Appalachian Community Histories – Asco, McDowell County: Atlantic Smokeless Coal, Company Scrip, and the Superior Branch
In the coalfields of southern West Virginia, some communities began with farms, churches, crossroads, or river landings. Others were created almost entirely by industrial development. Asco, in McDowell County, belonged to the second group.
Its railroad connection, company store, numbered mines, and even its name were tied to the Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company. The strongest surviving contemporary records identify the company as Atlantic Smokeless, despite a commonly repeated online claim that Asco stood for American Smokeless Coal Company. Company correspondence, mine directories, federal documents, court records, and coal industry tables consistently use Atlantic.
Asco’s documented history stretches from the construction of the Norfolk & Western Railway’s Superior Branch around 1920 through the expansion of its mining operations, the circulation of company scrip, the appearance of several numbered Asco mines, and the closure of the Atlantic Smokeless company store by 1949. It is a history preserved less through a single town chronicle than through scattered pieces of evidence found in government reports, business correspondence, railroad photographs, court decisions, and the metal money once carried by miners and their families.
A Coal Town Hidden in Its Name
Asco’s name was closely connected to the Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company. The most convincing interpretation takes the first letters and sounds from Atlantic Smokeless Coal, producing ASCO.
This identification matters because the incorrect name “American Smokeless Coal Company” has circulated widely in modern summaries. The contemporary evidence points in another direction. Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company letterhead repeatedly gives the company’s address as Asco, West Virginia. A federal coal industry table from 1935 lists Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company at Asco. The 1949 federal court decision involving the company also uses the Atlantic name.
The name therefore carried the identity of the company into the landscape. Asco was not simply a location where Atlantic Smokeless happened to operate. The place itself became an abbreviation of the industrial enterprise around which it developed.
That pattern was common in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Company names, mine names, railroad sidings, and post office designations frequently became interchangeable. A community might be known by the operator’s name while the mine was active, then retain that name long after the company had left or disappeared.
The Superior Branch Reaches Asco
Coal development in McDowell County followed the railroad. Before an operator could move thousands of tons of coal to distant markets, it needed a dependable connection to the Norfolk & Western Railway and the larger national rail network.
The 2018 Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report for McDowell County identifies the Superior Branch as a Norfolk & Western line constructed around 1920 to serve Yerba and Asco. The branch was part of a wider web of railroad extensions that reached into McDowell County hollows wherever commercially valuable seams could support new mines.
The railroad was more than a transportation convenience. It made industrial settlement possible. Rails carried equipment, building materials, food, merchandise, and workers into the hollow. Loaded coal cars carried the product of the mines toward markets outside Appalachia.
The branch also connected Asco to Davy and the Norfolk & Western main line. Atlantic Smokeless company correspondence listed the telegraph office at Davy, showing that Asco’s business communications depended partly upon the larger nearby railroad community. Company letterhead also advertised a telephone number, another indication that the operation was integrated into the commercial network of the coalfield.
The approximate 1920 construction date of the branch gives Asco a useful starting point. The community emerged during the later phase of McDowell County’s great industrial expansion, after railroads and coal operators had already transformed much of the county.
Asco No. 1 Enters the Record
By the early 1920s, Atlantic Smokeless was operating a mine officially identified as Asco No. 1.
The West Virginia Department of Mines annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1923, listed Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company and Asco No. 1 in its mine directory. The same report credited the company with 58,760 gross tons of coal production during the fiscal year.
That figure places Asco firmly within the working coal economy by 1923. It was no longer merely a railroad siding or proposed development. Coal was being mined, processed, loaded, and shipped in substantial quantities.
The numbered designation also suggests that company officials expected an operation larger than a single undifferentiated opening. Later federal records would identify Asco Nos. 1, 2, and 3, although the mines did not always appear under the same corporate operator.
Mine numbering was practical. It helped companies, inspectors, railroads, and federal regulators distinguish between separate openings or operating units associated with the same place. For historians, those numbers reveal that Asco’s industrial history was more complicated than the story of one mine owned continuously by one company.
Selling Davy-Sewell Smokeless Coal
Surviving Atlantic Smokeless correspondence from the 1920s provides an unusually detailed look at how the company presented itself.
Company letterhead described Atlantic Smokeless as a producer of Davy-Sewell smokeless coal. The letterhead listed J. B. Clifton as president, J. Howard Anderson as vice president, I. Black as secretary and treasurer, and R. E. Brockman as general manager at Asco.
The company also printed a chemical analysis of its coal directly on its stationery. It advertised moisture of 0.90 percent, sulfur of 0.58 percent, ash of 2.60 percent, and a heating value of 15,584 British thermal units. These figures were not decorative. Coal companies competed by promoting the purity, heat, ash content, and burning qualities of their product.
The term “smokeless” referred to high quality bituminous coal that burned with comparatively little smoke and produced intense heat. Coal from southern West Virginia was valuable for industrial boilers, railroads, furnaces, and other markets that required a powerful and dependable fuel.
By placing the coal analysis on its letterhead, Atlantic Smokeless turned every invoice and business letter into an advertisement. Anyone corresponding with the company was reminded that Asco produced a marketable fuel from one of the most important coal regions in the United States.
The documents also reveal the reach of the company’s business relationships. Its officers were associated with Asco, Beckley, Marytown, and Lynchburg, Virginia. Although the coal came from a McDowell County hollow, the financial and administrative structure extended well beyond the community.
Metal Money at the Company Store
Among the richest surviving records from Asco are the company’s orders for metal scrip.
Coal companies commonly operated stores in isolated mining communities. Because cash could be scarce and the company controlled much of the local economy, miners were often paid partly in scrip or allowed to draw advances against future earnings. The scrip could be exchanged for food, clothing, tools, household goods, and other merchandise at the company store.
In August 1925, the Ingle-Schierloh Company of Dayton, Ohio, prepared a shipment of Master Metal Scrip for Atlantic Smokeless. The supplier also contacted a National Cash Register salesman to arrange installation of the machine needed to process the new system.
The installation did not proceed as quickly as Atlantic Smokeless expected. In October, the company explained that it had delayed paying a $93.75 invoice because the machine had not been placed into service until October 1. Without the proper machine, the company wrote, the metal money could not be used.
That dispute offers a small but revealing glimpse inside the Asco store. Scrip was not simply handed out informally. Atlantic Smokeless purchased a specialized system linking metal tokens with company accounting and cash-register equipment.
Another letter from December 1925 complained that one denomination closely resembled an ordinary United States penny. The similarity was causing difficulty for the store staff, and the company asked whether the tokens could be replaced with a more distinctive color.
The scrip system remained in use for years. In January 1930, Atlantic Smokeless ordered 500 copper five-cent pieces, each pierced with a hole. The tokens cost $22.50 before postage and delivery charges.
The hole and metal composition helped distinguish the scrip from official currency. They also made the pieces immediately recognizable to miners, store clerks, and family members who used them.
Today, surviving pieces of coal company scrip are often collected as artifacts. In their original setting, however, they represented something larger. They show how thoroughly a coal company could shape the daily economy of a community. Wages earned underground could return to the company through rent, utilities, store purchases, and other deductions.
The Scale of the Operation in 1935
By the middle of the 1930s, Atlantic Smokeless remained a significant McDowell County producer.
An appendix submitted during the 1935 Carter v. Carter Coal Company litigation listed coal operators by district, annual tonnage, and number of employees. Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company at Asco reported 117,134 tons of coal and 250 employees.
The figures provide one of the clearest surviving measurements of Asco’s size. A workforce of 250 did not necessarily mean that every employee lived in the immediate camp, but it indicates that the operation supported a substantial network of miners, railroad workers, store employees, supervisors, families, and service providers.
The tonnage also shows that Atlantic Smokeless had increased production from the 58,760 gross tons reported for the fiscal year ending in 1923. Direct comparisons must be made cautiously because the reporting periods and methods may not have been identical, but the two figures demonstrate continued production over more than a decade.
The year 1935 was significant throughout the coal industry. Operators faced depressed coal prices, unstable employment, federal regulation, labor conflict, and the lingering effects of the Great Depression. For miners, annual company production figures could conceal long periods of unemployment or shortened workweeks. A mine might produce tens of thousands of tons while individual families still faced uncertainty between working days.
Life Beyond the Mine Portal
The surviving business records tell historians a great deal about coal, scrip, machinery, and corporate officers. They tell less about the private lives of the people who made Asco a community.
The broader pattern of McDowell County company towns helps fill part of that silence. Coal operators often constructed houses and public buildings because isolated mining sites had little existing infrastructure. Miners rented company housing, purchased goods at company stores, and sometimes saw rent and utility costs deducted directly from their pay. Larger houses were usually reserved for managers, doctors, engineers, foremen, and other higher-ranking employees. Single workers might live in boardinghouses.
Schools, churches, social halls, and athletic facilities could develop alongside the mines. Later school listings and community recollections identify an Asco Grade School, although the original McDowell County Board of Education records are still needed to establish its opening date, enrollment, teachers, and eventual closure.
The 2018 Coal Heritage Survey also noted that racial and ethnic groups frequently worked beside one another in the mines while living in segregated sections of company towns. That regional pattern should not automatically be imposed on Asco without census schedules, maps, and company housing records, but it identifies an important question for further research.
The 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950 federal census schedules could eventually reconstruct Asco household by household. Those records may reveal miners’ birthplaces, occupations, family relationships, literacy, rent, income, and migration into the coalfield.
For now, the company store correspondence offers the closest surviving view of everyday transactions. A complaint about a five-cent token resembling a penny may seem minor, but it places store clerks and customers inside a real building, handling metal scrip and trying to keep the community’s accounts straight.
Asco No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3
By the early 1940s, federal coal-pricing documents identified at least three numbered Asco mining operations.
A Federal Register order issued in October 1942 named Asco No. 1 of the Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company, Asco No. 2 of the Atlantic Coal Sales Company, and Asco No. 3 of the Darr Smokeless Coal Company. The order established maximum prices for particular sizes and classifications of coal.
The document complicates any simple account of ownership. The Asco name was being used by more than one corporate entity, and the numbered mines could be associated with different operators or sales organizations.
Atlantic Coal Sales may have acted as an affiliated company, marketing organization, operator, or successor in portions of the Asco operation. Darr Smokeless was connected to R. E. Brockman in other federal records and also handled coal from the Davy-Sewell seam. Establishing the precise corporate relationships will require deeds, leases, incorporation records, tax books, and annual mine reports.
The federal records also show that Asco continued to function as a coal business address after World War II. In 1946, the L & L Coal Company was listed through Atlantic Coal Sales Company at Asco. This suggests that Asco may have served as an administrative or mailing center for additional nearby mining activity, although the exact physical location of the L & L operation must be confirmed through mine maps.
These changing company names were not unusual in the coalfields. Mines could be leased, reopened, sold, consolidated, or marketed through separate sales corporations. To residents, the place might remain Asco even as the name printed on a government form or paycheck changed.
The Tipple in 1948
A coal tipple was the industrial heart of a mining operation. Coal brought from underground was sorted, cleaned, processed, and loaded into railroad cars for shipment.
One of the most important visual primary sources for Asco is a Norfolk & Western Railway photograph cataloged as “Asco, West Virginia, Asco Tipple, Atlantic Smokeless Coal Co.” The photograph is dated February 26, 1948, and survives in the Norfolk Southern Collection relating to the Norfolk & Western Railway at Virginia Tech Special Collections.
The date is important. It shows that the railroad considered the Asco tipple worth documenting near the end of the community’s best-recorded mining period. Railroad companies photographed industrial facilities for operational, engineering, valuation, and administrative purposes.
The photograph should be studied alongside mine maps, railroad valuation plans, and historical aerial images. Together, those records could reveal the relationship between the mine openings, tipple, tracks, store, company houses, roads, and neighboring Yerba.
The picture also provides a visual bridge between Asco’s production records and its physical landscape. Annual reports reduce the mine to tonnage and employment totals. The photograph preserves the structure through which that coal passed before leaving McDowell County.
The Closed Store and the Sheriff’s Key
The clearest evidence of Atlantic Smokeless’s decline appears in an unlikely source, a federal court decision concerning garnishment and a sheriff’s control of company property.
In 1949, Oakey Bishop brought suit against Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company seeking unpaid wages, overtime compensation, and damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The surviving decision did not determine whether all of Bishop’s wage allegations were correct. Instead, it addressed whether company property held by the McDowell County sheriff could be attached in the lawsuit.
Another creditor had already secured a judgment against Atlantic Smokeless. Acting on that judgment, the sheriff levied upon approximately $700 worth of merchandise stored on the first floor of the company store at Asco.
The court recorded the condition of the operation in plain language. The mines were not operating, and the store was closed.
Because no one was conducting business inside, the sheriff took possession of the store key. Atlantic Smokeless later arranged to make installment payments to the earlier creditor, and the key was returned after the company paid part of the judgment and the execution costs.
The legal issue was technical, but the scene it preserved was deeply human. A store that had once required specialized cash-register equipment and thousands of pieces of metal scrip now stood closed. Its remaining merchandise had been seized, and control of the building had been reduced to possession of a key.
The decision was issued on December 29, 1949. It does not prove that every mining activity associated with Asco ended permanently that year. Smaller operators or successor companies may have continued nearby. It does show that Atlantic Smokeless’s mines were idle and its central company store had ceased operating by the autumn of 1949.
What Remained After the Mines
Coal communities did not always disappear when their principal company closed. Some residents remained, houses passed into private ownership, roads continued to be used, and railroad names survived long after active mining declined.
A 1954 letter from the scrip manufacturer contacted Atlantic Smokeless at Asco and asked whether the company needed another order. The letter should not be treated as proof that the store or mines had reopened. It appears to have been a sales inquiry sent because the manufacturer had supplied the company in earlier years.
The Norfolk & Western Railway continued to recognize Asco as a named station or siding location in its 1977 Stations and Sidings document. The survival of the name in railroad records reflects the long afterlife of industrial geography. A mine could close and a tipple could disappear, but the location remained useful to railroad employees, mapmakers, former residents, and local families.
Asco and neighboring Yerba were included in the architectural fieldwork for the McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey update conducted during the 2010s. That inclusion suggests that the landscape retained enough historical association or surviving material evidence to warrant examination.
Mine maps, deed books, tax records, aerial photographs, and individual historic property inventory forms may eventually reveal exactly which structures survived and when the industrial landscape disappeared. These sources could also identify former company-house rows, the grade school site, mine portals, railroad sidings, and the location of the company store whose key entered the federal court record.
Why Asco’s Story Matters
Asco represents hundreds of Appalachian coal communities whose histories survive in fragments.
Its name preserves the Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company. The Superior Branch records the railroad investment that made mining possible. Department of Mines reports document Asco No. 1. Company stationery advertises Davy-Sewell coal. Metal scrip orders reveal the workings of the company store. A 1935 industry table records 250 employees. Federal price orders identify three numbered mines under several operators. A railroad photograph preserves the tipple. Finally, a court decision records the silent store and the sheriff holding its key.
Taken separately, each document appears narrow and administrative. Together, they recover the outline of a community.
They also show why local coal history cannot be written from modern place-name summaries alone. A single mistaken word can obscure the company from which a town received its name. A court case about garnishment can preserve evidence of a mine closure. An invoice for five-cent tokens can reveal how families purchased their daily necessities.
Asco’s surviving record is incomplete. Much remains to be found in census schedules, school minutes, mine maps, deeds, newspapers, company files, and the memories of former residents and their descendants.
Even so, the evidence already establishes Asco as more than a forgotten name along an old railroad branch. It was a working McDowell County coal community shaped by Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company, the Norfolk & Western Railway, the Davy-Sewell seam, the company-store economy, and the uncertain cycles of the Appalachian coal industry.
Sources & Further Reading
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report, McDowell County, West Virginia. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Transportation, Division of Highways, 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Bishop v. Atlantic Smokeless Coal Co., 88 F. Supp. 27 (S.D.W. Va. 1949). https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/bishop-v-atlantic-smokeless-887341535
“Brief of Counsel as Amici Curiae at the Instance of Members of the Bituminous Coal Code.” Carter v. Carter Coal Company, 298 U.S. 238, 1936. https://briefs1.lonedissent.org/1935/carter-v-carter-coal-company/Brief%20of%20Counsel%20as%20Amici%20Curiae%20at%20the%20Instance%20of%20Members%20of%20the%20Bituminous%20Coal%20Code%2C%20Part%202.pdf
DiBello, Joseph, et al. A Coal Mining Heritage Study: Southern West Virginia. Philadelphia: National Park Service, Mid-Atlantic Regional Office, 1993. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/coal-mining-heritage.pdf
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. https://utpress.org/9780870493416/miners-millhands-and-mountaineers/
Federal Register. “Maximum Price Regulation: Bituminous Coal Delivered from Mine or Preparation Plant.” September 20, 1941. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1941-09-20/pdf/FR-1941-09-20.pdf
Federal Register. “Bituminous Coal Delivered from Mine or Preparation Plant.” October 24, 1942. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1942-10-24/pdf/FR-1942-10-24.pdf
Federal Register. “Correction Concerning Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company and Atlantic Coal Sales Company.” November 4, 1942. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1942-11-04/pdf/FR-1942-11-04.pdf
Federal Register. “Atlantic Coal Sales Company, Asco, West Virginia.” October 28, 1943. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1943-10-28/pdf/FR-1943-10-28.pdf
Federal Register. “Asco No. 3 Mine, Darr Smokeless Coal Company.” July 14, 1944. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1944-07-14/pdf/FR-1944-07-14.pdf
Federal Register. “R & M Red Ash Mine, Asco, West Virginia.” February 5, 1946. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1946-02-05/pdf/FR-1946-02-05.pdf
Federal Register. “L & L Coal Company, Care of Atlantic Coal Sales Company, Asco, West Virginia.” March 7, 1946. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1946-03-07/pdf/FR-1946-03-07.pdf
“Ingle-Schierloh Records, Volume 1: ACME to Big Creek.” Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company correspondence, scrip orders, invoices, and company letterhead, 1925–1954. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ingleschierloh1ingl
In re Atlantic Smokeless Coal Co., No. 2820 (S.D.W. Va. February 15, 1952). https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914a051add7b049346775bd
Library of Congress. “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Norfolk & Western Railway Company. “Asco, West Virginia, Asco Tipple, Atlantic Smokeless Coal Company.” Photograph, February 26, 1948. Norfolk Southern Collection, Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/collections/show/332
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. “National Mine Map Repository.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.osmre.gov/programs/national-mine-map-repository
Schust, Alex P. Billion Dollar Coalfield: West Virginia’s McDowell County and the Industrialization of America. Harwood, MD: Two Mule Publishing, 2010. https://www.nwhs.org/commissary/product654.html
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
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1983. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView: Historical Topographic Maps.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
West Virginia Archives and History. “Archives and History Online Resources.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://wvculture.org/agencies/archives-and-history/
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1923. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Annual_report_of_the_Department_of_Mines_for_the_year_ending_…_%28IA_annualreportofde41west%29.pdf
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Reports and Mine Directories. Charleston: State of West Virginia, various years. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County.” Charleston: West Virginia Humanities Council. Last modified April 23, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Coal Bed Mapping Project.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/cbmp/coalims.html
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “West Virginia Mine Map Archives.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/west-virginia-mine-map-archives/
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Coal Mines and Mining Collections.” West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/subjects/102
Author Note: Asco’s history survives through mine reports, company correspondence, railroad photographs, court records, and the metal scrip once carried by local families. This article attempts to bring those scattered records together while preserving a community whose story remains incomplete.