HOME>SOUTHERN WV>POCAHONTAS COALFIELD>MERCER COUNTY MISC.
FLAT TOP / POCAHONTAS FIELD - MERCER COUNTY
I know its hard to see, but this caught my eye. These are two train tunnels near Matoaka with a large steel structure above them. I believe tunnel 1 on the
left was built by the Norfolk & Western Railway, and tunnel 2 on the right was constructed by the Virginian Railway. The steel structure probably supported part of the infrastructure from where one or both of these
railways was electrified.
A vintage view of the coal town of Goodwill, WV, where coal mining started in the 1880s and ended in 1958. The town is best known as the property of
Winding Gulf Collieries.
Mill Creek Coal and Coke Company store in Coopers was built in 1924 to replace one that was built in 1884. The Cooper coal mine, opened by John
Cooper, was the second mine to ship coal from the Pocahontas Coalfield. (Pocahontas, Va. was the first.) Some of the coal camp is still extant.
The first photo above shows the tipple at Arista many years ago, and the second photo shows how the site looked in 2021. Arista was originally operated by the S.J. Patterson Pocahontas Company from 1916 to 1922, and later the Weyanoke Coal Company from 1923 off and on until 1960. In the late 1960s the C&M Coal Company mined coal in the Arista vicinity.
The town has vanished - not even a chimney.
The company store at Springton, I presume. This coal camp was the property of Solvay Collieries from 1915 to 1922.
The Kingston Pocahontas Coal Co. then ran Springton from 1923 until 1942.
Bill Morefield writes, "My family moved to Springton, WV., Mercer County, in 1942. The mine was 'worked out' some time in the late 1930's.
My father was responsible for maintaining four coal camps, Smokeless and Springton in Mercer County, Tralee and Iroquois in Wyoming County. All four camps were owned by the Semet-Solvey Division of the Allied Chemical Corp.
The coal and land was leased from the Pocahontas Land Corp. which is a subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corp.
In reference to the Springton company store picture, the Springton post office was in the left front of the building, the store in the right front of the building extended all the way to the rear. The top floor was used primarily for store supplies and storage. Among other things stored were a few cases of 94 Winchesters that were used by
payroll guards back when the mine was working. There was a railroad siding for the store and an elevator in the store to move supplies between floors
My father's office was in the left rear of the building, you had to go through the post office to get to it. His office had one of the two telephones in the coal camp. The other was in our house. Our 'ring' was three long rings."
The last few coal camp houses left at Ennis Coal Company's Hiawatha coal town. The mine operated from 1914 until 1936.
There are only a few company-built structures remaining at Piedmont, WV, and most of them are in ruins. They were built in 1915 by the American Coal Company, who closed the Piedmont mines in 1957.
Coal camp houses at Weyanoke, an operation of the Weyanoke Coal Company. Dan writes, "I grew up in Weyanoke coal camp in the 1950's. Weyanoke was the white coal camp and Giatto was the black residential area, only about a half mile south of Weyanoke ... The rest of Weyanoke, including the school, the superintendent's house and the company store, were up the N&W track to the north. There are hardly any buildings left in Giatto at all.
Weyanoke was always a small coal camp, but it used to have a big company store, and that picture is up on the net somewhere. It also had a theater, and my dad got his tickets paid for because he could read fast enough to read the subtitles for people during the silent movies. In the area right south of the bottom that you photographed between Weyanoke and Giatto, which was called the ball diamond, a circus used to set up every year. That was before my time, but my brother remembers them. Giatto is pronounced gi - to, with long vowels, and flat vowels
in the southern mountain style."
This murky, foggy photo of Weyanoke / Giatto on a Sunday morning is more about the feel of Appalachia than a clear photo of the town.
Weyanoke coal camp over a century ago.
The town of Matoaka under fog. Despite having the main line of the Virginian and and a branch of the N&W running through it, Matoaka declined until it dissolved
its town charter in 2018.
The big railyard at Bluefield still features a coaling tower, a row of sand (?) tanks, and the locomotive shop, all built by Norfolk
and Western, now Norfolk-Southern.
Bluefield rail yard in the morning sun.
The seldom photographed upper end of the yard.
The Norfolk-Southern locomotive shop is in the center of the Bluefield rail yard.
Coal and Coke building in downtown Bluefield.
At one time Crystal Coal & Coke Co. had 150 beehive coke ovens in western Mercer County. I went to look for them and all I found was this
miniscule remant that is probably part of the wharf where the coke workers stood.
There are also these remains of the Crystal mine. I also saw one (occupied) house remaining from Crysal, W.Va. Crystal Coal & Coke's coal coal mines closed in 1954. Use of the coke ovens probably ceased
many years before that.
Kim writes, "I am looking for a place in WV that may not exist anymore called Thornhill,
probably in Mercer Co. My aunt says it was a mining town. My great grandfather
ran a store there and I want info but can't find any.
My observation is this. I saw your page on mountain accents. My parents are
from WV and moved to northern Ohio for work where I was born. There they, and
all the other WV transplants, were thought to be extremely southern. The
Italians teased them to death about being hillbillies. Heck, we even made
apple butter in caldrons in the yard in the middle of the city and used real
lye soap to wash things. Now I live in Tennessee and have to
hear discrimination about my yankee accent every day. When I first moved here
I tried to tell people that I may have a yankee accent but was raised very
Southern by my WV parents. They would go through the roof, saying WV people
are more Yankee than anyone! (See Civil War, still alive here, for
explanation!) That is, to Tennesseans, the greatest insult they can give.
Seeing your page confirmed what I knew. My parents talked just like these
Tennesseans. I can understand all these people here because I grew up eatin'
bisquits and cornbread with buttermilk and worshin' up after!"
Joseph wrties, "I am a West Virginia native and found your website. I am very interested in the coal mine towns and railroad history there. I saw where a lady
named Kim was looking for a place named Thorn Hill. I don't know if she has found it yet but I know exactly where it's at. I grew up just a few miles from
there and it is just outside of Montcalm WV. When you get into Montcalm on Rt.71 you take a left up Crane Creek toward McComas. It's the next little stop in the road past
the community of Crystal. My grandfather said there was a school, liquor store and a company store there at one time. Most of the company houses are gone now but when I was
growing up most of them were still occupied. I was up there during Thanksgiving and was surprised how much it had changed since I left the area in 1986. I'm not sure
which coal company was there in it's heyday but Consolidated Coal was just up the road in McComas and I Know there was a Crane Creek Coal Company also."
Dee writes, "I was researching the internet for some facts about the Battle of Blair Mountain and a friend of mine referred me to your site for pics of coal camps and mines. While there I discovered a comment from a lady named Kim.
She is looking for a place in WV called Thornhill and was not for sure if the town still existed or not. I don't know how old that comment is but I wanted to let her know that the town does still exist and the store is still standing.
It was a very small coal camp but the remnants are still there."
Dec. 2006 image by author
Image courtesy of the West Virginia State Archives
Mar. 2005 image by author
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Black Diamond magazine image
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In this photo of the Bluefield train yard one can view not only a coal train, but a trip of
orange cars carrying another imporant mineral export of the Bluefield-Tazewell-Rich Creek area: limestone.
March 2017 image by author
March 2017 image by author
Feb. 2017 image by author
Feb. 2017 image by author