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Ten years ago, he began exploring the abandoned coal towns of the New River Gorge with a friend, and soon began driving to some of the coal camps he’d visited with relatives as a child.

“So many of the towns I’d visited earlier were already gone,” he said. “The towns that weren’t completely gone were in the process of being obliterated, and their historical integrity was, for the most part, missing. I thought it was time to start documenting these places, and that I’d better hurry.”

On his list of favorite sites, DellaMea includes the New River Gorge coal ghost towns, like Sewell and Kaymoor.

“I proposed to my wife at the coke ovens at Sewell,” he said with a smile.

Other sites that stand out include Marianna, Pa., which he said is “one of the most intact coal company-built towns left in the country. Everything was built with the same distinctive yellow brick from the company’s kilns.”

Caretta in McDowell County is another favorite, with its still-standing company store, assortment of shops and maintenance buildings, company homes and a long garage structure that once housed dozens of miners’ cars.

“I know state government can’t do everything,” he said. “But it seems like it would be worthwhile to preserve and restore at least one coal camp town so people in the generations to come can know something about what coal camp life was like.”

DellaMea, 33, and a Marshall graduate, works as a draftsman for a company that builds mining-related structures.

In addition to touring old mining communities, “I like to visit active mines, too,” he said. “I’m the only guy I know who would drive to visit a preparation plant for pleasure.”

His wife, Lisa, accompanies him on some coal camp visits, but generally, he goes solo — usually on Sundays, at the crack of dawn, after taking in a Saturday night Mass.

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