Appalachian Community Histories – Naugatuck, Mingo County: Seven Coal Seams, the N&W Wye, and the Tug Fork
Naugatuck occupies one of those places where the geography of the Tug Valley almost seems to explain the history before the records do. Here the Tug Fork runs along the Kentucky border while Pigeon Creek cuts eastward into the mountains of what is now Mingo County. Roads, railroads, coal seams, and communities all had to adjust themselves to that narrow landscape.
Long before Naugatuck became the name attached to the place, people knew this section of the Tug by another practical Appalachian description: the mouth of Pigeon. The name identified exactly where they were. It was the place where Pigeon Creek emptied into the Tug Fork, and for much of the nineteenth century that geographic description mattered more than the community name that would eventually replace it.
Then the railroad arrived.
The Norfolk & Western transformed the mouth of Pigeon from a river and creek settlement into an important junction in the industrial geography of the Tug Valley. Federal engineers surveying the region in 1900 described the railroad coming down the Tug Fork to Naugatuck and then turning into Pigeon Creek. They also found something else that explained why the railroad mattered so much. Seven different coal seams had already been opened in the hills surrounding the community.
Naugatuck would never grow into a city the size of Williamson, nor would it acquire the national reputation of Matewan. Its importance was different. For generations it served as a place where older settlement patterns met the railroad, where the Tug Fork met Pigeon Creek, where West Virginia faced Kentucky across the river, and where the coal industry continued operating long after many of the first mines and company towns had disappeared.
Before Naugatuck Was Naugatuck
The history of Naugatuck begins before Mingo County existed.
Until January 30, 1895, the land surrounding the mouth of Pigeon Creek belonged to Logan County. Mingo County was created from the southern portion of Logan after railroad construction and rapid population growth transformed the Tug Valley. That means anyone searching for the earliest families around modern Naugatuck must look in nineteenth-century Logan County deeds, court records, marriages, tax books, surveys, and estate records rather than beginning with Mingo County.
Henry Clay Ragland’s 1896 history of Logan County preserves some of the early family traditions associated with Pigeon Creek and the Tug Valley. Ragland recorded Christopher Dillon as an early settler on the waters of Pigeon, Adam Runyon as settling on Pigeon, and Moses Parsley at the mouth of Rockhouse Fork of Pigeon. He also wrote that John B. Clark settled at the mouth of Pigeon itself and connected other Davis, Hensley, Chafin, Parsley, Dillon, Runyon, and Clark families with the surrounding watershed.
Ragland was writing a county history rather than producing a modern genealogical study, so individual family claims deserve comparison with deeds, census records, and court documents. Still, his work shows that the Pigeon Creek country was not an empty wilderness waiting for coal companies to arrive. Families had occupied the creek valleys and river bottoms for generations before industrial development.
The name preserved in older records was often simply Mouth of Pigeon.
The West Virginia State Archives place-name collection lists Mouth of Pigeon in Logan County from 1857 to 1891. A separate historical post-office dataset compiled from federal appointment records gives slightly different dates, beginning in 1855 and ending in 1892. The discrepancy is small, but it matters. It shows why it is better to describe Mouth of Pigeon as an earlier postal and geographic identity associated with the area rather than stating without qualification that the office was officially renamed Naugatuck on a particular date.
The Naugatuck post office appears in the federal-record-derived chronology in 1903. Yet the name Naugatuck was unquestionably being used before then. Federal engineers called the place Naugatuck in 1900, and the Norfolk & Western produced a map of land at Naugatuck in 1902. The historical record therefore suggests a gradual transition in community identity rather than a single clean moment when Mouth of Pigeon vanished and Naugatuck suddenly appeared.
The Railroad Comes to the Mouth of Pigeon
Few developments changed northern Mingo County as thoroughly as the Norfolk & Western Railway.
The original N&W route through this region followed the Tug Valley before turning at Naugatuck and running up Pigeon Creek toward the Twelvepole country. The Twelvepole route was built in the early 1890s, during the same period when railroad access was helping turn the southern portion of Logan County into the new county of Mingo.
Naugatuck’s geography made it particularly important.
A federal survey of the Big Sandy River system published in 1900 described Pigeon Creek as a major tributary extending for more than twenty miles while flowing roughly parallel to the Tug Fork. The Norfolk & Western came down the river to Naugatuck, reached the mouth of Pigeon Creek, and then turned eastward up the creek.
The railroad did not simply pass Naugatuck. It changed direction there.
That distinction helped give the community a transportation role out of proportion to its size. Railroad lines extending toward Lenore and the interior coal country connected with the river corridor at Naugatuck, while trains continuing through the broader Tug Valley tied the community to Williamson, Kenova, and markets far beyond southern West Virginia.
The archival record left by the railroad is unusually rich. On May 12, 1902, the Norfolk & Western chief engineer’s office prepared a map titled “Map of Land to be Deeded by M. H. Waldron, Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia.” Drawn at a scale of one inch to 100 feet, it identified railroad right of way and a station lot at Naugatuck.
A much larger N&W right-of-way map covering the Ohio Extension from Nolan through Naugatuck toward the Logan and Wayne County line incorporates deeds dating from 1891 through 1924. Those maps are especially important because they preserve not only railroad property but the names and boundaries of people whose land was affected by construction.
By 1904 Naugatuck was established enough that the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals referred to it as the “town of Naugatuck.” A dispute over voting precincts resulted in an order dividing Hardee District so that one precinct covered Pigeon Creek and another covered Tug River and its branches while including Naugatuck. That legal record is particularly useful because it shows the community recognized as a distinct place only a few years after the federal river survey.
Seven Coal Seams in the Hills
The railroad explains how Naugatuck became connected to the outside world, but coal explains why that connection mattered.
The 1900 federal survey of the Big Sandy and Tug Fork watersheds provides one of the best early descriptions of Naugatuck’s mineral landscape. Government engineers reported that seven different seams of coal had been opened in the hills around the community.
One seam was already being mined for local use.
The investigators noted that several older prospect openings had collapsed too badly to permit dependable measurements, but two additional seams appeared to exceed four feet in thickness. The coal then being worked was located approximately 250 feet above river level and appeared at other locations along lower Pigeon Creek.
This description captures Naugatuck at an important moment.
Coal was present in abundance, prospecting had already begun, and small-scale mining was taking place, but the fully developed twentieth-century industrial landscape had not yet appeared. The surveyors were looking at hills that investors and mining companies would soon treat as commercial properties connected directly to railroad transportation.
The future coalfield was visible in the openings cut into the mountains.
The Naugatuck Wye
Federal and railroad surveys allow the early transportation landscape around Naugatuck to be reconstructed with unusual precision.
When U.S. Geological Survey crews performed spirit leveling through the area in 1909 and 1910, they began one section of their work at Naugatuck and followed the old Norfolk & Western line northward. Their benchmark description placed a marker about 230 feet north of the Naugatuck station on the foundation of the east water tank.
From Naugatuck the survey continued through Blocton, Eugene, Lenore, Rapp, and Canterbury, repeatedly recording railroad stations, rails, bridges, rock ledges, and other permanent features.
The railroad infrastructure became part of Naugatuck’s identity.
A surviving Norfolk & Western photograph from 1930 shows a time freight crossing Bridge No. 934 over Pigeon Creek as it approached the Naugatuck wye. Another image in the railroad collection records the same bridge and approach.
Later engineering records continued to treat Naugatuck as the beginning of the Lenore Branch. A 1940 set of plans for an easement between Naugatuck and Lenore specifically identifies the station, track wye, railroad property, and surrounding land.
The surviving records make the old railroad landscape unusually tangible. There was a station, a water tank, a wye, a bridge over Pigeon Creek, branch tracks, right of way, and engineering infrastructure surrounding a community whose reason for importance was closely tied to movement.
Coal came out.
Trains passed through.
People and supplies went in.
Winco Block and the Kentucky Side of the River
Naugatuck’s history cannot be understood by looking only at the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork.
The river is a state boundary, but it was never an absolute barrier to the economic life of the coalfield. Families crossed it, companies operated around it, miners traveled across it, and rail and industrial interests treated both sides as parts of the same working region.
One of the clearest examples came in 1923.
On February 8 of that year, Congress passed a law granting the Winco Block Coal Company permission to construct and operate a suspension or foot bridge across the Tug Fork “at or near Naugatuck” in Mingo County.
A federal law authorizing a footbridge might appear to be a small piece of history, but it reveals a great deal about the community.
The bridge connected places divided politically between West Virginia and Kentucky but joined economically by the coal industry. Operations carrying a Naugatuck address were not necessarily confined to the West Virginia side of the river, which is why Winco Block records need to be followed into neighboring Kentucky as well.
The company’s reach can also be seen in an unexpected source.
In 1926 the Hungarian-language miners’ newspaper Magyar Bányászlap carried advertisements for the Winco Block Coal Company at Naugatuck, West Virginia, identifying the operation as being on the N&W line.
Those advertisements place Naugatuck within a much wider labor network. West Virginia coal operators recruited and employed workers from communities whose families had come from many parts of Europe, and Mingo County’s industrial population became considerably more diverse during the railroad and mining era. Modern histories of the county note arrivals from Italy, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, along with African American workers and other groups drawn into the southern coalfields.
A small community at the mouth of Pigeon Creek was therefore connected not only with Williamson and Kenova but with a labor economy that extended far beyond Appalachia.
Naugatuck During the Depression
Coal communities could prosper when mines worked steadily, but the same dependence made them vulnerable when the market collapsed.
A Depression-era field report made in the Williamson area in December 1934 listed the Winco Block Coal Company at Naugatuck with 110 men working only three days a week. The same report described miners in the surrounding region as struggling to make ends meet under shortened work schedules and noted serious overcrowding.
The numbers help explain what the Great Depression meant in a place like Naugatuck.
A mine did not have to close completely to throw families into hardship. Cutting a workweek to three days could reduce household income while rent, food, clothing, medical expenses, and other necessities continued. Company employees could technically remain employed while still living on the edge of relief.
That experience was repeated across the southern West Virginia coalfields. Naugatuck’s story was local, but the economic forces controlling it were national.
A Community Beyond the Mine
Coal and railroads dominate the surviving documentary record because companies and governments produced enormous quantities of paperwork about them. That does not mean they represented the whole of community life.
People in Naugatuck raised children, attended churches, shopped, visited neighbors, participated in politics, played sports, and built lives around institutions that rarely produced the same volume of records as a railroad or mine.
The 1917 West Virginia Blue Book, for example, listed J. M. Palmer and H. C. Straton of Naugatuck as members of the Mingo County Democratic Executive Committee. Their appearance alongside representatives from communities such as Gilbert, Matewan, Red Jacket, Rawl, Myrtle, Lenore, Kermit, and Dingess places Naugatuck firmly within the county’s civic network.
Baseball also became part of local memory. Goldenseal, the magazine published by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, devoted an article in volume 16 to “Baseball, Naugatuck-Style.” The fact that Naugatuck baseball entered the state’s cultural-history record is a reminder that coalfield communities developed identities around far more than their mines.
Census schedules offer another route into that everyday history. Naugatuck belonged to Hardee District, meaning families are often hidden within district-level census records instead of neatly grouped under a separate incorporated town. The West Virginia State Archives likewise places Naugatuck within Hardee District alongside Belo, Blocton, Lenore, Maher, Myrtle, and Rapp.
Those household records can reveal the community that industrial reports cannot: miners sharing homes with extended family, railroad employees living beside laborers, children born in West Virginia to immigrant parents, widows maintaining households, renters living near property owners, and families moving between Kentucky and West Virginia.
Coal Did Not End With the Early Company Era
It would be easy to treat Naugatuck’s coal history as something belonging to the first half of the twentieth century.
The federal record shows otherwise.
Mining around Naugatuck remained substantial late into the century, particularly through the Marrowbone complex. Mine Safety and Health Administration records show that A. T. Massey Coal Company began developing the larger complex in 1974 and that mining commenced in 1976. Ownership later passed through Shell Mining, Zeigler Coal Holding Company, and Addington Resources.
By the 1990s, the scale of mining associated with Naugatuck was immense compared with the local mining described by federal surveyors in 1900.
A 1995 MSHA investigation described Eastern Mingo Coal Company’s Big Branch Mine near Naugatuck as operating in the Coalburg seam with hundreds of employees. In November 1995 the mine was averaging approximately 20,650 raw tons of coal per day, while a second investigation the following month reported 317 employees and average daily production of approximately 20,910 tons.
The difference between those figures and the 1900 description is striking.
At the beginning of the century, federal surveyors found one seam being worked locally in hills where seven seams had been opened.
Near the end of the century, industrial mines around Naugatuck were extracting tens of thousands of tons every working day.
The processing side of the industry was similarly large. An MSHA investigation following a fatal accident in December 2000 described the Tug Valley Coal Processing plant at Naugatuck as producing an average of approximately 3.43 million clean tons annually. Its processing capacity reached 10 million raw tons per year, making it one of the largest preparation facilities in the region at the time.
A 2004 investigation continued to describe the Naugatuck facility as part of the Marrowbone mining complex, with a preparation plant, unit-train loading facility, mines, conveyors, trucks, and refuse impoundments functioning as pieces of a much larger industrial system.
Naugatuck therefore experienced several generations of coal development rather than a single boom.
From Railroad Junction to Highway Community
Transportation around Naugatuck changed as automobiles and highways grew more important.
A pair of Norfolk & Western engineering drawings dated March 17, 1953, addressed improvements to the grade crossing where U.S. Route 52 and West Virginia Route 65 interacted with the railroad at Naugatuck. The plans capture a community adjusting to a world in which the highway increasingly shared space with the rail system that had helped create modern Naugatuck decades earlier.
Yet the railroad did not disappear from the landscape.
The Lenore Branch continued from Naugatuck toward the interior coalfields, and modern Norfolk & Western historical material still identifies Naugatuck as the point from which the branch extends up Pigeon Creek.
The community also acquired a new regional institution in 1987 when Tug Valley High School opened as the consolidated successor to Lenore and Kermit high schools. The school is located in Den’s Branch at Naugatuck and continues serving northern Mingo County. Its own school song closes with the line that, wherever students may go, “Naugatuck will be our home.”
That line fits the larger history of the place surprisingly well.
Naugatuck has never needed incorporation or a large downtown to remain a recognizable community. Its identity survived changes in post offices, mines, railroad operations, highway construction, schools, employers, and generations of families.
Why Naugatuck Matters
Naugatuck’s history is the history of a junction.
Before there was a Naugatuck, families settled around Pigeon Creek and described the place by its geography. Mouth of Pigeon became a postal identity while the surrounding mountains remained part of Logan County.
Then the Norfolk & Western entered the Tug Valley.
The railroad reached the mouth of Pigeon Creek and turned inland, giving the future Naugatuck a place in the transportation system that opened northern Mingo County’s coal lands. Federal investigators soon counted seven opened coal seams in the surrounding hills. Railroad engineers mapped the station and right of way. Courts recognized Naugatuck as a town. Coal companies expanded, a bridge connected industrial activity across the Tug Fork, and trains rolled over Pigeon Creek toward the wye.
The names of the companies eventually changed. Early mines disappeared. The automobile joined the railroad. New mining complexes replaced older operations. Tug Valley High School became another landmark by which people identified the community.
Yet the geography remained.
Pigeon Creek still reaches the Tug Fork at Naugatuck. The railroad still helps explain the shape of the valley. Kentucky remains across the water. Roads follow the narrow ground available between mountain and river.
For more than a century, Naugatuck has occupied that crossroads between the older Tug Valley and the industrial one.
Its history is not simply the story of a small unincorporated community in Mingo County. It is the story of how the waterways, railroads, coal seams, families, and state line came together at the mouth of Pigeon and created a place that endured.
Sources & Further Reading
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://wvupressonline.com/node/246.
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. “U.S. Post Offices.” Historical Post Office Dataset. 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.
Francis, Henry W. Federal Emergency Relief Administration Field Report, Williamson, West Virginia, December 7, 1934. Harry Hopkins Papers. Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Mingo County Genealogical Society. Heritage of Mingo County, West Virginia. Williamson, WV: Mingo County Genealogical Society, 1985–.
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Fatal Roof Fall Accident, Big Branch Mine, Eastern Mingo Coal Company, Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia, November 8, 1995.” U.S. Department of Labor, 1995. https://arlweb.msha.gov/FATALS/1995/FTL95C39.HTM.
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Fatal Roof Fall Accident, Big Branch Mine, Eastern Mingo Coal Company, Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia, December 7, 1995.” U.S. Department of Labor, 1995. https://arlweb.msha.gov/FATALS/1995/FTL95C43.HTM.
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Fatal Exploding-Vessel-Under-Pressure Accident, Tug Valley Coal Processing, Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia, December 27, 2000.” U.S. Department of Labor, 2000. https://arlweb.msha.gov/FATALS/2000/FTL00C38.HTM.
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Tug Valley Coal Processing Company Accident Investigation, June 10, 2004.” U.S. Department of Labor, 2004. https://arlweb.msha.gov/fatals/2004/ftl04c11.asp.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Bridge No. 934 over Pigeon Creek at Naugatuck.” Photograph. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Grade-Crossing Improvement Plans, Naugatuck, West Virginia.” March 17, 1953. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=208486.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Lenore Branch Easement Plans between Naugatuck and Lenore.” 1940. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=260928.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Map and Profile of the Main Line and Branch of the Tug River and Kentucky Railroad Company.” October 24, 1913. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Map of Land to be Deeded by M. H. Waldron, Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia.” May 12, 1902. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=119900.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Ohio Extension Right-of-Way Map from Nolan through Naugatuck toward the Logan-Wayne County Line.” Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=213491.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Surveys between Clarks Gap and Naugatuck: Key to Maps and Profiles.” Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Time Freight Crossing Bridge No. 934 over Pigeon Creek Approaching the Naugatuck Wye.” Photograph, 1930. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=155275.
Perry, Huey. They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2010. https://wvupressonline.com/node/381.
Ragland, Henry Clay. History of Logan County, West Virginia. 1896. https://loganwv.us/henry-clay-ragland/.
Smith, Nancy Sue. An History of Mingo County, West Virginia. 1960. Listed in the West Virginia Archives and History Mingo County bibliography. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html.
Smith, Nancy Sue. History of Logan and Mingo Counties, Beginning in 1617. 1966. Listed in the West Virginia Archives and History Mingo County bibliography. 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.
United States Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Hardee Magisterial District, Mingo County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900. https://www.archives.gov/research/census.
United States Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. Hardee Magisterial District, Mingo County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920. https://www.archives.gov/research/census.
United States Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Enumeration District 30-1, Hardee Magisterial District, Maher and Naugatuck, Mingo County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940.
United States Congress. United States Statutes at Large. Vol. 42. Public No. 406, February 8, 1923. Act granting the Winco Block Coal Company authority to construct a suspension or foot bridge across the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River at or near Naugatuck, West Virginia. https://dheller.org/Timeline-files/US-Statutes/v42/c67/Public-Laws-c67-s4.pdf.
United States House of Representatives. Final Report on Survey of Big Sandy River, Kentucky and West Virginia, Including Levisa and Tug Forks. House Document 235, 56th Cong., 2nd sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-04155_00_00-007-0235-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-04155_00_00-007-0235-0000.pdf.
United States House of Representatives. Preliminary Survey of the Big Sandy River, Kentucky and West Virginia, Including Levisa and Tug Forks. House Document 326, 56th Cong., 1st sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-03980_00_00-002-0326-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-03980_00_00-002-0326-0000.pdf.
United States National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html.
United States National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html.
United States Geological Survey. Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1909 and 1910. Bulletin 477. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0477/report.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. Spirit Leveling in West Virginia, 1896–1915. Bulletin 632. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1916. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0632/report.pdf.
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection and topoView.” U.S. Department of the Interior. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/.
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1917. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1917. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1917.pdf.
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West Virginia Archives and History. “Logan County History Sources.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/logan.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Mingo County History Sources.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mingo.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamm.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Vital Research Records.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/.
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “Goldenseal Subject Index.” See “Baseball, Naugatuck-Style,” Goldenseal 16, no. 1. https://archive.wvculture.org/goldenseal/gseal1.html.
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1923.
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Interactive Coal Bed Mapping Project.” https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/cbmp/coalims.html.
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Mine Map Archives.” https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/minemaparchives.htm.
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “Scanned West Virginia Mine Maps.” https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/wvminemaps.htm.
West Virginia Humanities Council. “Mingo County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1772.
West Virginia University Libraries, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Logan County Court Records, 1846–1980.” A&M 2733. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/844.
“What’s the Matter With Mingo?” Williamson, WV: Mingo Republican Print, 1938.
“Built of Coal.” Norfolk and Western Magazine, November 1939.
Williamsons v. County Court, 56 W. Va. 38 (1904). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. https://app.midpage.ai/document/williamsons-v-county-court-8175529.
Winco Block Coal Company. Advertisement. Magyar Bányászlap, September 30, 1926. https://epa.oszk.hu/05100/05152/00352/pdf/EPA05152_magyar_banyaszlap_1926_39_szept_30.pdf.
Author Note: To the reader, Naugatuck is one of those communities whose history becomes much larger when the railroad, coal mines, and Tug Fork are followed through the surviving records. Its story reaches back to the older Mouth of Pigeon settlement and continues through generations of railroad workers, miners, families, and industries that made this junction home.