NEW RIVER FIELD
The most outstanding feature of this field was the main line of the C&O Railroad running through it (and the western terminus of the Virginian). Mining was chiefly in the low-volitale Fire Creek and Sewell Seams. The New River Field was the chief producer of beehive coke in Southern West Virginia before the 1890s and after the 1920s. In the interim period it was second to the Pocahontas Coalfield.
Mining in the field began in the 1870s. At first English and Scottish immigrants were imported to dig the coal. Later, Southern European "hunkies" settled in the coal camps along Dunloop and White Oak Creeks. In the latter years a majority of the miners in the New River Gorge were African-Americans.
This coal field went into decline after World War 2. I am not aware of any active mines in the area anymore. The New River Field, which burned brightly like a lump of Sewell coal for over 100 years, burned out in the 1980s and '90s.
THE TOWNS:
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