Welcome the Traveler Home: Jim Garland's Story of the Kentucky Mountains

Jim Garland was a mountain man, born and bred in the eastern Kentucky mining camps. He didn't want to go in the mines like his father and his brothers before him. His dream was to pursue an education, but his circumstances led him to the mines at age thirteen, and there he worked for the next fourteen years. This is his story-and the story of his people and his country, as he saw it. It is history, recollected and set down in the mind of an ordinary, everyday man. The history describes the settling of the Kentucky mountains, according to traditions handed down in families. It dwells upon the Garlands, how they came to America and their life in the hills. Finally, it speaks of the coming of coal. Here Jim Garland writes most tellingly, giving an account of the miner's life and the efforts to organize unions during the 1920s and, particularly, of his part in the abortive campaign of the communist-backed National Miners Union and the strike of 1931-1932.