The Hatfield & McCoy Marathon

Getting Along in the Long Run

The sound of gunfire was no cause for celebration a century or more ago in the valley of the Tug River separating Kentucky and West Virginia. Back then, one shot was invariably followed by others . . . and maybe a day or two later by a funeral. You see, this is the land of the Hatfields and the McCoys, the original feuding families. But nowadays, when a single shotgun blast is heard the second Saturday in June, it is followed not by the thud of a body falling to the ground but by the cheers of several hundred runners setting off on a demanding journey through this mountainous region. It’s a one-of-a-kind event, and those who run the Hatfield & McCoy Marathon know a good thing when they experience it. I can vouch for that. I ran up and down Blackberry Mountain, negotiated the swinging bridge, and crossed the Tug River five times, and I’m darn glad I lived to tell about it.

Before the Civil War, the Tug Valley region was populated by subsistence farmers who eked out a hard-scrabble existence from land so rugged that Native Americans avoided it. During Reconstruction, however, skyrocketing national demand for wood as a building material meant the area’s vast timber resources suddenly took on great value. That was the earliest exploitation of Appalachia’s natural resources, and several decades later it happened again with coal. Unfortunately human exploitation has been widespread here as well. The monopolization of land and resources has prevented economic diversification, and a prolonged coal bust from the 1920s through the 1970s meant massive unemployment and poverty. Even now, at the dawn of the 21st century, Appalachia lags behind much of the nation.

Considering the hardships Appalachian people have endured throughout the region’s history, it seems somehow appropriate that a marathon has been organized here, giving outsiders an opportunity to labor and struggle through narrow mountain valleys that have seen so much misery over the past two centuries. Marathoners are suckers for punishment, right? But I suspected there was much more here than poverty and hard times, and I decided to experience the event first-hand.

The Hatfield & McCoy Marathon is staged by the Tug Valley Road Runners Club, a small outfit founded in 2000 and led since its inception by David Hatfield—a distant descendant of the feuding Hatfields. Based in Mingo County, WV, and Pike County, KY, the TVRRC was just getting off the ground when members learned that the first-ever Hatfield & McCoy Reunion Festival would be held in June of 2000. "So one thing led to another," Hatfield recalls, "and we ended up helping organize the marathon that year. We stepped into it kind of cold."