NEW RIVER COALFIELD - MISC.
Coal camp houses along Ragland Road near Beckley are left over from Ragland Coal Company's Ragland Mine, which operated from
1920 until 1925. It probably closed because the price of coal crashed at that time due to overproduction. This Ragland, W.Va. is not to be confused with the other Ragland, W.Va. coal camp in Mingo County.
Aug. 2014 image by author
Image courtesy of Walter Caldwell
Vintage picture of the coal tipple that was at Oswald, WV.
Image by Red Ribble
Oswold, W.Va. coal camp.
Image courtesy of WVDEP AML Program
Mine ruins between Price Hill and Oswold - possibly from McKell Coal and Coke Company's Sidney Mine.
February 2002 image by author
What's left of the coal camp of Ames, Fayette County. The residences, built by the Ames Mining Co., are on the plateau and the mine itself was down in the New River Gorge.
The last coal production reported by Ames Mining was in 1963.
December 2004 image by author
These concrete piers were the foundations for the Garden Ground tipple, built in 1940 by the New River Company on property they acquired from the McKell Estate. A Sewell seam mine, Garden Ground closed in 1961.
2006 image by author
Part of the Weirwood coal camp near Pax, WV.
October 2006 image by author
The rail depot in Oak Hill, built in 1903 and restored by the White Oak Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society in the early 2000s. It was built by the White Oak Railroad, which was later owned by the Virginian Railway. Thus this is the last
Virginian depot in WV.
July 2008 image by author
This railroad trestle at Dothan, on the border of the New River and Kanawha Coalfield, WV illustrates why the Virginian Railway was an engineering masterpiece.
Image courtesy of Rick Burgess
Rick contributed this picture of an old mine fan he found near Ragland Road near Beckley.
Image courtesy of Rick Burgess
An old mine car and rails sitting on the edge of Beckley (near Woodrow Wilson High School).
Image courtesy of Walter Caldwell
Wingrove, WV coal tipple.
Apr. 2015 image by author
Ruins of the Newlyn coal camp. I once had an elderly neighbor who grew up in Newlyn. She told me that her mother used to ask her to walk down to
Thurmond to retrieve their mail, and the mother instructed her to turn her head and not look at the beer joints and saloons on the "South Side" of Thurmond.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway image via Google Books
Incline and tipple at Meadow Fork, WV on Dunloup Creek. Evidently a small
coal town accompanied this mine. The current location of Meadow Fork is where the yellow painted line disappears on the road to Thurmond. A few tipple foundations and
a really cool wooden trestle that served the mine are all that remains.
Dec. 2013 image by author
Almost no trace remains from the Meadow Fork coal mine or mining camp, but
here are the moss-covered railroad ties still at the Meadow Fork tipple siding.
Aug. 2018 image by author
The former Babcock Coal & Coke Company store in Clifftop, W.Va. was built in the 1890s. The coal mined
at Clifftop was taken down the Mann's Creek Railroad to Sewell, W.Va. where it was loaded into C&O Railway trains
to take it to market.
Aug. 2018 image by author
This house at Landisburg used to be the residence of the Babcock Coal & Coke Company doctor. Apparently he served the lumber camp of Landisburg and the coal camps
of Clifftop and Sewell.
Aug. 2018 image by author
A few of the company-built homes remaining at the former lumber camp named Landisburg, W.Va. These houses,
probably built by Sewell Lumber Co., were a pretty good grade of house for a West Virginia lumber camp.
Image by others
Ancient colorized image of Stonewall, W.Va. on Piney Creek. It was buit by the Stonewall Coal & Coke Co. circa 1902, and
was one of the first coal company towns in Raleigh County. Stonewall has vanished now. However vestiges of Stonewall Coal & Coke's
Terry coal camp do survive a few miles away from Stonewall.
Sept. 2018 image by author
At the southern edge of the New River Coalfield is this street of coal camp houses in Daniels, WV. The street is even named "Camp Street." Several of them have had substantial additions. They were built by the Very Top Seam Coal Co.in 1917 to house the workers of their
Very Top Seam coal mine. The mine transported its coal down their own short line railroad with a Climax locomotive to connect with the end of the C&O branch that went from Raleigh to the Blue Jay and
Ritter lumber camps. This Beckley seam coal mine was opened at the height of the World War I coal boom, and like another ephemeral Raleigh County coal camp - Viacova Smokeless Fuel
Company's Viacova mine - a small group of homes were quickly constructed, and coal was mined for 5 or 6 years before the mines were exhuasted and/or the coal market collapsed.
Apr. 2020 image by author
Coal train over Dunloop Creek.
Dec. 2025 image by author
After 30 years of coal camp hunting, I am still finding communities. This one is Rock Lick / Dunedin in Fayette County. Rock Lick Coal Co. opened Rock Lick mines and town in 1913 as an extension of earlier mines by Thurmond Coal Co. at Erskine where the working face had progressed far from the New River. They even continued to use the old tipple at Erskine down on the river for a while. However, a rail spur off the C&O Rend Subdivision was laid to a new tipple at Rock Lick. There were at different times two or three portals active. Low Volatile Consolidated Coal Co. was the operator of Rock Lick mines in the early 1920s. The final owner was Rock Lick Smokeless Coal Co., who closed Rock Lick mines in the 1930s. However, Dunedin Coal Co. also built a company town at Rock Lick in the 1920s.
