The two towers you see in the photo immediately below are cooling towers at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia, about 15 miles from where we are camping and 10 miles east of Parkersburg, WV. Jim took the photo through the sun roof of our Honda as we drove by. The fact that Jim pointed his camera toward the sky and the towers dominated the view gives you an idea of how big the towers are.
A fellow camper at Leith Run Recreation Area told us they were nuclear coolers -- and the towers do resemble what I normally think of as parts of a nuclear power plant. But I did some research and these coolers at a coal-powered electric plant, not a nuclear one. In fact, there are no nuclear power plants in West Virginia.
That research lead me to something else -- the Pleasants Power Station is the site of the worst construction accident in US history. In April 1978, one of the towers had reached 166 feet in height when concrete poured the previous day started to collapse. A jumble of concrete, wooden forms, and metal scaffolding fell into the hollow center of the tower. Fifty-one men were working on the scaffolding and all fell to their deaths.
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