Kopperston was named after Koppers Coal Co. who founded the town in 1938 as one of the last company-built coal camps in Appalachia. The next year they mined 329,864 tons of coal there. By the time Koppers had metamorphisized into Eastern Associated, they were mining millions of tons per year in the Eagle and Campbell's Creek seams. The tipple continued to process contract coal until it was closed in 1997. The last superintendent was Mike Phipps. Norfolk-Southern still uses a loadout at the Kopperston site to load coal from Eastern's Harris No. 1 mine, which comes over the mountain via a 5 mile long overland conveyor that has no idlers.

The Kopperston coal processing plant just before its demolition. (Photo courtesy of Harold Trent)

The big idle prep plant at Kopperston as it looked in August 2001.

The original prep plant before all of the upgrades and additions. (Courtesy VT ImageBase, housed and operated by Digital Library and Archives, University Libraries; scanning by Digital Imaging, Learning Technologies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)

The old loadout behind the defunct prep plant.

The refuse conveyor and the slate dump.

The railyard looking down toward the plant. This is truly the end of the line for the Virginian (later N-S) spur that ran from Baileysville through Lynco and Oceana.

The bath house.

The "modern" styled maintenance shop.

U.S. Dept. of the Interior photo of the Kopperston coal camp in 1946.

Kopperston feels more like a quaint little town than a coal camp because Koppers Coal Co. took the novel approach of building houses that didn't all look alike. It may have been the nicest coal camp in Southern West Virginia.

The art deco Koppers Company store is no longer there. (Courtesy of Triubte to the Coal Miner, with permission)

The boarded up school at Kopperston.

The walkway under Rt. 85 to the Kopperston No. 1 mine mouth.

Ray writes, "I grew up in an atypical coal town, Kopperston, where my step dad was the General Tipple Foreman ... Kopperston was supposed to be the show-town of Eastern Gas & Fuel, Koppers division, and was purchased by the Peabody Coal company after I left in 1959 ... The company store, operated by Koppers while I lived there, was sold to Island Creek Coal company, and later demolished... I was last in Kopperston in the early 90's, and the store was being taken down at that time ... I had no desire to work in the mines, being somewhat apprehensive about going underground... I do remember clouds of black dust coming down the valley (holler) day after day... Mom would have me rinse off the porch almost daily, so as not to track the dust in the house, which was a losing cause, as you can imagine. The creek ran black from the process of cleaning the coal, and remained that way for years, before they began pumping the waste water to the other side of the huge slate dump. It wasn't too long after that minnows began living in the cleaned water. We lived just south of the Company Store... My brother...worked for Eastern Gas, in the main Kopperston office... He told me Kopperston was one of the most productive mines in W. VA, sending two 150 car trains out per day... I do remember the switch from steam to diesel."

Ray also contributed a panoramic photo of Kopperston. It is too wide for this webpage, but here is part of it.

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