Appalachian Community Histories – Westbourne, Campbell County: The Coal Town Named for Its Mine
Westbourne sat in the mountains of northeastern Campbell County, Tennessee, where coal, rail, school, church, and post office records made a small place visible on paper. Like many Appalachian coal communities, it did not begin as a courthouse town or a commercial center. It grew because a mine opened there, because a company needed men to dig coal, and because families followed the work into a mountain landscape already crossed by creeks, ridges, roads, and rail lines.
The old place-name account preserved through Campbell County history gives the simplest beginning. Westbourne took its name from the Westbourne Coal Company, which opened the mine at that location. The same account described it as an unincorporated village in northeastern Campbell County, about fifty-two miles north of Knoxville and three miles west of U.S. 25W. It was served by a branch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, stood at an elevation of about 1,400 feet, and had one industry, coal mining.
That is the short version. The longer story is the familiar Appalachian one. A coal company gave the town its name. A railroad gave the coal a way out. A post office gave the place a public identity. A school, church, company store, and rows of homes made it a community.
The Name from the Westbourne Coal Company
The name Westbourne was not accidental. It came from the company that opened the mine. In coal country, that fact matters because many places were named less by settlers than by operators, land companies, railroads, and post offices. A mountain hollow might have had older family names and local landmarks, but the name that reached maps and government records often came from the industrial system that turned a rural settlement into a coal camp.
Westbourne’s recorded establishment around 1900 fits the wider growth of the coal fields around Campbell County, Claiborne County, Jellico, LaFollette, Anthras, Cotula, Morley, and the Clear Fork Valley. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rail lines and mineral companies changed the map of northeastern Tennessee. Communities appeared around mines, tipples, sidings, branch lines, and company stores. Some grew large enough to keep schools, churches, post offices, and ball teams. Others remained small camps known mainly through mining reports, maps, and family memory.
Westbourne belonged to that world. It was not just a dot on a map. It was a coal place.
Campbell County and the Coal Landscape
Campbell County was created in 1806 from Anderson and Claiborne counties, with Jacksboro as the county seat. By the time Westbourne emerged nearly a century later, the county had already become part of a larger East Tennessee coal region tied to Knoxville markets, Kentucky rail connections, and the mountain seams of the Cumberland Plateau.
Westbourne’s location placed it close to several coal communities that appear again and again in maps and records. Anthras, Cotula, Habersham, Morley, Duff, Jellico, LaFollette, Pruden, and Eagan all help frame its story. A researcher who looks only for Westbourne may miss the wider record. Families moved between nearby camps. Miners worked under changing company names. Newspapers reported events by community, post office, mine, or railroad point. Census takers used civil districts and enumeration districts rather than the emotional boundaries people carried in their own minds.
That makes Westbourne’s history scattered, but not lost. It survives through overlapping records.
Railroad Branches and the Life of the Mine
The Dallas Bogan place-name sketch says Westbourne was served by a branch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. That short line of description reveals much about how the town worked. A coal town could not live by coal in the ground alone. The coal had to be cut, loaded, weighed, hauled, sold, and shipped. The railroad turned a mountain mine into a working part of the industrial economy.
Westbourne later appears on a Louisville and Nashville coal district map in the Jellico, Middlesboro, Harlan, and Southwest Virginia coal-hauling region. That map places Westbourne among a chain of coal points running through East Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and southwest Virginia. In that company of names, Westbourne was not isolated. It was part of a coal corridor.
The railroad also shaped daily life. Tracks meant coal cars and work schedules, but they also meant mail, supplies, visitors, and news. The company store depended on goods being brought in. Families relied on connections to larger towns. The branch line tied Westbourne to the outside world while reminding residents that the town existed because coal moved out.
A Post Office, a School, and a Church
Westbourne’s post office opened in 1905 and closed in 1954. Those dates help trace the community’s public life. A post office did more than handle letters. In small communities, it marked a place as real in the eyes of the state and the federal government. It gave families a mailing identity, anchored local business, and helped make the name Westbourne regular in records.
The 1939 place-name sketch also mentioned a graded school and a Baptist church. These details are easy to pass over, but they are among the most human parts of the record. A graded school meant children, teachers, lessons, attendance, school programs, and parents who expected a future beyond the mine portal. A Baptist church meant worship, funerals, revivals, Sunday gatherings, and a moral center separate from the company office.
A 1938 LaFollette Press item about PTA news from Westbourne points toward the same community life. Westbourne was not only an industrial site. It had families organizing around school, mothers and fathers attending meetings, teachers shaping children, and local people trying to build something steady in a place dependent on coal.
Westbourne in the Federal Census
The 1940 census enumeration descriptions placed Westbourne in Campbell County Civil District 5. The relevant district was described as the part of Civil District 5 east of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and southeast of the Habersham to Middlesboro Road by way of Anthras, including parts of Anthras and Cotula along with Westbourne.
That description is dry, but it is important. It tells researchers where to look for Westbourne households in the census. It also shows the community in relation to the road, railroad, and nearby camps. On a census page, Westbourne’s story would appear through names, ages, occupations, rented homes, school attendance, household members, and places of birth. Miners would appear beside wives, children, boarders, store workers, teachers, railroad employees, and older relatives.
The census also reminds us that coal towns were never only about miners. They were about the households that made mining possible. A mine could employ men underground, but a town required cooks, teachers, preachers, store clerks, railroad workers, children, and elders. Westbourne’s record should be read through families, not only through tonnage.
Mining Reports and Company Names
State mining reports are among the best primary sources for Westbourne’s industrial history. Tennessee mining and mineral-resource reports from the early twentieth century include Westbourne among the state’s coal places and operators. These reports can help track mine ownership, production, inspections, machinery, seams, inside foremen, superintendents, and accidents.
The early name to follow is Westbourne Coal Company. Later records and artifacts point to Blue Diamond Coal Company at Westbourne. Coal scrip tokens marked “Blue Diamond Coal Company” and “Westbourne, Tenn.” show that Westbourne had the kind of company-store economy common in many Appalachian coal camps. Another token record identifies Campbell Coal Mining Company at Westbourne. Such artifacts do not replace mining reports, deeds, payrolls, or newspapers, but they preserve a physical trace of the economic system that shaped everyday life.
Corporate records and biographical sources also connect Westbourne Coal Company to larger business networks. One Georgia biographical source for John Bulow Campbell lists him as vice president of the Westbourne Coal Company and treasurer of the Blue Diamond Coal Company, among other coal-related positions. That kind of evidence helps explain how a small Tennessee coal camp could be tied to investors and coal businesses beyond Campbell County.
The Company Store and Coal Scrip
Coal scrip is one of the clearest surviving symbols of life in a company town. The tokens connected to Westbourne were not souvenirs when they were used. They were part of the economy of the camp. A piece of scrip marked payable in merchandise only shows how miners and their families lived within a system where wages, credit, food, clothing, tools, and household goods could all pass through the company store.
In memory, the company store often stands as both convenience and control. It brought supplies close to mountain families who might otherwise travel miles for goods. It also kept workers tied to the company. In many coal camps, a family’s life could be measured by the mine, the store, the school, the church, and the pay envelope.
Westbourne’s scrip gives researchers a doorway into that world. It suggests counters, shelves, ledgers, clerks, orders, flour sacks, coffee, work clothes, children’s shoes, and the daily dependence of a mining community on the company that owned or controlled much of its built environment.
The Fire and the Long Decline
A later Tennessean newspaper account remembered Westbourne as an old mine town that declined after a 1952 fire shut down the mine, leaving only a few people behind. That account should be checked directly in the full newspaper page, but it fits a pattern repeated across the coalfields. When a mine closed, a company town could lose its reason for being almost overnight.
The post office closed in 1954, only a short time after the reported mine fire. That does not prove cause by itself, but the timing is suggestive. In coal country, a closing mine often meant lost wages, empty houses, shrinking school rolls, fewer church families, and families leaving for work elsewhere. Some went to nearby towns. Some crossed into Kentucky or Virginia. Others joined the larger Appalachian migration to industrial cities in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and beyond.
Westbourne did not disappear from memory, but it faded from the daily map. That is the fate of many coal places. They remain visible in old maps, census schedules, post office lists, scrip catalogs, obituaries, and the stories of descendants.
Westbourne on the Map
USGS historical topographic maps are essential to understanding Westbourne’s setting. The La Follette quadrangle from 1936 and later editions show the geography around the community. Topographic maps help place Westbourne in relation to roads, ridges, streams, rail lines, and nearby settlements. They show why the town formed where it did and why movement in and out of the community followed certain corridors.
USGS water data also preserves the name in the monitoring location “Granny Branch at Westbourne, TN.” That kind of federal record may seem minor, but it matters. Place names survive through streams and branches long after tipples, houses, and stores are gone. Water keeps a map memory that industry often leaves behind.
Westbourne’s landscape was never just industrial. It was mountainous, wooded, and tied to the natural drainage of Campbell County. Coal mining changed the land, but the ridges and branches shaped where people could build, travel, and work.
Remembering Westbourne
Westbourne’s history is not as easily told as the history of a courthouse town. It has to be gathered from pieces. A place-name sketch gives the name and basic description. Post office records give dates. Census descriptions locate the community within Civil District 5. Mining reports trace the coal industry. Maps show the physical setting. Scrip tokens reveal the company-store economy. Newspapers and obituaries preserve memory.
Together, those records show a community born from coal and carried by families.
Westbourne was established around 1900 and grew around the mine that gave it a name. It stood in a mountainous part of northeastern Campbell County, tied to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and to the broader Jellico and LaFollette coal region. It had a school, a Baptist church, a post office, miners, families, and a place in the industrial geography of East Tennessee.
Then, like many coal towns, it declined when the mine no longer sustained the life around it. The reported 1952 fire and the 1954 post office closing mark the end of Westbourne’s strongest public era. But the community did not vanish completely. It remained in records, in family stories, in maps, in scrip, and in the memory of a Campbell County coal town built where the mountains, railroad, and mine came together.
Sources & Further Reading
Yoe, Della. “Westbourne.” In Dallas Bogan, “Campbell County Place Names.” TNGenWeb Campbell County. May 16, 1939. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/placenames.html
Bogan, Dallas. “Place Names in Campbell County.” TNGenWeb Campbell County. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/CampbellPlaceNames.html
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Tennessee Place Names and Post Offices: T to Z.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/places/postoff5.htm
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Tennessee Place Names and Post Offices.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/places/postoff.htm
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837 to 1950.” National Archives. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Records.” National Archives. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Geographic Finding Aids.” National Archives. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions: Tennessee, Campbell County, ED 7-14, ED 7-15, ED 7-16.” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Tennessee_-_Campbell_County_-_ED_7-14,_ED_7-15,_ED_7-16_-_NARA_-_5880791.jpg
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Maps: Tennessee, Campbell County, ED 7-1 to ED 7-21.” Wikimedia Commons. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Maps_-_Tennessee_-_Campbell_County_-_ED_7-1_-_ED_7-21_-_NARA_-_5839230_%28page_1%29.jpg
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
United States Geological Survey. “Topographic Maps.” U.S. Geological Survey. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/topographic-maps
United States Geological Survey. “USGS topoView.” National Geologic Map Database. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Geological Survey. “Granny Branch at Westbourne, TN.” USGS Water Data for the Nation. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03403719/
University of Texas Libraries. “Tennessee Historical Topographic Maps.” Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/tennessee/
YellowMaps. “La Follette, Tennessee, 1936 Historical Topographic Map.” YellowMaps Map Store. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://store.yellowmaps.com/collections/topo-maps/products/usgs-5338596-la-follette-1936-historical-topographic-map
YellowMaps. “La Follette Topo Map, Tennessee.” YellowMaps. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.yellowmaps.com/usgs/quad/36084d1.htm
Tennessee Mining Department. Annual Report of the Mining Department. Nashville: Tennessee Mining Department, 1911. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Mining_Department.html?id=TB45AQAAMAAJ
Tennessee Bureau of Labor, Statistics, and Mines. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor and Inspector of Mines. Vol. 21. Nashville: Tennessee Bureau of Labor, Statistics, and Mines, 1912. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Commissioner_of_Lab.html?id=zWdiXo8fXLUC
Tennessee Mining Department. Annual Report of the Mining Department. Nashville: Tennessee Mining Department, 1922. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Mining_Department.html?id=w9hAAQAAIAAJ
Tennessee Department of Labor, Division of Mines. Annual Report of the Mineral Resources of Tennessee. Nashville: Tennessee Department of Labor, Division of Mines, 1928. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Mineral_Resources_o.html?id=rhgZAQAAIAAJ
Tennessee Department of Labor, Division of Mines. Annual Report of the Mineral Resources of Tennessee. Nashville: Tennessee Department of Labor, Division of Mines, 1930. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://books.google.com/books/about/Annual_Report_of_the_Mineral_Resources_o.html?id=zxgZAQAAIAAJ
The LaFollette Press. “Miss Wilson Tells PTA News of Westbourne.” March 11, 1938. Newspapers.com. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/1145871912/
The Tennessean. “Black Gold: Life and Death of a Tennessee Coal Town.” July 9, 1967. Newspapers.com. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.newspapers.com/article/6794213/westbourne_tn_mine_town_left_after_fire/
The Tennessean. “Westbourne, Tennessee Coal Town.” July 9, 1967. Newspapers.com. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tennessean-westbourne-tennessee-c/6789223/
Smith, Alex C., Edward D. Thimons, Michael A. Trevits, and L. Yuan. “NIOSH Mine Fire Research in the United States.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/227150
Baird, Adrion. “Campbell County.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Tennessee Historical Society. March 1, 2018. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/campbell-county/
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Genealogical Fact Sheets About Campbell County.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-campbell-county
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Bibliography of Tennessee Local History Sources: Campbell County.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/history/bibliographies/bibcampbell.htm
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Tennessee Archives Directory: Campbell County Archives.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://tnsos.net/TSLA/archives/index.php?archives=Campbell+County+Archives&option=archives
FamilySearch Research Wiki. “Campbell County, Tennessee Genealogy.” FamilySearch. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Campbell_County,_Tennessee_Genealogy
Tennessee Genealogical Society. “Campbell County Locality Guide.” June 21, 2024. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.tngs.org/resources/Documents/Locality%20Guides/Campbell%20County%20Locality%20Guide.pdf
Bogan, Dallas. “Discovery of Coal in Jellico Mountains Changed Small Village of Smithburg from 1833 to 1878.” TNGenWeb Campbell County. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/discovery.html
Bogan, Dallas. “Land of the Lakes 2.” TNGenWeb Campbell County. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/landoftheLake2.html
WorthPoint. “Coal Scrip Token, 10¢, Blue Diamond Coal Company, Westbourne, Tennessee.” WorthPoint. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/coal-scrip-token-10-blue-diamond-coal-459547901
WorthPoint. “Blue Diamond Coal Co. Scrip, Westbourne, Tenn.” WorthPoint. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/blue-diamond-coal-co-scrip-westbourne-159096634
All Auction Sales. “Huge Coin and Currency Online Only Auction.” All Auction Sales. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.allauctionsales.com/auctions/huge-coin-currency-online-only-auction-300-lots-w-shipping
Lewis, Helen Matthews, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins, eds. Who Owns Appalachia? Landownership and Its Impact. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://files01.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232571748.pdf
Mayshark, Jesse Fox. “Black Gold Rush.” Metro Pulse, October 21, 2000. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://monkeyfire.com/mpol/dir_zine/dir_2000/1021/t_cover.html
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Appalachian Regional Commission. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Tennessee.” Appalachian Regional Commission. Accessed June 4, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-states/tennessee/
Author Note: Westbourne’s story survives through place-name records, post office lists, mining reports, maps, newspapers, and family memory. If your family has photographs, school memories, church records, or coal-camp stories from Westbourne, they can help preserve a fuller record of this Campbell County community.