacations.
20 May 2014 . Iaeger, UNITED STATES. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
In the town of Iaeger a coal train sits idle by the side of a house. Less than a handful of businesses remain in the once thriving town, which relied heavily on the coal industry for income and employment.
Strict environmental policies, the rising production of natural gas and the higher cost of deep mining. have all contributed to the industry’s decline.
21 May 2014 . GILBERT, UNITED STATES. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
Plants grow on an abandoned building near the town of Gilbert.
Coal miners have lived here for over a century, enjoying the best of the boom times and riding out the bad. The constant refrain being that coal would always be there, the mines would be back. But residents fear that this time their community will not survive the downturn.
23 May 2014 . WHARNCLIFFE, UNITED STATES. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
Stewart Johnson, 59, has been a miner since leaving the military in 1975, but lost his job when the mine he worked at shut down.
Suffering from a variety of mining related injuries, and with the nearest mine an hour and a half drive away, Johnson said that his doctor recommended that he stop working.
"Coal has always been cyclical," Johnson said. "I've been laid off as long as a year. At the peak of coal just four years ago, if you had a card, you could work wherever you wanted - they had to fill shoes."
Johnson is among a growing chorus of miners who don't think the slide in coal production can be reversed.