Appalachian History Series
Coal shaped Pocahontas before the town had a charter, a post office, or a railroad. In the early 1880s a 13 foot bench of the Pocahontas No. 3 seam drew speculators, surveyors, and the Norfolk and Western. The first commercial mine opened in 1882, the branch line reached town in 1883, and within a year tragedy and growth arrived together. The mine later became the nation’s first exhibition coal mine in 1938, and the complex survives today as a rare place where visitors can walk through the seam that powered a region.
A seam worth building a railroad for
Geologists place the Pocahontas No. 3 coal within the lower Pennsylvanian Pocahontas Formation of the Pottsville Group. It is a high rank, low volatile bituminous coal known historically for low ash and low sulfur that made first quality metallurgical coke. That reputation drove early industrial demand across the central Appalachians and beyond.
By the late 1870s and early 1880s promoters and railroad men focused on Powell’s Bottom in northeastern Tazewell County, where outcrops along Coal Branch showed a thick, easily reached bench. The first commercial opening that became known as Pocahontas Mine No. 1 went in during the spring of 1882. The Norfolk and Western raced a 70 mile branch from Radford to the new town, and the first train arrived on March 10, 1883. Two days later the first car of Pocahontas coal rolled out and was presented ceremonially at Norfolk.
Early output scaled quickly. By January 1883 miners were producing 1,000 to 1,200 tons daily, a tipple and sidings were in place, and 200 coke ovens were under construction. By mid May the East Mine was open across Coal Branch, with roughly 420 beehive ovens completed and the first commercial coal and coke consignments on their way to Virginia ironmakers. In its first full twelve months the operation shipped over 100,000 tons of coal, plus nearly 20,000 tons of coke.
Founding a company town
The Southwest Virginia Improvement Company selected young engineer William A. Lathrop to open the mine and lay out housing and services. The first house in town went up in 1882, and the place soon took the name Pocahontas. The General Assembly incorporated the town in 1884 and later revised the charter in 1896 and 1918. That legislative trail remains the official lineage of local government.
Harriet Eliza Lathrop left a firsthand account of these years. She moved to Tazewell County with her husband in 1881 to help open the field and later wrote a reminiscence describing town building, the mine, and the 1884 explosion. Her manuscript preserves how quickly the place grew and how suddenly danger could upend that growth.
Disaster underground, March 1884
On a March night in 1884 a violent explosion tore through the Laurel workings associated with the Pocahontas openings. Contemporary Virginia newspapers reported the scale of loss within days, and later histories settled on a death toll of 114. The Norfolk Landmark carried early details on March 15, while other Virginia papers tracked relief efforts and the halt in shipments. The shock lingered, yet mining resumed within weeks and production recovered by late spring.
Reading the landscape on paper and in stone
Sanborn Fire Insurance maps captured the built fabric of the company town and plant by the late 1890s. The 1898 Sanborn for Pocahontas shows the industrial core and nearby blocks that supported miners, coke workers, and railroad crews. It is a street by street look at how a remote valley became a dense industrial site.
USGS mapped the geology and structure of the region in classic folios at the end of the nineteenth century. The Tazewell Folio, issued in 1897, set the regional context and remains a primary reference for stratigraphy, structure, and field relationships around Pocahontas. These federal pamphlets also fix the place of the field within the broader Allegheny Plateau and Valley and Ridge transition.
Roofs, riders, and the realities of mining No. 3
Federal technical work in the twentieth century explains why certain sections of the No. 3 seam were notorious for roof falls. A thin rider coal above the main bench and variable shale partings weakened the roof in places. Hydrologic and geotechnical studies from the federal government detail how shale thickness could drop to zero and how a two to four inch coal above the bench worsened conditions. Bureau of Mines investigators later summarized roof behavior in the Pocahontas No. 3 bed and tied it to local geology.
Coke and the railroad that followed the coal
Pocahontas coke earned a national reputation in the 1880s and 1890s. As the Flat Top field developed on both sides of the state line, the Norfolk and Western pushed new lines to reach the ovens and mines, then crossed Flat Top to the Elkhorn Valley and the Ohio River by 1892. Writers in the company magazine later argued that the first hole at Pocahontas directly caused the railroad’s western push. Whatever the rhetoric, the timetable is plain. Coal first, tracks next, markets after that.
From Baby Mine to Exhibition Mine
The site the company called Baby Mine became the country’s first exhibition coal mine in 1938. Tours by automobile gave way to walking, but the route still takes visitors past a 13 foot section of the No. 3 seam and through rooms where tools and fossils tell the larger story. Commercial mining at the original opening ended in 1955. The surviving complex includes the arched entry, the fan house that now serves as the entrance to the tour, and the powerhouse and bathhouse.
People in the coal town
The best visual record of the community in the late 1930s comes from documentary photographer Robert H. McNeill. Working for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1938, he photographed African American life around Virginia, including a sequence labeled “Pocahontas, coal area.” His negatives and prints sit in the Library of Congress with finding aid entries that list Pocahontas among the covered places.
Sources & Further Reading
National Register nomination, Pocahontas Mine No. 1. Detailed narrative on opening dates, production, coke ovens, infrastructure, the 1938 exhibition conversion, and the 1955 retirement. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPGallery
Virginia General Assembly charter lineage, Town of Pocahontas. Official legislative history showing 1884 incorporation and later charter actions. Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Law Library. Virginia Law
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Pocahontas, Aug. 1898. Three sheet set capturing industrial layout and town fabric. Library of Congress. The Library of Congress
Norfolk Landmark, March 15, 1884, early coverage of the Laurel Mine explosion and its aftermath, with follow up on resumption of shipments in May. Virginia Chronicle digital archive. Virginia Chronicle+1
Greenville Banner, March 19, 1884, contemporary report on loss of life. Virginia Chronicle. Virginia Chronicle
USGS Geologic Atlas, Tazewell Folio (No. 44, 1897), and related late nineteenth century federal mapping references to the Pocahontas folio work by M. R. Campbell. U.S. Geological Survey. U.S. Geological Survey+1
Harriet Eliza Lathrop, Reminiscences (c. 1937), first person account of 1881 to 1885 town formation and the 1884 explosion. Virginia Tech Special Collections. digitalsc.lib.vt.edu
Federal technical reports on the Pocahontas No. 3 bed. Hydrologic and geotechnical descriptions of roof conditions and rider coal above the main bench. U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Bureau of Mines. U.S. Geological Survey+1
Robert H. McNeill, “Negro in Virginia” photographs, 1938. Library of Congress finding aid confirming a Pocahontas sequence. Library of Congress
USGS regional synthesis for the Pocahontas No. 3 coal bed. Stratigraphic setting, rank, and areal extent across Virginia and West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey