During the late forties and into the fifties, the US Bureau of Mines (USBM) and the Alabama Power Company conducted a series of underground coal gasification burns in the Pratt and America coal beds at Gorgas, Alabama. Following the first burn, by the so called stream method, it was feasible to enter the burned out areas by deep mining and assess what had taken place during the operation of the test site. In the latter tests, however, it was not economically feasible to explore the burned out areas except by means of core drilling. Now, in early 1981, surface mining is being done in the vicinity of the first hydraulic fracture area. I had been there during the active operation of the burns and agreed to go to Gorgas, evaluate the exposed area, collect samples, take photographs, and provide this written report. I spent several days taking photographs and making observations at the exposed burn site, taking samples, and discussing the best ways to coordinate future exposures with the coal mining process. The uncovered burn area at the site of the first hydraulic fracture can be described as a flat, roughly circular shaped area, varying in thickness from about 1 foot to 2 feet high and covered with a mixture of the various materials removed in the mining operation, i.e., broken bits of coal, rock, clay, etc. However it rained the night before the observation and during the entire evaluation period making it extremely difficult to determine whether fine gray colored materials were clay or residual ash.