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For many activists, the road to the anti-mountaintop removal movement ran across Kayford Mountain, where Larry Gibson and his relatives have established a private public park at the family homeplace near Charleston, W.Va. It’s an island of trees and family cemeteries among a sea of mountaintop removal mines.

“Last year I had 700-some people come to see me,” Gibson said recently.

In March, Gibson, a tiny retiree in a ball cap, hosted more than 70 students from 15 colleges in 10 states. It was Virginia Tech senior Rich Schreib’s first look at mountaintop removal mining.

“You can look at pictures, but when you go and actually see it — I’m looking for the word to describe it. It’s hard to find one,” Schreib said. “It’s bad.”

Gibson’s 50 acres used to be one of the lowest spots around.

“I used to have to look up in every direction from my mountain to see the sky,” Gibson tells anyone who will listen. “Now it’s the highest peak for miles.”

To keep his mountain from being leveled like its neighbors, Gibson established a nonprofit called the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation. To fight against mountaintop removal mining everywhere else, Gibson hosts students, journalists, activists and almost anyone else at Stanley Heirs’ Park.

He’s visited at least a dozen colleges, including Tech, participates in rallies and speaks out every chance he gets. In May, Gibson was part of a delegation that spoke to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.

“The greatest thing I ever did except for seeing my little girl be born was going to the United Nations,” Gibson said.

He’s been spreading an anti-mountaintop removal message for nearly two decades now.

“They’ve already got me labeled as an extremist radical,” Gibson said at rally in Richmond last summer. “To me the extremists are the ones who are tearing the mountains down.”