Appalachian Community Histories – Big Sandy, McDowell County: Coal, Company Housing, and the Families Who Remained
Big Sandy is one of the many McDowell County communities whose history survives in fragments. Its story is scattered through federal coal tests, state mine inspection reports, court cases, census schedules, school bond notices, postal appointments, and photographs made after the local mine had already closed.
Those fragments reveal more than the history of an industrial operation. They show how a place built around coal became a community with homes, children, schools, churches, stores, and families who remained even after the mine that created the settlement stopped producing.
Big Sandy was not simply a mine beside an existing mountain town. Like many McDowell County coal camps, the settlement developed because coal companies needed workers close to the mine opening. Houses, roads, commercial services, and public institutions followed the industry into a narrow landscape shaped by creeks, steep hills, and railroad lines.
The Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company
The earliest strong industrial records place the Big Sandy Mine in operation by 1904. That year, coal supplied by the Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company was sent to the United States Geological Survey’s coal-testing plant at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.
The federal government identified the sample as West Virginia No. 12. The testing records associated it with the Big Sandy Mine at Big Sandy in McDowell County, while listing Marytown as the company’s mailing location. The sample underwent chemical analysis, combustion testing, and coking experiments intended to compare American coals and determine their usefulness for industrial fuel.
The appearance of Big Sandy coal in a major federal testing program is important. It shows that the mine was not merely a small local operation selling fuel to nearby households. Its coal belonged to the growing industrial system that connected the Pocahontas coalfield with railroads, steel production, manufacturing, and national energy markets.
Coal removed from the hills around Big Sandy entered an economy that stretched far beyond McDowell County. The mine may have occupied a narrow hollow, but the product leaving it was being judged beside coal from operations across the United States.
Inside the Big Sandy Mine
A West Virginia mine inspection report identified the Big Sandy operation as Mine No. 459. The mine worked the Welch seam, which was reported as approximately three to four feet thick.
That was not a generous working height. Miners often performed their labor bent forward, kneeling, or lying partly on their sides while cutting coal, drilling holes, setting posts, loading cars, and examining the roof above them. The physical dimensions of the seam shaped every movement underground.
The state inspector reported that the Big Sandy Mine had been examined three times during the year. Its roof, drainage, ventilation, entries, and rooms were described as being in good condition. Yet such official language never meant that the mine was free from danger. A mine could pass inspection and still contain unstable slate, hidden cracks, explosives, machinery, moving cars, and working places that changed after every cut and blast.
The difference between an inspection report and the lived experience of miners appears clearly in the accident records.
Death Beneath the Slate
On January 3, 1908, a miner identified in the state report as Jno. Gilgy was working at the Big Sandy Mine when slate fell upon him. The falling rock crushed his chest. He was transported to the hospital at Welch but died shortly after arriving.
The brief entry preserves only the final moments of a working life. It does not explain how long Gilgy had lived at Big Sandy, whether he had a wife or children, where he had been born, or where he was buried. Yet the record places an individual name inside a history too often reduced to production totals.
Slate falls were among the most persistent dangers in underground mining. Coal could be removed only by disturbing the layers supporting the rock above it. Miners installed posts and tested the roof, but changing pressure, vibration, imperfect timbering, and unseen weaknesses could cause sections to fall without sufficient warning.
Another fatality occurred on December 18, 1914. Miles Pharr, described by the Department of Mines as an American miner, was boring a hole in preparation for making a shot when slate fell. He suffered injuries that caused his death the following day. By that time, the report identified his employer as the Solvay Collieries Company, showing that the Big Sandy operation had passed into different corporate hands.
The deaths of Gilgy and Pharr were separated by nearly seven years, but the cause was almost identical. Both men were killed by the mountain roof while carrying out ordinary mining work.
Mining Law Comes to Big Sandy
The mine reports also reveal the state’s attempts to regulate dangerous working practices. In September 1910, several Big Sandy miners were prosecuted for what officials called solid shooting.
Solid shooting generally involved firing an explosive charge directly into an uncut body of coal rather than properly undercutting or preparing it beforehand. The practice could increase the danger of blown-out shots, flying coal, unstable roof conditions, and explosive dust.
Among the Big Sandy miners named in the proceedings were Faught, E. S. Kurcy, E. Overstreet, Joe Parker, and Henry Ellenberger. Each case was heard in a justice court, and the reported fine, including costs, was generally thirteen dollars.
The entries offer a rare glimpse of individual workers interacting with the state’s mining laws. They also raise questions that the report does not answer. Miners may have used unsafe methods because they wanted to increase production, because they were paid according to the amount of coal loaded, because of pressure from supervisors, or because accepted practices underground did not always match regulations written in Charleston.
The prosecutions show that Big Sandy was part of the wider struggle to impose safety rules on a rapidly expanding industry. Laws existed, inspectors visited, and miners were fined, but dangerous work continued beneath roofs that could not be made entirely predictable.
The Big Sandy Company in Court
The Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company also entered West Virginia’s legal history through Daniel v. Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company. The case originated in the McDowell County Circuit Court before reaching the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
W. H. Daniel, acting as administrator, brought the action against the company. The lower court entered judgment for the plaintiff, and the state’s highest court affirmed that decision.
Later West Virginia decisions placed Daniel among a series of coalfield cases involving the unlawful employment of children and the responsibilities of employers when violations of child labor laws contributed to injuries. These cases helped establish that a company’s violation of a protective statute could support a claim when the prohibited employment led naturally to the injury the law was designed to prevent.
The published appellate decision offers only part of the story. The original McDowell County court file, if it survives, could contain testimony, depositions, employment information, medical evidence, and descriptions of the company’s working practices.
Such records matter because corporate histories often list owners, mines, and production figures while leaving the experiences of workers unnamed. Court files can reverse that pattern by preserving voices recorded during disputes over injury, death, wages, and responsibility.
A School District and a Post Office
Big Sandy was becoming more than an industrial workplace during the first decades of the twentieth century. A financial notice published in the Commercial and Financial Chronicle reported the awarding of thirty thousand dollars in five percent bonds for the Big Sandy School District. The notice identified Big Sandy as the district’s post-office location and reported that the bonds had been awarded to the Fifth-Third National Bank of Cincinnati.
A bond issue of that size suggests an organized community making a substantial investment in education or school facilities. It also indicates that Big Sandy possessed enough families and children to support a distinct school district.
Postal records offer another sign of community development. In August 1915, a newspaper notice reported that Russell E. West had been commissioned as postmaster at Big Sandy, succeeding George D. Black. A post office connected residents with letters, newspapers, money orders, government notices, and distant family members. It also gave the settlement a recognized place within the federal postal system.
By 1920, census material identified Big Sandy Precinct No. 4 and associated it with Marytown. The surviving transcription is best used as a guide to the original federal schedules, but it confirms that census officials treated Big Sandy as a recognizable residential area rather than simply the name of a mine.
Inside those original schedules are the names of the people who made Big Sandy a community. They include miners and their wives, children born in West Virginia, migrants from other states, immigrants from overseas, boarders, widows, laborers, and families sharing company houses.
From Big Sandy Coal to Solvay Collieries
The Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company operated the mine during the opening years of the twentieth century. By 1914, however, the Department of Mines named Solvay Collieries Company as the operator.
Later state records described Solvay’s Big Sandy operation as a drift mine located along the Norfolk and Western Railway west of Welch. Ventilation was produced by mechanical fans, and concrete stoppings helped direct air toward the working faces.
The change in ownership reflected a common coalfield pattern. Mines, leases, housing, mineral rights, and railroad connections were frequently transferred between companies. A community might retain the same name while the corporation controlling the mine changed several times.
For residents, corporate changes could affect employment, rent, store accounts, management, work rules, and access to company property. Yet the houses, school, roads, and relationships between neighbors often gave the community a continuity that outlasted any single operator.
The precise corporate history of Big Sandy deserves further study through West Virginia charter records, McDowell County deeds, tax books, mine maps, and Norfolk and Western Railway records. Those sources may establish when the property passed from the Big Sandy Coal and Coke Company to Solvay and how the camp later became connected with Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company.
When the Mine Closed but the Camp Remained
By 1946, the mines at Big Sandy had closed. The houses, however, had not been abandoned.
Families connected with the Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company’s Exeter Mine were living in the old Big Sandy housing camp. The men traveled away from the settlement to reach the working mine, while their wives and children continued occupying houses originally constructed for another phase of Big Sandy’s coal history.
This transition transformed Big Sandy from an active mine camp into a residential camp for miners employed elsewhere. The community remained connected to coal, but the mine entrance that had first justified its construction no longer provided local employment.
The arrangement illustrates how coal camps could survive after their founding operations disappeared. Houses represented a valuable investment, and mining companies could continue renting them to workers employed at nearby mines. For families, remaining in Big Sandy may have been cheaper or more practical than finding private housing in Welch or another crowded coalfield town.
The closing of the Big Sandy mines therefore did not produce an immediate ending. It created a second period in the community’s history.
Russell Lee Comes to Big Sandy
That second period was recorded in remarkable detail by photographer Russell Lee.
In 1946 and 1947, the federal government conducted a Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry. The resulting National Archives series contains more than four thousand photographs, including 2,765 images made by Lee. The survey documented miners, families, homes, medical care, sanitation, schools, stores, churches, workplaces, and community conditions across American coalfields.
Big Sandy received unusually extensive coverage. Lee photographed residents inside bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, and porches. He recorded children at play, miners returning from work, household water arrangements, electrical wiring, streets, rent, transportation costs, and the local store.
One photograph shows Beulah Wady with her youngest child in the bedroom of the family’s five-room house. The federal caption stated plainly that the Big Sandy mines were closed and that Exeter miners now occupied the housing. It also reported that the electrical wiring in the house was old and unsafe.
Other photographs show two of Wady’s four children inside the living room. The family paid nine dollars per month for the five-room house. Another caption recorded that the only running water in the house had been installed through an arrangement created by Mr. Wady himself.
These details turn an abstract coal camp into a lived place. Rent was measured in a few dollars. Water might come from an outside tap. Electrical service could be present but unsafe. Household improvements sometimes depended upon a miner’s own labor rather than company maintenance.
Houses, Roads, and Water
The Big Sandy photographs show rows of frame houses fitted into the narrow available land. Some had small porches, metal roofs, and rooms arranged one behind another. Hills rose sharply beyond the buildings, limiting where roads, yards, and community structures could be placed.
Federal captions described typical three-room houses and noted that miners paid eight dollars each month for bus transportation to the Exeter mines. The men therefore paid not only rent but also a recurring cost simply to reach the workplace that had replaced the closed Big Sandy operation.
A separate photograph identified Tommy Howell beside a three-room house for which he paid seven dollars per month. Other images showed families carrying water from outdoor taps and storing household goods wherever space allowed.
The company store serving Big Sandy had no telephone, and the federal caption stated that there were no telephones anywhere else in the camp. In an emergency, the absence of direct communication could delay medical help, mine notifications, or contact with Welch.
Photographs of roads and people carrying groceries recorded unpaved streets, the absence of sidewalks, and limited camp maintenance. Chickens wandered between houses, children played near roads and tracks, and the forest pressed close around the settlement.
These were not incidental background details. The condition of roads, water systems, wiring, sanitation, and communication shaped the daily health and safety of every family in Big Sandy.
A Pay Slip from the Coalfields
Among the most revealing Big Sandy images is a photographed pay slip covering a half-month period at the Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company’s Exeter Mine.
A pay slip can reveal the difference between a miner’s gross earnings and the amount he actually carried home. Deductions might include rent, transportation, store purchases, medical charges, union dues, equipment, fuel, or other company-associated expenses.
The surviving image does not merely represent wages. It documents the economic network surrounding a coal miner. The company could be connected with his job, his house, his transportation, his shopping, and certain community services.
The eight-dollar monthly bus charge recorded in another caption is especially significant when placed beside rent of seven or nine dollars. Traveling to work could cost as much as living in a company house.
That arrangement also shows how the closing of the Big Sandy mine changed the geography of labor. The miners remained in the old camp, but each workday began with transportation to Exeter. Big Sandy had become a residential extension of another mining operation.
Veterans, Farmers, and Temporary Miners
Lee also photographed Big Sandy miners who had recently been discharged from the armed services following World War II.
The federal caption reported that many miners in the area came from farm families. Some were saving money with the intention of returning to farming, but they planned to remain in the mines while wages were favorable.
That statement complicates the idea that every coal miner saw mining as a permanent identity. For some workers, the mine was one part of a larger survival strategy. They might move between farming, military service, timber work, railroading, and coal depending upon wages and opportunity.
The men photographed at Big Sandy had already moved between several worlds. Some had left farms for military service, returned from war, entered or reentered the mines, and hoped eventually to purchase or reclaim a life on the land.
Big Sandy was therefore home not only to lifelong miners but also to workers living through a temporary stage in plans that could be changed by prices, family needs, injuries, or the availability of farmland.
Children, Church, and School
Children occupy a central place in the 1946 photographic record. Lee documented their clothing, games, chores, homes, siblings, and surroundings.
One photograph simply identifies a group as children of miners at Big Sandy Housing Camp. Another caption stated that the camp had no supervised recreational activities for children. They played in yards, roads, and open spaces shaped more by industrial convenience than planned recreation.
The company supplied a building that served as both church and school. Its existence demonstrates how education and worship could share limited community space. It also shows the continuing influence of the coal company over institutions that extended far beyond the mine itself.
The school connected the 1946 camp with the earlier Big Sandy School District documented through the bond notice. Whether the photographed building resulted directly from that bond issue requires additional research, but both records confirm that education formed part of Big Sandy’s community life over several decades.
The church and school building also provided a gathering place. In a community without extensive recreational facilities or modern communication, such a structure could host worship, lessons, meetings, holiday programs, and other activities that brought families together.
Big Sandy’s children grew up in a landscape defined by coal even after the local mine closed. Their fathers still worked underground. Mine clothes hung on porches. Pay slips determined household finances. Buses carried men to Exeter. Company property surrounded home, school, worship, and play.
Big Sandy After the Coal Camp Era
Big Sandy survived the closing of its original mine because people continued to live there. Later census records, vital records, newspapers, school materials, and family histories can trace which of the photographed families remained and which moved away.
The nearby Exeter mines also developed a later history beyond coal production. A United States Geological Survey study conducted during the late twentieth century examined the hydrologic characteristics of abandoned Exeter mine workings and their possible use as a public water supply. The underground spaces once created for coal extraction had become part of a discussion about water and community infrastructure.
The McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey continued to recognize Big Sandy among the county’s historic coal communities. The survey placed it within the railroad and settlement system that linked Marytown, Roderfield, Welch, Hemphill, Exeter, and other nearby mining places.
Modern Big Sandy is smaller than the industrial community suggested by the early school district, mine records, and housing photographs. Yet the survival of the place name is itself significant. Many company camps vanished entirely when houses were demolished, roads were abandoned, or later development erased their boundaries.
Why Big Sandy Matters
Big Sandy’s history cannot be told through a single famous disaster, labor battle, or nationally known person. Its importance comes from the survival of ordinary evidence.
A federal coal test records what the mine produced. An inspection report describes the seam and ventilation. Accident entries preserve the names of Jno. Gilgy and Miles Pharr. Court decisions show the company encountering questions of labor law and responsibility. A bond notice proves that local families supported a school district. A postal notice identifies community leadership. Census records preserve households. Russell Lee’s camera shows what official statistics could not.
Together, these sources reveal the complete system of a coal community. The mine provided work, but it also influenced housing, transportation, education, shopping, medical care, communication, and family life.
Big Sandy also demonstrates that the closing of a mine did not always close a community. By 1946, the original operation was gone, yet the houses remained full. Children still played in the camp. Families still paid rent. Men still boarded transportation to another mine. The community had lost the industrial center that created it but had not lost its people.
That may be Big Sandy’s most important historical lesson. Appalachian coal towns were never only collections of tipples, tracks, and company buildings. They were places where families made homes inside an industrial system they did not fully control.
The mine could close. The company name could change. The railroad could carry coal elsewhere. Yet the memories of the people who lived there remained rooted in the hollow long after the last coal car left Big Sandy.
Sources & Further Reading
Parker, Edward W., Joseph A. Holmes, and Marius R. Campbell. Preliminary Report on the Operations of the Coal-Testing Plant of the United States Geological Survey at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 261. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0261/report.pdf.
Parker, Edward W., Joseph A. Holmes, and Marius R. Campbell. Report on the Operations of the Coal-Testing Plant of the United States Geological Survey at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Saint Louis, Missouri, 1904. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 48. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/report-operations-coal-testing-plant-united-states-geological-survey-louisiana.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Twenty-Third Annual Report: Coal Mines in the State of West Virginia for the Year Ending June 30, 1905. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Mines, 1905. https://archive.org/details/annualreportcoal23west.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1908. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1909. https://archive.org/details/annualreportofde26west.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1911. Charleston: Union Publishing Company, 1911. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde29west/annualreportofde29west_djvu.txt.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1914. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Mines, 1914. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde1914west/annualreportofde1914west_djvu.txt.
Daniel v. Big Sandy Coal & Coke Company, 68 W. Va. 490, 69 S.E. 993. Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, 1910. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/daniel-v-big-sandy-929782763.
“Big Sandy School District, McDowell County, West Virginia, Bonds Awarded.” Commercial and Financial Chronicle, September 30, 1911. Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/commercial-financial-chronicle-1339/september-30-1911-497197/fulltext.
“West Virginia Postmasters Commissioned.” Wheeling Intelligencer, August 27, 1915, 8. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TWI19150827.1.8.
United States Post Office Department. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971. Record Group 28. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.
United States Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920: Browns Creek District, Big Sandy Precinct No. 4, McDowell County, West Virginia. Transcription provided by West Virginia GenWeb. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/census/1920brc57.html.
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Enumeration District 24-37. National Archives Identifier 5888419. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5888419.
United States Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: Population Schedules for McDowell County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: United States Department of Commerce, 1940. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940.
United States Bureau of the Census. Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950: Population Schedules for McDowell County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: United States Department of Commerce, 1950. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950.
National Archives and Records Administration. “Photographs of the Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry, 1946–1947.” Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540230. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540230.
Lee, Russell. “Big Sandy Housing Camp. Mines at Big Sandy Closed and Housing Now Occupied by Exeter Miners.” August 10, 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540710. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540710.
Lee, Russell. “Pay Slip for a Half-Month Period, Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company, Exeter Mine, Big Sandy Housing Camp.” 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540749. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540749.
Lee, Russell. “Children of Miners, Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company, Exeter Mine, Big Sandy Housing Camp.” 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540751. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540751.
Lee, Russell. “Mrs. Walter Rose and Her Baby at Big Sandy Housing Camp.” 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540759. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540759.
Lee, Russell. “Miners’ Children Playing. This Camp Has No Supervised Children’s Activities.” 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540761. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540761.
Lee, Russell. “House, Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company, Exeter Mine, Big Sandy Housing.” 1946. Photograph. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. National Archives Identifier 540797. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/540797.
Lee, Russell. “Miners, Recently Discharged from Armed Services, Kingston Pocahontas Coal Company, Exeter Mine, Big Sandy Housing Camp.” April 10, 1946. Photograph 245-MS-1250-L. Records of the Solid Fuels Administration for War, Record Group 245. https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2024/03/20/power-light-russell-lees-coal-survey-exhibit/.
National Archives and Records Administration. “Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey.” March 20, 2024. https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2024/03/20/power-light-russell-lees-coal-survey-exhibit/.
Ferrell, G. M. Hydrologic Characteristics of Abandoned Coal Mines Used as Sources of Public Water Supply in McDowell County, West Virginia. Water-Resources Investigations Report 92-4073. Charleston: United States Geological Survey, 1992. https://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/1992/4073/report.pdf.
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006731317.
Sone, Stacy. Coal Company Stores in McDowell County. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form. Charleston: West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office, 1991. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64500726_text.
Aurora Research Associates LLC. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report, McDowell County, West Virginia. Charleston: West Virginia Division of Highways, November 15, 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf.
Torok, George D. A Guide to Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. https://utpress.org/9781572332829/guide-to-the-historic-coal-towns-of-the-big-sandy-river-valley/.
West Virginia. West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official Register, 1916. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1916. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1916.pdf.
Author Note: Big Sandy’s history survives because mine reports, court records, census schedules, and federal photographs preserved details that might otherwise have disappeared. I hope readers with family memories, photographs, or records from the community will help add more names and stories to its history.