NEW RIVER COALFIELD - MISC.
Coal camp houses along Ragland Road near Beckley are left over from Ragland Coal Company's Ragland Mine, which operated from
1920 until 1925. It probably closed because the price of coal crashed at that time due to overproduction. This Ragland, W.Va. is not to be confused with the other Ragland, W.Va. coal camp in Mingo County.
Vintage picture of the coal tipple that was at Oswald, WV.
Oswold, W.Va. coal camp.
Mine ruins between Price Hill and Oswold - possibly from McKell Coal and Coke Company's Sidney Mine.
What's left of the coal camp of Ames, Fayette County. The residences, built by the Ames Mining Co., are on the plateau and the mine itself was down in the New River Gorge.
The last coal production reported by Ames Mining was in 1963.
These concrete piers were the foundations for the Garden Ground tipple, built in 1940 by the New River Company on property they acquired from the McKell Estate. A Sewell seam mine, Garden Ground closed in 1961.
Part of the Weirwood coal camp near Pax, WV.
The rail depot in Oak Hill, built in 1903 and restored by the White Oak Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society in the early 2000s. It was built by the White Oak Railroad, which was later owned by the Virginian Railway. Thus this is the last
Virginian depot in WV.
This railroad trestle at Dothan, on the border of the New River and Kanawha Coalfield, WV illustrates why the Virginian Railway was an engineering masterpiece.
Rick contributed this picture of an old mine fan he found near Ragland Road near Beckley.
An old mine car and rails sitting on the edge of Beckley (near Woodrow Wilson High School).
Wingrove, WV coal tipple.
Ruins of the Newlyn coal camp. I once had an elderly neighbor who grew up in Newlyn. She told me that her mother used to ask her to walk down to
Thurmond to retrieve their mail, and the mother instructed her to turn her head and not look at the beer joints and saloons on the "South Side" of Thurmond.
Incline and tipple at Meadow Fork, WV on Dunloup Creek. Evidently a small
coal town accompanied this mine. The current location of Meadow Fork is where the yellow painted line disappears on the road to Thurmond. A few tipple foundations and
a really cool wooden trestle that served the mine are all that remains.
Almost no trace remains from the Meadow Fork coal mine or mining camp, but
here are the moss-covered railroad ties still at the Meadow Fork tipple siding.
The former Babcock Coal & Coke Company store in Clifftop, W.Va. was built in the 1890s. The coal mined
at Clifftop was taken down the Mann's Creek Railroad to Sewell, W.Va. where it was loaded into C&O Railway trains
to take it to market.
This house at Landisburg used to be the residence of the Babcock Coal & Coke Company doctor. Apparently he served the lumber camp of Landisburg and the coal camps
of Clifftop and Sewell.
A few of the company-built homes remaining at the former lumber camp named Landisburg, W.Va. These houses,
probably built by Sewell Lumber Co., were a pretty good grade of house for a West Virginia lumber camp.
Ancient colorized image of Stonewall, W.Va. on Piney Creek. It was buit by the Stonewall Coal & Coke Co. circa 1902, and
was one of the first coal company towns in Raleigh County. Stonewall has vanished now. However vestiges of Stonewall Coal & Coke's
Terry coal camp do survive a few miles away from Stonewall.
At the southern edge of the New River Coalfield is this street of coal camp houses in Daniels, WV. The street is even named "Camp Street." Several of them have had substantial additions. They were built by the Very Top Seam Coal Co.in 1917 to house the workers of their
Very Top Seam coal mine. The mine transported its coal down their own short line railroad with a Climax locomotive to connect with the end of the C&O branch that went from Raleigh to the Blue Jay and
Ritter lumber camps. This Beckley seam coal mine was opened at the height of the World War I coal boom, and like another ephemeral Raleigh County coal camp - Viacova Smokeless Fuel
Company's Viacova mine - a small group of homes were quickly constructed, and coal was mined for 5 or 6 years before the mines were exhuasted and/or the coal market collapsed.
Coal train over Dunloop Creek.
Aug. 2014 image by author
Image courtesy of Walter Caldwell
Image by Red Ribble
Image courtesy of WVDEP AML Program
February 2002 image by author
December 2004 image by author
2006 image by author
October 2006 image by author
July 2008 image by author
Image courtesy of Rick Burgess
Image courtesy of Rick Burgess
Image courtesy of Walter Caldwell
Apr. 2015 image by author
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway image via Google Books
Dec. 2013 image by author
Aug. 2018 image by author
Aug. 2018 image by author
Aug. 2018 image by author
Image by others
Sept. 2018 image by author
Apr. 2020 image by author
