Appalachian Community Histories – Beartown, McDowell County: Island Creek Coal, Blue Boy No. 6, and Life Along Dry Fork
Beartown rests along Dry Fork in southern McDowell County, not far from Bradshaw and Bartley. It was never incorporated, never developed a large downtown, and never became the sort of place that regularly appeared in state histories. Yet the community stood beside a railroad, a coal preparation plant, underground mines, a school, and the narrow stream that first carried its name into the public record.
For much of the twentieth century, Beartown would have been difficult to miss. Railroad cars moved through the valley. Mine openings pierced the surrounding hills. Steel galleries, conveyors, trestles, sidings, and preparation buildings occupied the limited ground between Dry Fork, the road, and the mountains. Miners entered the earth nearby while plant employees processed the coal that came out.
Today, Beartown is easier to overlook. Some industrial buildings have disappeared, others survive only in pieces, and many records connected to the community are filed under Bradshaw, Bartley, Island Creek Coal Company, Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, or the Norfolk and Western Railway. Reconstructing its history requires following all of those names through maps, photographs, federal proceedings, company records, and the physical landscape.
A Name Older Than the Coal Plant
The earliest strong government reference presently located does not describe Beartown as a settlement. It describes a stream.
Henry Gannett’s 1904 Gazetteer of West Virginia, published as United States Geological Survey Bulletin 233, identifies Beartown as a small branch entering Dry Fork, which in turn flows toward the Tug Fork and the Big Sandy River. The entry establishes that the name was in recognized geographical use decades before the construction of the large coal complex later associated with the community.
This suggests that Beartown Branch, or the hollow drained by it, gave its name to the settlement. That pattern was common throughout Appalachia. A creek, fork, ridge, family farm, or natural landmark often carried a name long before a post office, mine, school, or cluster of houses appeared. When industrial development arrived, companies and railroads frequently adopted names that local residents had already used for generations.
The origin of the name itself remains uncertain. It may reflect the presence of bears in the surrounding mountains, an encounter remembered by early residents, or a descriptive name attached to the hollow before detailed maps were made. Without an early deed, survey note, family account, or newspaper explanation, any more specific origin would be speculation.
What can be established is that Beartown began as a geographical identity. The branch came first in the written record. The recognized community developed around it later.
Between Dry Fork and the Mountain
Geography determined nearly everything about Beartown.
Dry Fork runs through a steep, narrow valley where level ground is scarce. The mountains rise quickly from the water, leaving only thin strips of usable land beside the stream. Roads, houses, railroad tracks, mine structures, and industrial buildings had to compete for space in the same confined corridor.
The later Beartown Project photographs show how completely engineers adapted the industrial site to the valley. Tracks followed the water. Steel frameworks crossed narrow spaces between the highway and the river. Mine openings entered the hills where the coal seams could be reached. Trestles and galleries lifted coal above the ground so that gravity and mechanical conveyors could move it from one stage of processing to another.
The railroad was essential. Beartown stood on the Norfolk and Western system’s Dry Fork Branch, part of the network that connected the interior mines of McDowell County with the larger Pocahontas coalfield transportation system. Coal could be mined in a remote hollow, loaded into cars, and carried outward to distant markets that most residents would never see.
A Norfolk and Western Historical Society catalog description identifies Hawley Coal Mining Corporation’s Blue Boy No. 6 at Beartown around 1980. The photograph shows the railroad, bridge, mine buildings, nearby houses, and steep winter mountains crowded into a single industrial landscape. It captures the physical reality of Beartown better than a map alone could. The community, mine, railway, road, and stream existed almost on top of one another.
Island Creek Coal Company Comes to Beartown
Island Creek Coal Company had grown into one of West Virginia’s major coal producers long before its Beartown Project began. The company developed first in Logan County, where it shipped its initial trainload of coal in 1904. It soon expanded beyond Logan into Mingo, Wyoming, Fayette, and McDowell counties, acquiring coal lands and operating mines across several fields.
By the middle of the twentieth century, Island Creek was already connected to the Bartley area through the Pond Creek Pocahontas Coal Company, an Island Creek affiliate. The Pond Creek No. 1 explosion at Bartley on January 10, 1940, killed 91 miners and became one of the defining tragedies in McDowell County history. Beartown stood close enough to Bartley that the communities shared roads, families, schools, mines, and the wider memory of coalfield danger.
Island Creek’s work at Beartown belonged to the next period of coalfield development. Rather than merely opening another small drift mine and constructing a simple wooden tipple, the company undertook a coordinated project involving underground workings, rail facilities, a substantial tipple, preparation equipment, waste-handling areas, steel galleries, and supporting infrastructure.
The surviving photographic sequence at West Virginia University documents that project in remarkable detail. The images form part of collection A&M 3645 and carry titles identifying Island Creek Coal Company’s Beartown Project. Many also describe the operation as No. 6 Bartley, demonstrating how the industrial geography of Beartown and the better-known neighboring community overlapped in company records.
Building the Beartown Project
Construction was underway by at least March 1951. A photograph dated March 10 records a railroad fill being prepared for the empty track at No. 6 Bartley. The empty track was not a minor detail. An efficient coal operation required separate movement for empty cars arriving at the plant and loaded cars departing from it. Grades, switches, fills, and sidings had to be designed around the stream, highway, and mountain.
By June, the project had advanced to the mine opening and trestle. A photograph dated June 30, 1951, identifies the Beartown opening and trestle, directly connecting the name of the community to the developing mine complex. Another image from that summer records a railroad grade extending downstream from the end of the track.
The construction photographs also document the steel gallery that would carry coal or equipment through the plant. One photograph from August 18 describes an 80-foot section positioned between the highway and river. The description reveals just how little room the builders had. The gallery could not simply be placed on a broad industrial site. It had to be inserted into a narrow space already occupied by transportation routes and moving water.
A temporary slate dump photographed in September 1951 shows another part of the operation. Slate and other waste material had to be separated from marketable coal and placed somewhere outside the underground workings. In narrow Appalachian valleys, these disposal areas could become large features of the industrial landscape.
Additional collection records dated December 1951 concern conveying machinery at Beartown. Together, the images show construction progressing through the year from railroad grading and mine access to steel frameworks, waste handling, and mechanical coal movement.
A later photographic survey states that Island Creek constructed the Beartown preparation plant in 1951. The archival sequence supports 1951 as the principal construction year, although photographs from July 1952 show the completed or nearly completed tipple, yard, portal, man car, and related facilities.
The Tipple, Portal, and Railroad Yard
By July 17, 1952, Island Creek photographers documented a mature industrial complex.
One photograph shows the Beartown tipple. Another looks down the gallery toward the railroad cars. A third records the empty yard. Additional images depict a mine portal and a man car used to carry workers underground. Each image bears the Beartown Project name and identifies Island Creek Coal Company.
The photographs reveal the different systems that had to work together. Men entered through the portal and traveled underground in mine cars. Coal came out of the mountain and moved through the tipple or preparation plant. Rock and slate were removed. Cleaned and sized coal passed through galleries and into railroad cars. Empty cars had to arrive in the correct order, be positioned for loading, and then be assembled into outbound trains.
The plant changed Beartown’s physical appearance. Steel and concrete rose beside the creek. Railcars occupied the yard. Conveyor galleries stretched above the ground. Machinery added a constant industrial rhythm to the valley.
It also changed the community’s sound. Residents lived with mine motors, railcars coupling, steel wheels moving across track, preparation machinery, whistles, trucks, and the rush of Dry Fork beneath it all. Coal production was not hidden beyond the ridge. It occupied the center of everyday life.
Beartown School and Community Life
Beartown was more than an industrial location.
A Coal Mining Heritage Study, prepared in connection with the National Coal Heritage Area, lists Beartown School among the historic resources of the southern West Virginia coalfields. The reference is brief, but it confirms that the community maintained a local educational institution worthy of recognition in a regional inventory.
Small coalfield schools were often central gathering places. They educated the children of miners, railroad employees, plant workers, merchants, and families who had lived in the hollow before industrial development. School events, holiday programs, athletic contests, and parent gatherings gave communities an identity that did not depend entirely on the company.
The surviving published evidence does not yet provide a full history of Beartown School. Its construction date, teachers, enrollment, consolidation, and closure require further research in McDowell County Board of Education minutes, school censuses, superintendent reports, photographs, and local newspapers.
The same is true of Beartown’s churches, stores, cemeteries, and individual families. Official industrial sources carefully documented steel, tracks, equipment, ventilation, and production. They were less likely to record a church supper, a school play, a funeral procession, children walking beside the road, or neighbors helping a family after an accident.
Those parts of Beartown’s history survive most clearly in family photographs, oral accounts, church records, obituaries, cemetery inscriptions, and the memories of former residents.
Blue Boy No. 6 and Hawley Coal
By the 1970s, the best-documented mine associated with Beartown was Hawley Coal Mining Corporation’s Blue Boy No. 6.
Federal mine proceedings generally described Blue Boy No. 6 as being at Bradshaw or simply in McDowell County. A Norfolk and Western photographic catalog, however, places the operation at Beartown on the Dry Fork Branch. The difference illustrates one of the central problems in researching the community. A mine physically associated with Beartown could be recorded under Bradshaw because Bradshaw was the larger and more widely recognized nearby town.
In October 1973, Hawley Coal Mining Corporation petitioned the federal Office of Hearings and Appeals for a modification of mine safety rules concerning automatic couplers. The notice identifies Blue Boy Mine No. 6 as a Hawley operation located at Bradshaw in McDowell County. It then describes how coal cars moved inside the mine.
According to the petition, cars were delivered to the working sections in units containing between 19 and 40 cars. At the section dumping point, they were uncoupled from the lead motor or from excess cars. An electric hoist and steel rope then pulled the cars through the loading point. The proceeding provides a rare view of the underground transportation system that supported the surface plant and railroad yard.
The notice was not a broad company history. It was a legal request concerning the application of a safety standard. Yet its technical language preserves details that might otherwise have disappeared. It tells how many cars moved together, how they were separated, what powered them through the loading area, and why Hawley wanted an alternative to the federally required coupling system.
Underground at Blue Boy No. 6
Later federal proceedings provide an even closer view of the mine.
In June 1977, Hawley stated that it had acquired Blue Boy No. 6 from an unnamed previous operator around April 30, 1968. At that time, the company described three working sections designated 3 East, 4 East, and 10 Right. Return air from those sections passed through approximately 5,800 feet of abandoned mine workings. Hawley said that the arrangement had been used since November 1, 1969.
The company sought permission to alter the normal requirement that abandoned return aircourses be examined in their entirety. Hawley argued that forcing inspectors to crawl through the abandoned areas for approximately 5,800 feet would physically exhaust them and expose them to additional hazards. As an alternative, it proposed daily air-velocity readings, methane checks, monitoring stations, and strict compliance with the approved ventilation plan.
The proceeding reveals a mine layered with history. Active working sections depended on air traveling through spaces mined by a previous operator. Old workings remained part of the ventilation system years after coal production had moved elsewhere. The abandoned sections were not truly separated from the living mine. They continued to shape how air moved and how safety inspections were conducted.
Another petition published in August 1977 described conditions in still greater detail. By then, Hawley listed two active sections, 3 East and 10 Right. The mining height was only 26 inches in 3 East and 32 inches in 10 Right. Men worked in spaces scarcely more than two feet high.
Hawley used continuous mining machines, shuttle cars, roof drills, and rubber-tired utility vehicles. The company petitioned for relief from requirements to install protective cabs or canopies on certain equipment. It argued that the low seams, rolls in the coal, and uneven mine floor could trap canopy-equipped machinery between roof and floor.
According to the company’s petition, miners had expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed devices and threatened not to operate the equipment if the cabs or canopies were installed. That statement represents Hawley’s presentation of the miners’ position rather than independent testimony from the workers themselves. Even so, it shows the complicated choices faced underground. A device intended to protect a miner from falling roof could restrict visibility, slow escape, or cause machinery to become wedged in an exceptionally low seam.
Work Beneath a Low Roof
The measurements in the federal records make the labor at Blue Boy No. 6 difficult to imagine from the surface.
A 26-inch mining height meant that workers could not stand. Many tasks had to be performed while crawling, kneeling, lying on one side, or bending beneath the roof. Equipment was constructed to fit the seam, but even machines operated with little clearance.
The men faced the ordinary dangers of underground coal mining, including roof falls, moving equipment, haulage accidents, methane, coal dust, electrical hazards, and ventilation failures. They also faced problems specific to the mine’s geography, including uneven seams, abandoned workings, long return aircourses, and equipment operating in confined spaces.
The records show a mine that was mechanized but still physically punishing. Continuous miners cut coal more quickly than older hand-loading systems, and shuttle cars moved it from the face, but mechanization did not make the mine spacious or safe. It placed larger and more powerful machinery beside workers in areas where there was barely room for either.
Blue Boy No. 6 remained a place where industrial efficiency and human vulnerability existed side by side.
The Railroad Connection
Everything produced at Beartown ultimately depended on transportation.
The Beartown Project photographs show that Island Creek planned the railroad facilities as part of the industrial complex rather than as an afterthought. Empty tracks, loading tracks, fills, grades, galleries, and the tipple were designed to move coal steadily from the mine to the Norfolk and Western system.
The railroad connected Beartown to a much larger economic world. Coal loaded beside Dry Fork could travel through the Pocahontas Division and onward to power plants, factories, ports, or export facilities. The valley’s industrial life was therefore shaped by demand far beyond McDowell County.
When demand was strong, trains, miners, preparation workers, and equipment kept the valley moving. When markets changed, mines reduced production or closed, railroad traffic declined, and the effects reached every house and business tied to the operation.
That dependence helps explain why the disappearance of a mine could weaken an entire community. Coal provided more than individual wages. It supported transportation, schools, stores, churches, local government revenues, and the social networks built around steady employment.
Decline and Demolition
The Beartown preparation plant survived long enough to be photographed in November 1999. At that time, the large industrial structure still stood beside Dry Fork. The photographer later reported that the plant was demolished after the picture was taken.
By February 2018, only portions of the former complex remained. The surviving structures were enough to identify the industrial site, but the great plant that had once dominated the valley was gone.
The demolition followed the broader decline of coal employment and population across McDowell County. Mechanization allowed mines to produce coal with fewer workers. Other operations closed because of depleted reserves, changing markets, corporate consolidation, transportation costs, regulatory pressures, or competition from other energy sources.
For small places like Beartown, the consequences were especially severe. An unincorporated community had no independent municipal government, commercial center, or large institution to preserve its name. Once the major workplace disappeared and families moved away, Beartown became increasingly likely to be absorbed into descriptions of Bradshaw, Bartley, or the general Dry Fork area.
Buildings disappeared more quickly than memories, but memories also became harder to collect as former residents scattered.
What Remains at Beartown
Beartown still survives as a recognized place, a stream name, a road name, an industrial site, and a collection of documentary fragments.
The United States Geological Survey maintains a monitoring location identified as Dry Fork at Beartown, station 03212980. The modern station preserves the community’s name in federal water records just as the 1904 gazetteer preserved Beartown Branch more than a century earlier.
Beartown Branch continues to enter Dry Fork. Roads and bridges still follow the same narrow geography that controlled the placement of the mine and plant. Flood mapping shows the branch, its channel, and the restricted valley where residents and industry occupied land close to moving water.
The most detailed surviving record may be photographic. Island Creek’s construction images preserve the project as it rose from the valley in 1951 and 1952. The Norfolk and Western image records the Blue Boy operation around 1980. Later photographs show the plant before demolition and the remnants afterward.
Placed together, those images allow Beartown’s industrial history to be read almost as a sequence. The railroad grade is prepared. The opening and trestle appear. Steel galleries rise. The tipple and yard enter service. Blue Boy No. 6 continues operating under another company. The preparation plant ages. The main structure disappears. A few remains stand beside the creek.
Why Beartown Matters
Beartown represents hundreds of Appalachian communities whose histories were never gathered into a single book.
Its story must be reconstructed from a geographical entry, company photographs, railroad catalogs, federal mine petitions, school inventories, water records, maps, and ruins. None of those sources tells the whole story. Together, they reveal a community shaped first by the land and water, then transformed by coal, railroads, mechanization, and industrial decline.
The 1904 gazetteer shows that Beartown’s name existed before the great preparation plant. The Island Creek photographs show how rapidly the valley was rebuilt for industry after 1950. Federal records from the 1970s reveal the low, difficult conditions beneath the mountain at Blue Boy No. 6. Later photographs document the disappearance of the plant that once defined the community.
Beartown should not be remembered only as the site of an abandoned coal structure. It was a place where people worked, raised children, attended school, worshiped, traveled, and built lives within one of the most heavily industrialized coal counties in Appalachia.
The large structures are mostly gone, but the community’s history remains visible to anyone willing to look closely at Dry Fork, the railroad grade, the surviving foundations, and the scattered records that still carry the name Beartown.
Sources & Further Reading
Gannett, Henry. A Gazetteer of West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 233. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0233/report.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Beartown.” Geographic Names Information System, feature ID 1553823. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/1553823
United States Geological Survey. Iaeger Quadrangle, West Virginia. 7.5-Minute Series. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 2014. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/WV/WV_Iaeger_20140218_TM_geo.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
United States Geological Survey. “Dry Fork at Beartown, West Virginia.” Monitoring location 03212980. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03212980/
West Virginia GIS Technical Center. “Flood Profile for Beartown Branch, McDowell County.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://data.wvgis.wvu.edu/pub/Clearinghouse/hazards/WV_Flood_Profile/54047_015.pdf
McDowell County Commission. McDowell County Comprehensive Plan. 2021. https://landuse.law.wvu.edu/files/d/f3a5b66b-8671-41f1-a561-ed63cc20cb68/2021-mcdowell-county-comprehensive-plan.pdf
DiBello, Joseph, Donald Briggs, Michael Creasey, and Alisa McCann. A Coal Mining Heritage Study: Southern West Virginia. Philadelphia: National Park Service, 1993. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/coal-mining-heritage.pdf
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Beartown Opening and Trestle, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” June 30, 1951. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035396. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035396
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Gallery Steel, No. 6 Bartley, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” August 18, 1951. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035443. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035443
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Temporary Slate Dump, No. 6 Bartley, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” September 1951. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035458. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035458
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Empty Yard, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” July 17, 1952. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035562. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035562
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Tipple Looking Down the Gallery, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” July 17, 1952. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035563. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035563
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Man Car, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” July 17, 1952. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035564. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035564
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Portal, Island Creek Coal Company, Beartown Project.” July 17, 1952. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 035575. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/035575
United States Department of the Interior. “Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, Petition for Modification of Application of Mandatory Safety Standard, Blue Boy Mine No. 6.” Federal Register 38, October 15, 1973. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1973-10-15/pdf/FR-1973-10-15.pdf
United States Department of the Interior. “Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, Blue Boy No. 6 Mine Proceeding.” Federal Register 41, April 26, 1976. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1976-04-26/pdf/FR-1976-04-26.pdf
United States Department of the Interior. “Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, Blue Boy No. 6 Mine.” Federal Register 42, June 14, 1977. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1977-06-14/pdf/FR-1977-06-14.pdf
United States Department of the Interior. “Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, Blue Boy No. 6 Mine, Petition for Modification.” Federal Register 42, August 10, 1977. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1977-08-10/pdf/FR-1977-08-10.pdf
Norfolk and Western Historical Society. “Hawley Coal Mining Corporation, Blue Boy No. 6 at Beartown, West Virginia, Circa 1980.” Digital scan DS00311. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/
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/
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Mine Data Retrieval System.” United States Department of Labor. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.msha.gov/data-and-reports/mine-data-retrieval-system
West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. “Mining Mapping Applications.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://tagis.dep.wv.gov/mining/
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Coal Mining Disaster Reports Collection, 1938–1977. A&M 4203. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/3696
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Island Creek Coal Company.” Archival authority record and related collections. West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1008
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Ernest Glenwood Otey Papers. A&M 1909. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1008
Spence, Robert Y. “Island Creek Coal Company.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Updated February 8, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/877
National Coal Heritage Area. “National Coal Heritage Area.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://coalheritage.wv.gov/
Coal Camp USA. “Pocahontas Coalfield, McDowell County.” Photographs of the Beartown preparation plant in 1999 and surviving structures in 2018. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/flattop/mcdowell/mcdowell.htm
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. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 1992. https://doi.org/10.3133/wri924073
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. County Geologic Report 30. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_10446.htm
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/
Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. https://wvupressonline.com/node/577
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. https://utpress.org/9780870498855/coal-towns/
Tams, William Purviance, Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. 1963. Reprint, with an introduction by Ronald D. Eller. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2001. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35
Author Note: Beartown’s history survives in scattered maps, company photographs, railroad records, and federal mine proceedings rather than in one complete local history. This article brings those fragments together while recognizing that family photographs, school records, and oral histories may reveal much more.