Part of the Wayne National Forest on the Athens Ranger District and managed by the U.S. Forest Service, this area has been transformed by a reclamation project begun in 2010, with plans for an interpretive trail and other development as funding allows. Its defining history grew from the 9-month Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884, when violence followed a pay cut imposed by coal operators known to miners as the Syndicate. New Straitsville had been a major mining center since at least 1875, with the region's twelve- to fourteen-foot-thick coal seam known as the Great Vein and railroads built to reach mines supplying local furnaces. In 1884, 3,000 miners from 46 mines struck, and the companies brought in more than 1,000 immigrant non-union workers and Pinkerton guards. As unrest continued for 10 months and the Ohio governor called in militia, striking miners pushed burning coal cars into five Syndicate mines. The fires were left untended until the strike ended in 1885, and by then several could not be extinguished. Repeated attempts to stop them by sealing tunnels, pumping in water, diverting streams, and digging firebreak trenches failed, and companies instead mined coal ahead of the advancing underground blaze. As the thick coal seams burned, the ground collapsed, buildings and roads sank into burning holes, smoke and mine gases forced abandonment of homes and parts of town, and many residents left. Others adapted by guiding tourists who came to witness the underground fire, sometimes demonstrating the heat by cooking eggs over ground vents or drawing boiling well water for coffee. Much of the still-burning area is now within the national forest, where the smoldering fires are closely monitored and the land also preserves evidence of its long farming and mining past.