[Still Thinking]

Interestingly both Briney and Katko felt they were getting screwed and together, sued the neighbors. Strange bedfellows.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This part of Iowa is home to a lot of poverty. The land is ‘gently rolling’ (hard to farm) and was once home to many dozen underground and later strip coal mines. My family mined coal just north of Eddyville for several years with draglines. A great-great-great grandfather opened the first commercial mine at Mystic in the 1880s.
These coal mines served the railroads for the most part. When the RRs switched to diesel in the 30s, mining evaporated. John L. Lewis, founder of the United Mines Workers and the CIO labor union, was from nearby.
The coal we mined went to the Iowa State University steam plant in Ames and to a Cedar Rapids utility.