TAMS
This was a major mining town with a large tipple, an aerial tramway for refuse, and a theater, store, a Catholic Church for the immigrant miners, and two Baptist Churches for white and black congregations.
Tams was opened by W.P. "Major" Tams's company, the Gulf Smokeless Coal Co., on Winding Gulf Creek in 1909, and was the
first mine on Winding Gulf Creek to ship coal. As a matter of fact, when Virginian Railway construction finally reached Tams there
was a stockpile of coal waiting there to be loaded. Tams was also later served by the C&O Railway, too.
The Tams No. 1 mine was in the thick
Beckley seam. This mine worked out in 1941, but by then the No. 2 mine down in the Pocahontas No. 4 seam had opened (in 1926). In the mid 1950's the Gulf Smokeless Coal Company, Winding Gulf Collaries, and McAlpin Coal Company were consolidated into Winding Gulf Coals, Inc., who kept
Tams No. 2 mine open until 1966. (They also operated a Tams No. 5 mine in 1969-70, but I am not sure where it was located.)
Around 1971 Westmoreland Coal Co. set up the headquarters for their Winding Gulf Divison at Tams, and adminsistered their mines
at McAlpin, East Gulf, Eccles, Skelton, Otsego, and Maben before winding these operations down in the early and mid-1980's. Westmoreland
Coal was a Pennsylvania mining company that was founded way back in the 1850's, and made their first forays into the Southern West
Virginia coalfields in 1950 in Boone County, and they were also prominent in Wise County, Virginia. Westmoreland later fell on
hard times, their stock value plummented to around 25 cents a share, and they went into bankruptcy. After reorganization they retreated
from the Appalachian coal basin to concentrate on coal mines out West.
After Westmoreland left Tams the town began to return to nature. The inhabitants left, and all of the company houses are gone now, including the one where "Major" Tams lived until he died. He wrote his autobiography, The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia, and Playboy magazine came to Tams to interview him as one of the last surviving coal barons before his death in 1977.
One chapter in the book covers the operations of the Gulf Smokeless Coal Company. This is a rare example of a detailed documentation of the formation of a coal company/mine/camp being available to the general public. In it Tams covers such topics as how he paid workers a wage higher than the unionized miners were receiving, how his company paid a dividend to investors every year, even during
the 1930's depression, and how he constructed the town so that "the houses above the tipple were occupied by the Negroes, the section below the tipple by white Americans, and still further down a section for the foregin miners."
James
was nice enough to send in this photograph of the Tams mining camp being constructed. James
writes, "I was raised in Tams and then moved to Ury (Cooktown) ... First I remember living at Tams in the
lower section, on Hunk Hill. I heard that was where the people from other countries lived, and
where the Black people lived was at upper Tams and we called it colored town. I went to 1st through
3rd grade at Tams Elementary. It was a really great school. We moved from Hunk Hill to behind
the Doctors office. Me my older brother and younger brother - we was normal kids. I think we got
into all the trouble that kids do get into. We played at the school play ground,
and use to love to get a man named Mike ... to chase us. He
was always getting on to us kids, cause we would always pick on him. Rumor was he burned the
Catholic church down - he knocked over a kerosene lantern. It was an accident, and we would
always tell him God was going to get him for it. I know that was wrong, but as kids we
thought nothing about hurting someone's feelings. Hey, we was just playing. Our town barber
was Mike Spanalli. My grandfather would take all us
kids there in the summer to get a hair cut. Mike would ask us how we wanted it to be cut.
And no matter how we told him we wanted it cut, he would give us a crew cut. We would ask him
why he did that, because we would be totally mad because of the haircut. He would just say in an
Italian accent, "That's the way Mr. a-Homer Cook a-wanted it cutta". My grandfather worked
for Mr. Tams for years in the coal mines. Mr. Tams was a great man. He would see us walking
the streets and or playing around, would always ask us how we was doing and always asked about
our grandfather and grandmother. I remember the Company store,
always we would find pop bottles and sell them to the store and then go back later and steal
them back and resale them. In the old bath house we would wait till the miners went to work and no
one was around and go in and plug up the drains, turn on few of the showers, and soap up the
floor and slide on the floor. We had a ball doing that. Can remember my Aunt saying we was going
to get athletes butt sliding on the bath house floor."
James wrote of this photo, "If you like here is another picture of Tams. The Baptist Church is the tall white building on the right. The one building looking building straight ahead is the old Tams School. Facing it the room on the right was one big room with a stage on it.
I can remember putting on a play there. The Catholic Church use to be in the lot in across the street from the school. The house on the left is where Mrs. Adams lived. We always thought it was funny that we had sidewalks, but dirt roads."
Looking up the Gulf toward Stotesbury. In the foreground is the Baptist Church.
By the time this photo was taken the Baptist church had been enlarged and then abandoned.
At this same time, 1988, the Tams coal camp was an abandoned ghost town. The last family to live in Tams, the Veenie family, moved out in the mid-1980s.
A typical abandoned coal camp house at Tams. Mick writes, "Every house in Tams was painted white with green trim."
A few years later, Mick again visited Tams and found these decaying coal camp houses, as viewed from the back window of the Baptist church, to still be in existence. Within a
decade even these last vestiges of Tams would vanish.
The machine shop and bath house are still in existance at Tams.
The Tams bathhouse.
A lonely shop building and scattered foundations remain where the Tams tipple was once located.
A closer look at the red brick shop building.
Twin portals of the Tams No. 2 mine. I'm guessing that the No. 2 mine at Tams was in the Pocahontas No. 3 seam, because this is
approximately the elevation that Pocahontas 3 would occur along Winding Gulf Creek. So Tams No. 1 must have been in the higher Beckley seam.
Detail of the inscription "Tams No. 2 Mine" in the lintel.
I have found the foundations for the refuse tramway at Tams.
An old fan housing leading to an airshaft.
Another view of the fan.
This block mine builiding is now engulfed in the woods.
Another structure associated with the Tams mines is extant on the hillside.
The upper (upstream) end of the camp was where the African-American population lived, as shown in this 1958 picture. These homes would
be later demolished so that Slab Fork Coal Co. could build a preparation plant and complex for its No. 10 mine. Also a plant for processing a ground "Austin Black" coal powder was constructed as well.
This African-American church, the New Salem Baptist Church, was still being occassionally used recently. In addition to
the church services held here, the Byrd-Prillerman High School reunions were also held here in later years.
I found the New Salem Baptist Church to be still extant in 2007.
A beautiful picture of the New Salem church contributed by a talented photographer. Click
here for high resolution image.
This photograph was taken during the demolition of the Slab Fork / Austin Black facility, a day
before the silos and (sand?) bin came down.
The small shed on the right and several concrete slabs remain from Slab Fork Coal Company's
complex at Tams.
This sign is at the foot of the impoundment that is now the trailhead for the Burning Rock ATV trail system.
Small industrial shed and New Salem Church.
James Hall shared this photo he took of a "coal house" at Tams. He writes, "I know for
a fact it is a coal house.. I use to live there, and I took that pic off the side of the road, and I think it is the only one left in Tams. I use to have
to get coal and carry it in the house. Every house had one in the yard."
Another photo of the coal house by James.
Fire hydrant in the former "Hunk Hill" neighborhood of Tams.
Mine ruins and water tank.
Industrial remnants.
Steel, wood, and stone ruins of a mining structure on the mountainside.
Note the Westmoreland Coal Co. structures behind this sign.
The process of manufacturing a product called "carbon black" or "Austin black" that was pioneered by Slab Fork Coal Co.
at Tams continued on at this plant at Tams operated by a company named Coal Fillers, Inc. I talked to staff at this site in early 2020 and they said that the coal they
were using came from McDowell County, W.Va. and Buchanan County, Va. A few weeks later I heard that this plant caught fire.
The Coal Fillers plant on fire. Fortunately no one was hurt.
In his book "Raleigh County" (1994) author/historian Jim Wood writes, "McAlpin, Stotesbury, and Tams today present a general appearance of abandonment and desolation, the few still standing company
houses long unpainted, rubble and debris strewn about broken down mine buildings, concrete steps and walks leading into weeds and brush, rusting pipelines, a trash-littered creek, empty railroad
tracks once lined with coal cars waiting shipment, lived-in houses with broken down cars and trucks out front, yards full of junk, decay everywhere.
Tams, as a mining community, no longer exists. Only a few of its buildings remain, abandoned, a machine shop without windows now, piles of warped lumber from demolished houses bleaching in the
sun, piled up around foundations and chimneys, a hillside water tank, its paint badly peeled, water gushing down a rust-colored hillside from an abandoned drift mouth.
And the cottage home of bachelor coal baron W.P. Tams, who wrote so knowledgeably about the early coal mining days at Raleigh County, also has disappeared. He lived there for 68 years and long
after he sold his operation in 1955. Gone too is his movie theatre, 'Golden Gate,' built in 1911 and reputed to have been one of the first theatres erected in the United States specifically for the
showing of movies. He died in 1977 at the age of 93 and his executor was required to post a bond of $2,000,000 but the town that he built in 1909 where circuses liked to set up their tents is gone
with the wind."
Here are those "piles of warped lumber from demolished houses bleaching in the sun" that Jim Wood was talking about.
Image courtesy of James Hall
Image courtesy of James Hall
Image courtesy of James Hall
Sep. 1988 image courtesy Mick Vest
Sep. 1988 image courtesy Mick Vest
Sep. 1988 image courtesy Mick Vest
Early 1990's image courtesy of Mick Vest
Nov. 1997 image by author
May 2001 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
May 2001 image by author
May 2001 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Image courtesy of byrnefamilyreunion.org
Oct. 1998 image by author
Apr. 2007 image by author
2020 image by David Dunlap
Image courtesy of Mick Vest
Dec. 2008 image by author
Nov. 2002 image by author
Dec. 2008 image by author
Image courtesy of James Hall
Image courtesy of James Hall
Feb. 2011 image by Mick Vest
Feb. 2011 image by Mick Vest
Feb. 2011 image by Mick Vest
Feb. 2011 image by Mick Vest
Early 1990s image by Mick Vest
April 2001 image by author
2020 image by Logan Bailey
Apr. 2001 image by author
