CAPERTON, WV
This mining town was built in 1881 by George Caperton (in partnership with Joseph Beury and John Cooper) alongside the main line of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Caperton was
later president of The New River Company. Names associated with Caperton in the 19th Century included Caperton Colliery Co. and New River Coke Co. In the early 1900s the Caperton mines were owned by Victoria Coal & Coke. It has been suggested by others that this firm
was owned by Queen Victoria of England, but it was actually controlled by the Empire Steel & Iron Co. of New Jersey. Sewell Colliery Co. owned the mine in the teens and they
called the mine "Sugar Camp." Premium Smokeless Colliery produced small amounts of coal from the Caperton mines during the Great Depression. However, all Caperton mining ceased by the '40s or '50s. The school for white children was closed in 1952, the post office in 1954, and the town was abandoned shortly thereafter.
The tipple and part of the coal camp at Caperton in the 1870's.
Caperton beehive coke ovens.
Detail of the coke ovens.
The cut stone foundations for the tipple are terraced into the mountainside.
A monitor car is still dangling from the cable across the tipple ruins.
The monitor car hoist at the top of the incline.
The monitor car hoist looking down the incline.
This tenacious structure was possibly a boarding house. A 1987 site inventory for the Park Service said this structure was "largely erect 40' high but nearly rotted to the point of
collapse made of wood and metal very dangerous." Fortunately, the NPS did not destroy the historic structure.
The ruins of the Caperton mansion. It stood until a tree fell across it in 1984. It was located at the end of the swinging bridge that connected Caperton and Elverton.
The creepy, abandoned, Gothic looking Caperton mansion before it collapsed.
"The term 'ghost town' implies former activity, perhaps greatness, as manifested in decrepit buildings and other ruins. A ghost town is a place
that is being reclaimed by nature, and we seem to take a perverse interest in the aesthetics and symbolism of time marching into, and over, such
forlorn places," says Richard Francaviglia in "Hard Places, Reading the Landscape of America's Historic Mining Districts."
Image courtesy of West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Mar. 2001 image by author
Circa early 1980's image courtesy of Stan Cohen