COAL MOUNTAIN, W.VA.

I have been trying to figure out what year Red Jacket Coal Corp. built Coal Mountain. In the Raleigh County Public Library I found a 1939 Department of Mines book that did not show Coal Mountain. The chronologically next book was from 1945, and it did show Coal Mountain No. 11 and 12. So it was somewhere between those dates. N&W Historical Society archives have a map of mine tracks at Coal Mountain dated 1942, so that's probably the year the Coal Mountain mine opened - a very late date for a coal company town. Later Island Creek Coal purchased Red Jacket Coal, and they were the owner and operator.

Image courtesy of Melissa Addison Coal Mountain when it was new.

1999 image courtesy of stevengearhart.com When I went up to Coal Mountain in 2005 to get a photo of the company store a resident told me it had burned or something. So I am glad that photographer Steve Gearhart took this picture of it.

1991 WV SHPO image Coal Mountain prep plant.

Mar. 2005 image by author One of the structures built by Red Jacket Coal that has survived at Coal Mountain, WV. Red Jacket Coal is gone, but there was another smaller company operating a coal mine there on the day I took this picture.