POWELLTON — Chris DellaMea aimed his digital camera at a long, slightly curving row of company-built houses. Early morning sunshine glinted off their rain-dampened roofs as DellaMea tripped the shutter and began documenting his second coal camp of the day.

“It’s really become an obsession with me,” he said, walking through this Fayette County coal town as a line of crumbling coke ovens came into view across Powellton Fork of Armstrong Creek.

“How many people do you know who leave a warm bed at 6 o’clock on a cold morning to go out and climb hills and cliffs to find another coal camp?” he asked, again raising his camera.

“The mine here opened in 1893, and the coke ovens probably date back almost to then. This is the best time of year to see the coal cam ps. The leaves are all gone, so you can see old foundations and overgrown buildings, and the snakes are gone, too.”

Since he took up the avocation of visiting, photographing and otherwise documenting coal camps in 1997, the Beckley man has added more than 400 coal communities in four states to his list. He posts his photos, along with maps, historical excerpts and other tidbits of information on his Web site, www.coalcampusa.com.

What’s the attraction of coal camps?

“When I walk up these hollows, I think about all the immigrants who came here from places like Italy, Poland and Hungary, and wonder what their lives were like,” he said, as a trio of dogs in a nearby yard documented his presence with a noisy chorus of barks.

“You can imagine people chatting over the fences of their company houses. You can picture steam trains chugging up the tracks and imagine the smell of bread baking, and smoke pouring out of the coke ovens. Now, everything’s so quiet. I like the mood of these places. It’s a little sad, yet still beautiful. I guess I like them for the same reason people like pictures of weathered barns.”

His interest in coal communities was whetted at an early age.

“When I was kid, Dad took me to wander around the old tipples at Cranberry and Skelton around Beckley, and later, we visited Winding Gulf, where my Sicilian-born great-grandfather came to America to mine for coal.”

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