Scenes on Stonecoal Creek

November 1997 photo by author There's not much left of Lillybrook, WV. But at one time this was a big mining community with two mines. In 1930 eight men on the hoot owl shift died in an explosion of the Lillybrook No. 1 mine. The town died out through the 1960s.

Jason writes, "My grandpa (Edgar M...) worked at the Lillybrook mine for a couple years, but his leg was crushed in an accident. My dad said there was a slate slide after an explosion, and the slate crushed his leg (sometime around 1940?) but he lived for quite some time after (1972). I have a picture of his mining crew and part of the tipple. He quit mining shortly therafter I believe."

1928 photo courtesy of W. Caldwell A vintage picture of Lillybrook showing one of the company stores, one of the tipples, and part of the camp.
February 2022 image by author Tipple foundations at Lillybrook toppled over like Easter Island statues (or is that a stretch of the imagination too far?).
November 1997 image by author Last vestiges of the Pickshin, W.Va. coal camp, built in the late 1910s. Pickshin Coal Co. mined the Beckley seam here. It was one of the operations of coal baron J.C. Sullivan.
November 2004 photo by author This collapsing church is indicative of the desolation and despair in Pickshin, WV today. Mead Pocahontas Coal Co. was a later coal operator here.
November 1997 photo by author The defunct Stoco High School in Lego, WV. Stoco is a corruption of Stonecoal. The grassy pasture was their athletic field.
March 2003 image by author The auditorium in the abandoned Stoco High School.
September 2001 photo by author A remnant of the coal mining camp at Lego, W.Va. Laurel Smokeless Coal Company opened the mines here in 1917. The mines were known as Hines No. 1 & No. 2. Laurel Smokeless closed their Lego coal mines circa 1924. Part of Lego was probably razed after that to make room for Stoco High School. Later Lillybrook Coal Company briefly reopened the mines as their No. 5 mine in the 1930s.
November 1997 photo by author This coal camp is Besoco, which comes from Beckley Smokeless Coal Co. The Leccony Smokeless Coal Co. took over by the 1930s. As late as the 1960s, Vecillio and Grogan were strip mining there.
September 2001 photo by author A few remaining coal company houses at Besoco.
Photo by Jack Corn, courtesty The U.S. National Archives Besoco coal camp in 1974.
November 1997 photo by author Don writes that this store is up the hollow from Besoco in a place called Hick Hollow, named after his great grandfather, Hick Garretson. It operated under the name A. W. Price Mercantile Store. This area is also known as Josephine, and in the early 21st Century United Pocahontas mined coal at the Josephine No. 2 mine there.
Image courtesy VT ImageBase, housed and operated by Digital Library and Archives, University Libraries; scanning by Digital Imaging, Learning Technologies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University The mining camp of East Gulf was the domain of the C.H. Mead Coal Co. in the 1920s. By 1960, this coal processing plant had been constructed there by Winding Gulf Coals.
Photo by Jack Corn, courtesty The U.S. National Archives In this 1970s view of the East Gulf mine complex a large shop building or bath house is visable that is no longer there.
November 1997 photo by author Additions were made to the East Gulf plant by later owner Westmoreland Coal Co. In the 1980s and 1990s owned by Maben Energy. It is shown here in the late 1990s when it was still active. The big cloud of steam is from a rare hydrothermal dryer. This dryer actually used a portion of the coal coming into the plant to dry the coal leaving the plant. I have heard that it would use the equivalent to a unit train's worth of coal in one year, and had to be kept on "hot idle" during miners' vacation periods.
November 2002 photo by author Left Fork Processing was rehabilitating the East Gulf plant in 2001, but it was idled in 2002.
June 2005 photo by author When the price of met coal was right, the East Gulf plant was processing coal at full throttle in 2005. Note the full N-S hopper cars waiting to be pulled to the Elmore train yard. Later, the plant was totally remodled.
October 2022 photo by author Later, the East Gulf prep plant was totally remodled by United Pocahontas Coal. It processed coal from their area mines, but had closed by the time I took this picture of the rail loader control room.
February 2022 photo by author This house in East Gulf, W.Va. was probably built by the East Gulf Coal Co. for one of their managers.
Image from "The Black Diamond" magazine via Google Books The company store at East Gulf, W.Va. was so new in this image that a sign had not even been placed on it. East Gulf was opened in the mid 1910s by East Gulf Coal Co. By 1920 C.H. Mead Coal Co. had purchased the operation.
February 2022 image by author Powder / dynamite storage shed in East Gulf.