Abandoned Appalachia Series – Nuttallburg, Henry Ford, and a Smokeless Coal Town in the New River Gorge
If you follow Keeneys Creek down from the highlands of Fayette County, West Virginia, the pavement narrows to a one lane road and drops into a gorge that feels closed off from the rest of the world. Trees lean over the hood of your car, rock walls press close, and the sound of the New River grows louder around each curve. Then, just when it seems there is no room left for anything but forest and water, a rust colored steel conveyor suddenly appears above the treetops, swooping down the hillside toward a massive coal tipple along the tracks.
This is Nuttallburg, once a company town built on the promises of “smokeless” New River coal and later pulled into the orbit of Henry Ford’s car empire. Today it survives as one of the most intact coal mining complexes in Appalachia, preserved inside New River Gorge National Park and Preserve as a kind of open air archive of the region’s industrial past.
John Nuttall and the coming of smokeless coal
The town began with a single English immigrant’s bet on the future. John Nuttall came to the United States in 1849 and first worked in the coal fields of western Pennsylvania. By 1870 he had turned his attention southward to the New River Gorge, where surveyors were laying out the route of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Nuttall began buying up land along Keeneys Creek and the New River, eventually assembling roughly 1,500 acres.
He did not wait for the railroad to arrive before building. Company records and later summaries describe him putting up rows of workers’ houses, a company store, and a bank of coke ovens, all positioned to take advantage of a coal seam that lay hundreds of feet above the river but could be moved downhill once the line was in place. By the time the C&O opened through the gorge in 1873, Nuttallburg was ready. It became one of the earliest completed mines in the New River field and the second town in the gorge to ship coal on the new line.
That coal was marketed as “smokeless,” a low volatile bituminous coal that burned hot and relatively clean. Industrial buyers in eastern cities prized it for steelmaking and locomotive fuel, and for several decades the New River field became one of the most important coal producing regions in the United States. Nuttallburg rode that wave, sending out loaded cars along the river while the town climbed higher up the hillside.
Life in a hillside company town
Unlike the broad, flat river bottoms of some coalfields, the New River Gorge offered very little level land. At Nuttallburg, the narrow strip beside the tracks was reserved for railroad sidings, coke ovens, and the large timber and steel structures needed to move and process coal. The tipple, which straddled the main line, and the long conveyor reaching up the slope became the visual backbone of the operation.
The people who worked those facilities mostly lived on terraces cut into the hillsides. Contemporary photographs and later National Register documentation show rows of simple frame houses perched above stone retaining walls, connected by footpaths and steep steps rather than by wide streets.
Company housing followed familiar Appalachian coal town patterns. There were single family dwellings and larger “barracks” style houses for unmarried men, a boarding house, and better quality homes for supervisors. A company store near the coke ovens anchored daily life, while schools and churches gave the community its own institutions. Later visitors walking the Town Loop and Seldom Seen trails can still trace those pieces in the foundations and scattered household artifacts that lie beneath the trees.
The work itself was demanding and dangerous. Miners rode or walked to the mine openings higher up the slope, where room and pillar workings honeycombed the seam. Underground, they loaded coal into cars that were then hauled to the headhouse and dropped into the conveyor for their long ride down to the tipple and coke works. Company rulebooks, union organizing drives in surrounding camps, and the scars on the landscape all point to a world built on long shifts, strict discipline, and the constant risk of roof falls, explosions, and accidents on the haulage lines.
Segregation along Short Creek
Nuttallburg was also a segregated town. Local histories and county interpretations note that Short Creek, the community’s main drinking water supply, functioned as an informal color line. White workers and their families lived on one side of the creek, Black workers and their families on the other, each side with its own school, church, and social hall.
The remains of that African American community still sit along the modern access road. Visitors driving into Nuttallburg pass interpretive panels that point out former house sites and the foundation of the Black school. The displays are brief, but they remind travelers that New River coal was dug and cleaned by a racially divided workforce whose opportunities and pay were shaped not only by geology and market prices but also by Jim Crow.
Black miners and their families built churches, lodges, and mutual aid networks that anchored community life on their side of the creek. Oral histories from the wider New River region describe barbershops, fraternal halls, and segregated company clubs where workers carved out space for their own celebrations and politics under the shadow of the company store and tipple. Nuttallburg fit that wider pattern, even if many of its specific stories now survive only in family memory and scattered photographs.
Henry Ford comes to the gorge
In the 1920s Nuttallburg’s history intersected with Detroit. Seeking greater control over his supply chain, automobile magnate Henry Ford began leasing coal operations in several regions as “captive mines” to feed his River Rouge steel mills in Dearborn, Michigan. The Nuttall family leased their mines at Nuttallburg to Ford’s Fordson Coal Company during this experiment in vertical integration.
Fordson engineers upgraded the operation. They modernized the mine plant and built the long steel conveyor that now defines the site for modern visitors, carrying coal from a headhouse halfway up the gorge down to the tipple along the railroad more than 500 feet below. That conveyor allowed the company to move large quantities of coal efficiently and became a symbol of industrial power stretching across the forested slope.
Despite these investments, Ford’s experiment stumbled on geography and corporate power. He could own the mines, but not the railroad that carried coal out of the gorge. When it became clear that he could neither buy the C&O line nor reliably dictate freight rates, he abandoned the effort. By 1928 Fordson had given up its lease, and the Nuttallburg mines passed into other hands.
Decline, closure, and a ghost town in the trees
The decades after Fordson’s departure followed a familiar Appalachian pattern. New owners kept the mines operating into the mid twentieth century, but the New River field slowly lost ground as other coal regions opened up and as national demand shifted. Production at Nuttallburg increasingly served local and regional markets rather than distant steel mills.
In 1958 the underground mine finally closed. Without the payroll that had justified a full company town carved into the hillside, families moved away, buildings emptied, and the forest began to reclaim streets and yards. What had once been a densely populated industrial village became, in the words of later park historians, a set of empty structures and stone foundations hidden beneath vines and trees at the bottom of a gorge.
Nuttallburg was not alone. Along a short stretch of the New River between Thurmond and Teays Landing there had once been more than a dozen coal camps and small towns, most of which vanished or shrank dramatically after mid century. Guides to the “ghost towns of the New River Gorge” now treat Nuttallburg as one stop in a chain of abandoned industrial landscapes that line the river.
From private property to public history
The fact that Nuttallburg looks as complete as it does today is the result of a late twentieth century decision by the Nuttall family. In 1998 they transferred ownership of the mining complex, townsite, and surrounding land to the National Park Service. Park staff documented the ruins, recorded the remaining structures in detail, and prepared a National Register of Historic Places nomination that designated a 90 acre historic district encompassing the mine plant, conveyor, tipple, coke ovens, rail grade, and surviving town fabric.
By 2005 the district was formally listed, and in 2011 the Park Service completed a multi year stabilization project. Crews cut back vegetation, shored up failing walls, and repaired critical elements of the conveyor and tipple so that they could safely remain as artifacts rather than collapsing into scrap. Park brochures now describe Nuttallburg as one of the most intact coal mining complexes in West Virginia and one of the most complete coal related industrial sites in the United States.
This work changed Nuttallburg from a dangerous ruin on private land into a managed historic site. Instead of rusting away unseen, the headhouse, conveyor, coke ovens, and house foundations now serve as outdoor exhibits in a national park focused not only on scenery but also on the human stories of the gorge.
Walking Nuttallburg today
For modern visitors, reaching Nuttallburg is itself a lesson in landscape. Keeneys Creek Road remains narrow, steep, and partly gravel, with sharp curves and long single lane stretches where drivers must negotiate passing on the mountainside. Park guidance warns off large vehicles and trailers and urges caution for everyone. The road follows the same drainage that miners once used to reach work, and at one point it passes through the heart of the former African American neighborhood, where interpretive signs explain what once stood among the trees.
From the parking area near the river, a short walk leads visitors to the base of the tipple and the long line of coke ovens that once turned raw coal into coke for steel mills. The Tipple Trail runs along these structures and connects to the Seldom Seen Trail, which climbs gently to the remnants of a residential cluster downstream. There, stone foundations and scattered fragments of bottles and ceramics mark what had been a small “suburb” of Nuttallburg for families connected to the mine.
Other paths, like the Town Loop and the steep Headhouse Trail, take more determined hikers up the hillside to the ruins of houses, the site of the mine offices, and viewpoints of the conveyor as it snakes down the slope. For many people the most striking moment comes when they step beneath the conveyor itself and look up at the long, rust colored spine of steel crossing the gorge forest. It is a reminder of how far coal had to travel even before it reached the main railroad line.
Newspaper features and travel accounts published since New River Gorge became a national park emphasize that walking Nuttallburg feels different from visiting a reconstructed company town. Nothing here has been rebuilt as a museum street. Instead, foundations, walls, and machinery stand where they were left when the mine closed. Nature has softened the sharp edges, but the arrangement of structures still matches early twentieth century photographs and the diagrams in the National Register nomination.
What Nuttallburg tells us about Appalachian history
Seen from above, Nuttallburg can look like a picturesque ruin. It sits in a green gorge, and its rusting conveyor has become a favorite photographic subject for hikers and travel writers. Yet the town’s history reaches well beyond scenic decay.
It tells a story about how outside capital and local initiative reshaped mountain valleys. John Nuttall was not a farmer quietly working a creek bottom but an industrialist who arrived with enough capital to buy land, open mines, and build an entire town around a railroad line that had not yet been finished. His gamble paid off because national demand for coal drew the New River Gorge into a web of steel mills and factories far from Fayette County.
It also speaks to the ways corporate power and geography complicated ideas of control. Henry Ford tried to extend his reach from Detroit to a West Virginia gorge by leasing Nuttallburg’s mines, modernizing its plant, and using its smokeless coal to feed his own steel works. He could not, however, control the railroad that ran through the gorge, and when that limitation proved too expensive, he walked away. The conveyor and other improvements remained, a local landscape permanently altered by a global industrial experiment.
Finally, Nuttallburg highlights the everyday lives of miners and their families who lived under segregated housing policies and company control yet built their own communities on the slopes above the tracks. The foundations of churches, schools, and houses along Short Creek and at Seldom Seen remind visitors that the story of coal is not only about tipples and conveyors, but also about the people who cooked in those kitchens, walked those paths, and navigated the racial lines that divided the town.
Sources & Further Reading
National Park Service. “Nuttallburg.” New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, U.S. Department of the Interior. Last updated February 28, 2025. https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/historyculture/nuttallburg.htm.
National Park Service. “Nuttallburg.” Places: U.S. National Park Service. Last updated August 10, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/places/nuttallburg.htm.
Walsh, Rita, David N. Fuerst, and Richard W. Segars. Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2005. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Nuttallburg-coal-mining-complex-town-historic-district.pdf.
National Park Service. “Getting to Nuttallburg.” Brochure, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, ca. 2016. https://npshistory.com/publications/neri/brochures/nuttallburg.pdf.
National Park Service. “Exploring Nuttallburg.” New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/historyculture/exploring-nuttallburg.htm.
National Park Service. “African American Life in a Coal Camp: Nuttallburg.” New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. Last updated January 29, 2020. https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/african-american-life-in-a-coal-camp-nuttallburg.htm.
National Park Service. “African American Heritage Auto Tour.” New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/african-american-heritage-auto-tour.htm.
West Virginia Division of Culture and History, State Historic Preservation Office. “Fayette County – National Register of Historic Places Nominations: Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District.” https://wvculture.org/agencies/state-historic-preservation-office-shpo/register-of-historical-places/national-register-of-historic-places-nominations/fayette-county/.
“National Register of Historic Places; Notification of Pending Nominations and Related Actions.” Federal Register 72, no. 146 (July 31, 2007): 41772. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/07/31/E7-14688/national-register-of-historic-places-notification-of-pending-nominations-and-related-actions.
“Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuttallburg_Coal_Mining_Complex_and_Town_Historic_District.
“Nuttallburg, West Virginia.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuttallburg,_West_Virginia.
“New River Coalfield.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_Coalfield.
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1983. https://archive.org/details/smokelesscoalfie0000unse.
Legg, J. Scott, and Fayette County Chamber of Commerce. New River Gorge. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010. https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/new-river-gorge-9780738586090.
Bragg, Melody. Thurmond and Ghost Towns of the New River Gorge. Glen Jean, WV: Gem Publications, 1995. https://www.abebooks.com/9781882722068/Thurmond-ghost-towns-New-River-188272206X/plp.
Downing, Bob. “History-Rich Nuttallburg Tells Story of Coal Mining in West Virginia’s New River Gorge.” Akron Beacon Journal, September 13, 2013. Reposted by Fayette County Commission, West Virginia. https://fayettecounty.wv.gov/news/Pages/Nuttallburg.aspx.
New River Gorge Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Nuttallburg, Henry Ford, and Coal Mining in the New River Gorge.” November 9, 2011. https://newrivergorgecvb.com/nuttallburg-henry-ford-and-coal-mining-in-the-new-river-gorge/.
New River Gorge Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Abandoned Coal Towns in the New River Gorge.” February 4, 2015. https://newrivergorgecvb.com/abandoned-wv-coal-towns/.
ACE Adventure Resort. “Coal Towns of the New River Gorge.” July 16, 2020. https://aceraft.com/new-river-gorge/new-river-gorge-national-park/history/coal-towns-of-the-new-river-gorge/.
ACE Adventure Resort. “History of Nuttallburg.” July 16, 2020. https://aceraft.com/new-river-gorge/new-river-gorge-national-park/history/coal-towns-of-the-new-river-gorge/history-of-nuttallburg/.
Visit Southern West Virginia. “Coal Mining Heritage: New River Gorge, Beckley and Beyond.” May 15, 2024. https://visitwv.com/coal-mining-heritage/.
Wonderful West Virginia Magazine. “The Nuttallburg Legacy.” October 2016. https://wonderfulwv.com/the-nuttallburg-legacy/.
Lafayette Flats. “New River Gorge Coal Mining Culture & History.” Blog post, June 2, 2022. https://lafayetteflats.com/new-river-gorge-coal-mining/.
Travel the Parks. “Discovering Nuttallburg: A Hidden Gem in the New River Gorge.” November 1, 2024. https://traveltheparks.com/discovering-nuttallburg-a-hidden-gem-in-the-new-river-gorge/.
Anne’s Travels. “Exploring the History of Nuttallburg (New River Gorge National Park, West Virginia).” February 4, 2023. https://www.annestravels.net/nuttallburg/.
“Ghost Towns of the New River Gorge.” Clio: Your Guide to History. June 16, 2021. https://theclio.com/tour/1943.
“Carter G. Woodson and Black Coal Miners in Nuttallburg, West Virginia.” Clio: Your Guide to History. May 4, 2021. https://theclio.com/entry/133276.
“Black Coal Miners in West Virginia in the Gilded Age.” Mining History Association Newsletter 30, no. 3 (Fall 2022). https://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/News/MHA%20newsletter%20fall%202022.pdf.
CoalCampUSA. “NUTTALBURG, WV.” Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains – New River Field. https://coalcampusa.com/sowv/river/nuttalburg/nuttallburg.htm.
National Park Service. New River Gorge National Park and Preserve: Administrative History and NRHP Documentation Portal. NPS History Collection, 2025. https://npshistory.com/publications/neri/index.htm.
Minsky, Gin. “West Virginia Ghost Towns (Part 1): Nuttallburg.” Minsky’s Abandoned, July 30, 2015. https://minskysabandoned.com/2015/07/30/west-virginia-ghost-towns-part-1-nuttallburg/.
Into Ruin. “Nuttallburg, WV – Henry Ford’s Coal Experiment.” Blog post, September 23, 2012. https://intoruin.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/nuttallburg-wv-henry-fords-coal-experiment/.
“New River Gorge Coal Mining Culture & History.” Lafayette Flats blog post, June 2, 2022. https://lafayetteflats.com/new-river-gorge-coal-mining/.
Trotter, Joe William Jr. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. https://books.google.com/books/about/Coal_Class_and_Color.html?id=nF-963i4uiUC.
Lewis, Ronald L. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_labor_history/2/.
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://archive.org/details/coaltownslifewor0000shif.
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. https://archive.org/details/minersmillhandsm0000elle.
Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. https://archive.org/details/appalachiahistor0000will.
Author Note: As a historian of the Appalachian coalfields, I am drawn to company towns where rusting machinery still hangs above living forests. I hope this look at Nuttallburg helps you see the conveyor, coke ovens, and Short Creek neighborhood as part of a larger story about capital, labor, and memory in the New River Gorge.