At some point in your travels, you may have visited a war museum before.

There's the World War II Museum in New Orleans, the National Vietnam War Museum near Dallas,

and the Museum of the American Revolution in Philly.

All those museums show the histories of wars that are pretty well known, at least on a basic level.

But in Mate 1, West Virginia, there's a museum that shows the history of a war that is far

less known.

This war took place in the early 1900s.

On one side, you had tens of thousands of striking coal mine workers, fighting for fair

treatment in the mines, dignity for their families, and above all else,

union recognition. On the other, you had scabs, private guards hired by the coal companies,

and at one point, the U.S. Army. This was the West Virginia Mine Wars, the biggest domestic

armed struggle since the Civil War. And it might not have happened the way it did had it not been for an old lady in her

70s, Mother Jones.

I always think of her as someone you didn't want to f*** with.

You know, she's plain and simple.

My name is Baudelaire, and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we hear the story of the West Virginia Mine Wars

and the woman who was at the time called the Most Dangerous Woman in America.

More after this.

Music woman in America. More after this. Back to this. Back in the early 1900s, the coal mines in West Virginia were extremely valuable to American industries.

But over time, the workers sent deep into the earth to mine for this black gold.

...