BISHOP, WV

Evidently this was one of the last coal camps to be built in the Pocahontas Coalfield (in 1930). Bishop, in which half the camp is in McDowell County, WV and half is in Tazwell County, Va, was opened by the Pocahontas Fuel Corporation. They mined a 7-foot section of the Pocahontas 3 seam here and Pocahontas 5, too. Later Consol owned the mine.

It is obvious that Bishop was a major mining camp because all of the houses are this large, and the sidewalks are a nice touch, too.

The remains of the Bishop preparation plant. This was a Chance cone plant built by Fairmont Machinery in 1956.

Another view of the rusting Bishop coal plant.

Miscellaneous conveyors and ruins.

This has been identified as the slope portal to Bishop No. 36 of Jacobs Fork Mains.

This sign from the Bishop mine is on display at the Pocahontas Exhibition Mine.

Bill Hall Jr. writes, "I remember these places from years ago. I worked for Consol during college in the early 1980s. One year I was in the lab in Pocahontas and sampled from many of the mines/tipples. Some I don't remember well, as I only worked on that site for a day or so. Others, like Turkey Gap, Crane Creek, etc. I do remember well. Other summers I worked at Bishop in the scale house, Amonate in the scale house, and one summer at Buchanan on the tipple. I actually loaded the very first unit train out of Buchanan in 1984 or 1985. My father was the final superintendent at the Pageton prep plant. They were running truck coal at that time. He also was a shift foreman on the plant at Jenkinjones, and ran a special plant at Jenkinjones that combined coal fines with oil to make coal pellets (oil agglomeration plant) in the 1980s. After Jenkinjones he was at Bishop for a while on the tipple, then Pageton. When Pageton shut down, he was transferred to Amonate and was the tipple superintendent there until he retired in the late 1990s."

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