BARRACKVILLE, WV
Jamison No. 7 mine at Barrackville when the operation was young.
These Pennsylvania-style duplex coal camp houses exist in Northern WV because the Barrackville coal
company town was built by a Pa. company - Jamison Coal and Coke of Westmoreland County, PA - in 1910. Another part of Barrackville, an incorporated town, was not built by the coal company. The row of garages on the left
side of the photo was a not-uncommon feature of coal towns. Jamison also operated Jamison No. 8 & No. 9 mines nearby.
In 1920 Bethlehem Steel purchased the Barrackville coal mine from Jamsion Coal and Coke and rechristened it
their No. 41 Mine. They operated it under their Industrial Collieries mining subsidiary, as they did the nearby Idamay coal mine and camp. Pictured here are the remains of the coal mine complex from that mine.
One of the buildings at the site of the Barrackville mine site - could have been a machine shop, lamp house, bath house, or ??? Like most
other mines in the Fairmont Coalfield, Barrackville (No. 41) was in the Pittsburgh seam of coal and was served by the Wheeling Division of the B&O railroad. The coal at this mine was 13,500 - 14,000 BTU / lb.
Another structure at the site of the Barrackville mine, infamous for a 1925 explosion where 33 men lost their lives.
Image from a 1920 "Keystone Coal Catalog"
Dec. 2007 image by author
Dec. 2007 image by author
Dec. 2007 image by author
Dec. 2007 image by author