ANSTED AREA MINES
Ansted, West Virginia is not a pure coal company town. It is an incorporated private town with a private residential section,
a commercial section, and a coal camp section. The community is named for David Ansted, a coal geologist from England who was a pioneer industrial explorer in the
area. Mining at Ansted began early - in the 1870s - by the Hawks Nest Coal Company. At some point banks of coke ovens were built. According to an 1887 issue of
The Coal Trade Journal, the coke ovens were "Coppee or Belgian ovens," not beehive ovens.
Another factoid
is that the labor strife that would characterize the Southern West Virginia coal industry for a century may have began at Ansted in 1880 when unionized miners from a
neighboring mine attempted to blockade the Hawks Nest/Ansted mines.
A later operator of the mines at
Ansted was the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, and, later, the Mill Creek Colliery Company, not to be confused with Mill Creek Coal & Coke that was in Mercer County. In 1913 the Mill Creek coal mines employed
75 men, used mules for haulage, and advertised an annual capacity of 50,000 tons. By 1921 they had upgraded to using electric locomotives to supplement their mule haulage, and
were now using "short wall" mining machines and "gravity screens" in the tipple. However, annual tonnage was still 50,000 tons of egg, lump, and R-O-M coal. Mill Creek Colliery closed
their mine in 1950. Gauley Mountain Coal's various mines in the area operated from 1897 until 1959.
Signal Knob Coal Co. opened their mines at Ansted in 1910. Their mines closed in the depths of the Great Depression, but reopened from 1942 until 1952.
This portal from the Mill Creek Colliery mine, which appears to have been a mine fan housing, is
still in existence.
This powder house, where dynamite and blasting poweder was stored, was part of the Mill Creek Colliery mine.
A few of the coal company houses at Ansted.
A loaded coal car sits along Route 60 in Ansted, with the former mansion of William Page
in the background.
A closer view of the large house that William Page lived in while he was manager of
Gauley Mountain Coal Company. The house was built in 1890.
This wooden railroad trestle once carried coal cars
down the mountain from the Gauley Mountain Coal Company mines to the main line of the C&O Railway.
Beehive coke oven ruins overgrown with very dense briars.
Another one of the coke ovens made unapproachable by impenetrable weeds and thorns.
Foundations for a tipple or mining structure.
Ghostly coal mine ruins in the woods.
This was once a railroad bed, now just a road.
Ruins of a company house - probably built by the Signal Knob Coal Co. - showing board and
batten construction.
These company houses, however, were Gauley Mountain Coal Co. houses.
Sources:
WV state mine records.
Old man following my son and I around in March 2018.
Image courtesy of Mick Vest
January 2002 WV SHPO image
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