Mine: (Satellite)
Warrior Met #7 West Portal: (Satellite, is this a different company? Yes, I found more of their stuff in the area.)
This is one of those wilderness areas in the Appalachians where there are nearby churches, but no nearby towns. Where do the workers at the preparation plant live?
The overhead conveyor is going to an auxiliary storage pile.
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| Street View, Sep 2025 |
They ship by barge. The barge dock is on the west side. That dock is on the Bankhead Reservoir on the Black Warrior River.
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| Satellite |
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| Mining #Shorts posted Shoal Creek is one of Peabody’s most important U.S. metallurgical coal assets, tucked into Alabama’s Warrior Coal Basin across Jefferson, Tuscaloosa and Walker counties. This isn’t a power-station coal story. Shoal Creek produces high-volatile A hard coking coal, a steelmaking product shipped into seaborne markets through Mobile. Peabody bought the operation from Drummond in December 2018 for $387 million, adding an underground longwall mine, preparation plant and river logistics system to its portfolio. The mine sits about 35 miles west of Birmingham and works the Mary Lee and Blue Creek seams at depths of roughly 1,000 to 1,300 feet. Coal moves by barge along the Black Warrior River, then heads to the McDuffie Terminal at the Port of Mobile. Peabody lists 2025 output at 1.8 million tons, with 13 million tons of proven and probable reserves and about 400 employees tied to the site. Shoal Creek has also had its share of trouble. In 2023, Peabody sealed two longwall panels after a fire involving void fill material in the J panel area. The company later shifted development toward the L panel area, where it expected better mining conditions. Shoal Creek remains a serious Alabama coal operation: deep, technical, export-focused and directly linked to global steelmaking rather than domestic electricity generation. - Photo: Peabody Energy |
Since they mine coal to produce coke, I added the label "metalIron" to these notes.
The map label for the mine is a maintenance facility. Around it is a lot of evidence of past strip mining even though they have done a decent job of land reclamation. I finally found active mining which is in the upper-right corner of this excerpt. But I could not find any mining equipment! Draglines and/or shovels and haul trucks are big enough to show up on a satellite image. The prep plant is near the bottom of this excerpt.
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| Satellite |
I did find some miscellaneous equipment parked up on the north side of the mining activity.
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| Satellite |
When I saw that the mine was north of Bankhead Lake, but the prep plant was south of the lake, I wondered how they got the coal from the mine to the plant. I quickly found this conveyor belt coming out of the ground in the prep plant.
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| Satellite |
One reason why I spent some time looking for an active mining area was to see if I could find the other end of the conveyor. I think I did:
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| Satellite |
Is the prep plant recent? I don't see it in the lower-right corner where it should be on this map.
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| 1978/78 Tutwiler School Quad @ 24,000 |
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