Appalachian Community Histories – Belo, Mingo County: Pigeon Creek, the Lost Post Office, and a Community That Endured
Belo did not suddenly appear when a government clerk first wrote its name into a ledger. Families had already lived, farmed, hunted, worshiped, and buried their dead along Pigeon Creek and the surrounding branches for generations. What emerged during the early twentieth century was not the beginning of settlement, but the recognition of a community name.
The West Virginia State Archives associates Belo with the year 1920. A historical database compiled from federal postmaster records indicates that a Belo post office opened in 1921 and continued operating until 1938. Those dates place Belo’s emergence as a named community during a period when coal mining, road construction, population growth, and changing postal routes were transforming Mingo County.
Belo never became an incorporated city with a courthouse, mayor, or municipal archive. Its history survives in less obvious places. It can be found in postal ledgers, county deeds, church minutes, census schedules, mine maps, highway plans, newspaper notices, cemetery stones, and the names assigned to creeks and roads.
To understand Belo, a researcher must look beyond the date when the name first appeared. The community’s deeper history begins with Pigeon Creek and with the families who lived there while the land was still part of Logan County.
A Community Older Than Its Name
Before January 30, 1895, the territory that became Mingo County belonged to Logan County. Mingo was created from the southern portion of Logan and became the youngest county in West Virginia. Any search for Belo’s nineteenth-century history must therefore begin in Logan County records rather than Mingo County records.
The name Belo will not normally appear in records from the earliest settlement period. Land was more often identified by watercourses, ridges, neighboring property owners, and natural landmarks. Researchers looking for the families who occupied the future Belo area must search for places such as Pigeon Creek, Trace Fork, Trace Creek, Riffe Branch, and nearby Naugatuck.
This method is especially important in Appalachian history. Many rural communities existed socially long before they were recognized administratively. A settlement might have families, farms, paths, churches, cemeteries, mills, and gathering places without possessing a single accepted name. One family might describe its home as being on Pigeon Creek, while another used the name of a smaller branch or hollow.
The first settlers in the broader Tug Valley arrived around the beginning of the nineteenth century. They entered a rugged landscape where rivers and creeks provided the most dependable routes through the mountains. Farming remained central to life before the arrival of commercial coal mining and rail transportation.
Deeds, land grants, tax books, wills, marriage records, and surveyor’s plats can help identify the families who occupied the future Belo area. Older surveys may describe boundaries by marked trees, forks in a creek, ridgelines, and the properties of adjoining landowners. Together, those descriptions can reconstruct a community that existed before Belo acquired its modern name.
Mingo County and the Coming of Coal
The creation of Mingo County was closely connected to the rapid changes taking place in the Tug Valley. The Norfolk and Western Railway reached the region in 1890, opening previously isolated coal lands to large-scale industrial development. Population growth and increased economic activity contributed to the decision to form a new county five years later.
The transformation was dramatic. Mingo County’s population increased from 11,359 in 1900 to 19,431 in 1910. It continued growing during the following decades and reached 47,409 residents in 1950. Coal companies, railroad workers, merchants, miners, and their families entered the county, while older farming families adjusted to a new industrial economy.
Not every community in the coalfields developed as a planned company town. Some places grew around older farms, country stores, churches, road crossings, and postal stops. Belo appears to have belonged to this second pattern. Its identity developed within the coal economy, but its roots reached back into the older geography of Pigeon Creek.
Coal development increased the need for reliable names and addresses. Companies needed to ship supplies and maintain payrolls. Miners received letters from relatives and correspondence from government agencies. Families ordered goods, subscribed to newspapers, received pension documents, and sent news to people living outside the mountains.
A named post office could transform a scattered rural settlement into a recognized point on the map.
The Post Office That Put Belo on the Map
The strongest documentary evidence for Belo’s emergence comes from postal records. The West Virginia State Archives place-name index dates Belo to 1920, while the historical post office database records the Belo post office as operating from 1921 until 1938.
The opening of the post office did more than provide mail service. It gave the surrounding settlement an official identity that could be used in federal records, newspapers, business correspondence, obituaries, and personal letters. Once Belo appeared as a postal address, residents who had previously described themselves as living on Pigeon Creek or near another community could identify their homes with a single name.
The exact location of the first Belo post office has not been firmly established in the readily available published records. The best source for answering that question is the National Archives collection known as the Post Office Department Records of Site Locations, 1837 to 1950. The reports were created when post offices were established, moved, or evaluated. They often identify nearby streams, roads, railroads, houses, businesses, and neighboring post offices. Some reports contain hand-drawn maps.
Microfilm Publication M1126, Roll 648, covers Mingo County, West Virginia. A Belo site report from that roll could reveal where the post office stood, who submitted the application, how many families it served, and how its mail route connected with neighboring communities.
The federal Record of Appointment of Postmasters, Microfilm Publication M841, is equally important. It should identify Belo’s postmasters, their appointment dates, and any official changes made to the office. Until those original records are fully examined, claims about Belo’s first postmaster or the precise circumstances of its establishment should be treated cautiously.
The Story of “Below”
The most familiar explanation of Belo’s name comes from a later community tradition involving E. E. Dempsey and his wife, Lummie Vernatter Dempsey. According to the story, the Dempseys operated a general store, and Lummie became associated with the local post office.
The tradition says the community was geographically below Myrtle, Lenore, Logan, and Charleston. The proposed name was supposedly “Below,” but the final letter was removed, producing “Belo.”
It is an appealing explanation. It ties the name to the geography of the valley and to a family remembered within the community. Like many Appalachian place-name stories, it transforms an administrative decision into a memorable piece of local folklore.
The chronology, however, presents a problem. Some versions of the story place the establishment of the post office in the 1930s. The State Archives lists Belo in 1920, and the post office database records the office as opening in 1921. That evidence shows that Belo existed as an official name considerably earlier than the 1930s version of the story suggests.
This does not necessarily mean the entire story is false. Oral traditions frequently preserve the correct people, places, or circumstances while shifting dates or combining separate events. The Dempseys may have operated the post office during a later period. The office may have moved into their store. A remembered change in postmasters may eventually have become confused with the original establishment of the office.
The original appointment register and site-location report are needed to determine which parts of the tradition can be documented. Until then, the “Below” story should be preserved as community memory, but not treated as a complete substitute for the postal record.
Belo During the 1930s
By the middle of the 1930s, Belo had become an ordinary geographic designation in regional newspapers. An April 1935 issue of the Big Sandy News-Recorder identified Mrs. Mary Evans as a resident of Belo. The notice did not explain where Belo was or treat the name as unfamiliar. It simply used the community as a recognized address.
That small reference is historically valuable. Newspaper notices involving deaths, marriages, illnesses, accidents, church gatherings, school activities, and visiting relatives can reveal a rural community more clearly than formal government histories. They identify the people who used Belo as their home address and connect them with relatives in neighboring counties and states.
A 1937 Mingo County highway map provides another important source from this period. The map was produced through the cooperation of the West Virginia State Road Commission, the United States Bureau of Public Roads, and the Works Progress Administration. Maps in the series commonly recorded roads, streams, houses, schools, churches, businesses, mines, and other features of rural communities.
The map dates from only a year before the Belo post office reportedly closed. Comparing it with later topographic maps and aerial photographs could reveal which roads, buildings, churches, mining sites, and settlement clusters existed at the end of Belo’s postal era.
The post office was discontinued in 1938. The available summary records do not explain why. It may have been affected by changes in mail transportation, rural routes, population distribution, or postal consolidation, but the reason should not be assumed without locating the official discontinuance order.
Whatever the cause, the closing of the post office did not erase Belo.
A Community Without a Post Office
Once a place name becomes rooted in family memory, church life, road directions, and local speech, it can survive long after the institution that officially recognized it has disappeared.
Belo continued to appear in addresses, transportation records, mine directories, government reports, and geographic descriptions. The disappearance of the post office did not cause residents to stop identifying with the community.
This persistence is common throughout Appalachia. Rural post offices often opened during periods of population growth and closed when routes were reorganized. The names they created sometimes vanished, but others remained attached to roads, creeks, churches, cemeteries, and neighborhoods.
Official environmental records still use Belo as a geographic reference. The United States Geological Survey maintains a monitoring location called “Trace Fork at Belo, West Virginia.” Water-quality records also describe a site on Pigeon Creek between Trace Fork and Conley Branch, south of Belo.
These modern records show how the name survived. Belo may not have municipal boundaries, but government agencies continue to use it to orient places within the landscape.
Coal and the Changing Landscape
Coal remained one of the most powerful forces shaping Belo and the surrounding Pigeon Creek area. Mining affected employment, transportation, landownership, water, road construction, and the physical appearance of the mountains.
The West Virginia Annual Report and Directory of Mines for fiscal year 2010 identified mining operations connected with Belo. These included the Mountaineer Alma-A operation and the MT-41 Mine, which was described as being at Belo near United States Route 119.
Mine maps may reveal far more about Belo’s industrial history. The West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey preserves thousands of historic mine maps showing underground workings, coal seams, company holdings, portals, rail connections, surface features, and neighboring properties. Searching those collections by mine name, company, creek, and quadrangle could connect individual operations with the families who lived nearby.
County deed books are equally important. Many Appalachian landowners sold or leased mineral rights separately from the surface land. A family could continue living on a farm while a company owned the coal beneath it. Mineral deeds, leases, rights-of-way, and court cases can therefore explain how outside companies acquired control of the resources surrounding Belo.
Coal brought wages and opportunity, but it also made communities dependent upon an industry that changed repeatedly. Mechanization reduced employment after the middle of the twentieth century, contributing to population loss throughout Mingo County.
The most complete history of Belo must eventually include the miners who worked underground or on the surface, the women who maintained households during strikes and layoffs, the storekeepers who extended credit, the children who attended local schools, and the families who left when employment disappeared.
Churches, Cemeteries, and Community Memory
In communities without formal municipal governments, churches often served as the most durable public institutions. They hosted worship services, funerals, revivals, weddings, association meetings, and gatherings that connected families across generations.
Little Dove United Baptist Church remains one of the institutions associated with Belo. Its original minute books, deeds, membership rolls, baptismal records, funeral records, and anniversary materials could preserve information that never appeared in newspapers or county histories.
Baptist association minutes offer another window into local religious life. A 1973 volume of the Northern New Salem and Sardis Baptist associations recorded a meeting involving Rebecca Church at Belo. Such records can identify ministers, delegates, congregations, membership changes, and relationships between churches spread across the mountains.
Cemeteries provide an additional archive. Family burial grounds along Trace Creek, Pigeon Creek, Riffe Branch, and the surrounding ridges preserve surnames that may also appear in deeds, tax books, census schedules, death certificates, and church rolls.
The Dempsey name, already connected with Belo’s naming tradition, also appears in the geography of the area through local roads and cemetery references. Careful comparison of gravestones, official death records, deeds, and family papers could help establish the Dempseys’ role in the community without relying entirely upon later retellings.
Official memorials also preserve local names. In 2008, the West Virginia Legislature adopted resolutions naming bridges near Belo in honor of Howard W. Bannister and Fred Mahon. Such acts place individual memory directly into the landscape, where a bridge can become both a transportation structure and a public monument.
Floods, Roads, and Isolation
Waterways made settlement possible, but they also made communities vulnerable. Homes and roads were often constructed in the narrow spaces between a creek and the mountainside. Heavy rain could turn an ordinary stream into a destructive force.
Mingo County experienced major floods in 1977 and 1984, part of a longer history of flooding throughout the Tug Valley.
Federal disaster files, engineering reports, newspaper photographs, and oral histories may document how floods affected Belo specifically. Flood records can identify damaged houses, washed-out bridges, altered stream channels, emergency shelters, relocated families, and properties later acquired for mitigation.
Road construction gradually reduced some of Belo’s isolation. State highway plans, bridge records, and right-of-way maps can contain details rarely preserved elsewhere. They may identify former houses, stores, cemeteries, landowners, and abandoned road alignments.
The 1937 highway map, later Division of Highways records, and modern roads such as United States Route 119 together show how transportation changed the community. Roads that once followed creeks and connected scattered homes became part of larger regional systems serving mines, businesses, schools, and commuters.
The King Coal Highway and a New Use for Mined Land
One of the largest modern projects associated with Belo is the King Coal Highway. State and federal planning documents examined a section extending approximately seven miles between Delbarton and Belo.
The project was designed in connection with CONSOL Energy’s Buffalo Mountain Surface Mine. Mining operations would create part of the rough road grade, with the highway becoming a planned use for the land after mining. The project area lay west of Pigeon Creek and south of United States Route 119.
This joint-use arrangement reflects a new stage in the relationship between coal and transportation. Earlier railroads entered the region to carry coal away from the mountains. Later highway planning sought to use a landscape already being reshaped by surface mining.
The Belo Industrial Park represents another attempt to transform former industrial or mined land into a site for new economic activity. Located near United States Route 119, it connects the community’s coalfield past with regional efforts to attract business and diversify the local economy.
These projects are part of Belo’s history even though they came long after the post office closed. They continue the process through which transportation, industry, and government decisions have repeatedly changed the physical and economic landscape.
Recovering the Families of Belo
The next stage in documenting Belo should focus on the people who lived there.
Federal census schedules can help reconstruct households, occupations, family relationships, and migration patterns. Before 1895, the relevant families will appear in Logan County. After the creation of Mingo County, researchers must identify the correct magisterial district and enumeration district rather than expecting Belo to appear as a separate town.
The order in which households were recorded can be especially important. Census enumerators often traveled along a creek or road, listing neighboring families one after another. By comparing those sequences with deeds, maps, and known landmarks, it may be possible to identify which census pages cover the future Belo community.
County land books and personal property tax records can fill gaps between census years. They may show acreage, land values, buildings, livestock, and changes in ownership. Deed indexes can reveal when property passed between generations or when coal companies acquired mineral rights.
Newspapers can restore details that official records omit. The Mingo Republican, Williamson Enterprise, Progressive West Virginian, Williamson Daily News, and Logan Banner may contain references to Belo schools, churches, stores, mining accidents, elections, road petitions, floods, funerals, and family visits.
School board minutes and school census records could identify where Belo children attended school, who taught them, how they traveled, and when smaller schools were consolidated. Lenore High School yearbooks may contain photographs and names of Belo students whose experiences would otherwise remain undocumented.
Oral histories are also necessary. The people who remember Belo’s stores, churches, mines, footpaths, floods, school buses, and family gatherings preserve knowledge that may never have been written down. Their memories should be recorded while they can still be compared with maps, photographs, and official documents.
Why Belo’s History Matters
Belo’s story is not the history of a large town. There was no city hall, public square, or local newspaper devoted solely to its affairs. That is precisely why its history matters.
Most Appalachian communities were never major political or commercial centers. They were places where families built homes near creeks, traveled difficult roads, worked in mines, attended small churches, buried relatives on hillsides, and used community names that outsiders rarely understood.
Belo demonstrates the danger of confusing the first appearance of a name with the beginning of a community. The archival record points to 1920 and 1921 as the years when Belo gained official recognition, but the people and settlement patterns of Pigeon Creek were much older.
It also demonstrates the value of treating oral tradition with both respect and care. The story that Belo came from “Below” may preserve genuine memories of the Dempsey family and the local post office. The dates, however, must be tested against federal postal records. Preserving folklore does not require ignoring contradictions. The contradiction itself can reveal how community memory changes over time.
The post office closed in 1938, but Belo remained. It survived in newspaper addresses, church records, cemeteries, mine directories, bridges, roads, government reports, and the language of the people who continued to call the community home.
Belo’s history is still waiting to be assembled. It lies in a federal postal roll that may contain a hand-drawn map, in Logan County deeds recorded before Mingo County existed, in the minutes of mountain churches, in mine maps showing tunnels beneath familiar ridges, and in the memories of families who understand that a community does not disappear simply because its post office closes.
Sources & Further Reading
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Mingo County, West Virginia.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/states_counties/mingo/
Bailey, Rebecca J. Matewan Before the Massacre: Politics, Coal, and the Roots of Conflict in a West Virginia Mining Community. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2008. https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9781933202280
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. “U.S. Post Offices.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/
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://books.google.com/books?id=vFXtAAAAMAAJ
Mingo County Genealogical Society. Heritage of Mingo County, West Virginia. Williamson, WV: Mingo County Genealogical Society. Listed in “Mingo County History Sources,” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Records of Site Locations, 1837–1955. Microfilm Publication M1126, Roll 648, Mingo County, West Virginia. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/post-offices/m1126.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Records of the Post Office Department.” Record Group 28, 1773–1971. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/028.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “United States Census Records.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Perry, Huey. They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle. Foreword by Jeff Biggers. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2010. https://www.ubcpress.ca/theyll-cut-off-your-project
Ragland, Henry Clay. History of Logan County. Manuscript history listed in the official Logan County bibliography of the West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/logan.html
Smith, Nancy Sue. An History of Mingo County, West Virginia. 1960. Listed in “Mingo County History Sources,” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
Smith, Nancy Sue. History of Logan and Mingo Counties, Beginning in 1617. Listed in “Mingo County History Sources,” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, 1963. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35?page=1
United States Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920. Volume I, Population. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1921. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1921/dec/vol-01-population.html
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection and topoView.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Geological Survey. “Trace Fork at Belo, West Virginia.” National Water Information System. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/374625082141201/
United States Postal Service. Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors. Publication 119. Washington, DC: United States Postal Service. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/sources-of-historical-information.pdf
Water Quality Portal. “Water Quality Data for Pigeon Creek and Belo, West Virginia.” National Water Quality Monitoring Council. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.waterqualitydata.us/
West Virginia Archives and History. “County Government Records.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/countyrecords.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Logan County History Sources.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/logan.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Mingo County History Sources.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Online Resources: Mingo County.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/teacherresources/counties/mingo.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia: Belo.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamb.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Vital Research Records.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Department of Transportation. “County Maps Index.” Charleston: West Virginia Division of Highways. https://gis.transportation.wv.gov/files/GISCountyMaps/County_Maps_Index.pdf
West Virginia Department of Transportation. “DOH to Hold Informational Workshop and Public Hearing on King Coal Highway Delbarton to Belo Project in Mingo County.” April 2, 2013. https://transportation.wv.gov/communications/PressRelease/Pages/DOHtoHoldInformationalWorkshopPublicHearingonKingCoalHighwayDelbartontoBeloProjectinMingoCounty.aspx
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Interactive Coal Bed Mapping Project.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/cbmp/coalims.html
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Mine Map Archives.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/minemaparchives.htm
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Scanned West Virginia Mine Maps and Mine Information Database System.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/wvminemaps.htm
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. Annual Report and Directory of Mines, Fiscal Year 2010. Charleston: State of West Virginia, 2010. https://minesafety.wv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Annual-Report-FY-2010.pdf
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “West Virginia Mine Map Archives.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/west-virginia-mine-map-archives/
West Virginia University Libraries. “Logan County Court Records, 1846–1980.” A&M 2733, West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/844
West Virginia University Libraries. “Logan County, West Virginia, Collections and Records.” West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/subjects/823
West Virginia University Libraries. “Mingo County, West Virginia, Collections and Records.” West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/subjects/2211
West Virginia University Libraries. “Mingo County Highway Map, 1937.” West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6604
West Virginia University Libraries. “Samuel Davis Stokes Papers, ca. 1915–1925.” A&M 2542, West Virginia and Regional History Center. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/606
The West Virginia Encyclopedia. “Mingo County.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://wvencprod.wvnet.edu/entries/1772
Author Note: To the reader, Belo’s history survives less in a single town chronicle than in postal ledgers, maps, deeds, church records, and family memory. This article preserves the community’s naming tradition while separating what local memory recalls from what the surviving records can presently prove.