Appalachian Community Histories – Litwar, McDowell County: Little War Creek Coal and Life Along the Tug Fork
A few miles west of Iaeger, where the Tug Fork curves through the mountains of McDowell County, the community of Litwar grew beside one of the transportation corridors that transformed southern West Virginia into an industrial coalfield. Today the name can be easy to pass on a map, especially beside better-known places such as Iaeger, War, Gary, and Welch. During the 1920s and 1930s, however, Litwar was the headquarters of an active coal company, the home of miners and merchants, a railroad community, and the site of a mine that sent hundreds of thousands of tons of coal into national markets.
The documentary record is unusually strong for a community of Litwar’s size. Court cases preserve the financial history of the Little War Creek Coal Company. State mine reports identify the operation by name. Contemporary newspapers reveal murders, labor recruitment, mine officials, and neighborhood relationships. An archival photograph preserves the faces of Litwar’s mining workforce in 1930. Federal records document the Tug Fork beside the settlement, while a modern historic-resource survey records surviving pieces of the built environment.
Together, these records allow Litwar to emerge as something more than another name on a list of vanished coal camps. They show a community built around coal, but also one in which people worked, raised families, operated stores, traveled by rail, endured violence, and remained after the original mining company disappeared. The surviving documentary trail identifies Little War Creek Coal Company as the central industrial force in Litwar beginning in 1921, while also pointing to structures and transportation infrastructure that may predate the company’s formal organization.
Before the Little War Creek Coal Company
Litwar’s development was tied to the Norfolk & Western Railway long before the community reached its coal-boom years. The 2018 Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report places Litwar along the Norfolk & Western main line’s Ohio Extension, the railroad corridor constructed westward through communities including Northfork, Keystone, Vivian, Kimball, Welch, Iaeger, Litwar, and Panther. The railroad had reached this part of McDowell County decades before the Little War Creek Coal Company began operating.
That distinction matters because the surviving landscape presents a small historical puzzle. The 2018 historic-property inventory dated an N&W railroad bridge over Negro Branch at Litwar to about 1915. Several houses were also assigned estimated dates around 1915, while another building was dated around 1920. One structure, MD-4469, was tentatively identified as a possible company store or related building and was also dated to approximately 1915.
Those dates should not automatically be read as proof that Little War Creek Coal Company existed before 1921. Historic-property dates are often estimates based on architecture, maps, and field observations. The stronger contemporary evidence places the company’s organization in 1921. What the survey does suggest is that Litwar’s landscape did not suddenly appear when the company charter was filed. The railroad, scattered buildings, and perhaps an earlier settlement were already part of this narrow Tug Fork valley.
That older landscape became the foundation upon which the coal camp expanded.
Little War Creek Coal Company Arrives
A 1938 federal court decision provides one of the clearest accounts of the company’s beginnings. In Little War Creek Coal Co. v. United States, the court found that the company had been organized in 1921 under West Virginia law, maintained its principal office at Litwar, and had continuously produced and marketed coal from its McDowell County property since its organization.
State records soon recognized the operation as part of McDowell County’s mining industry. The West Virginia Department of Mines listed Little War Creek Coal Company as the operator, “Litwar” as the mine, and Litwar as the post office in its annual report for the 1922-1923 fiscal year.
At nearly the same time, Litwar received a post office of its own. Postal-history records place its opening in 1921 and its closing in 1942, dates that closely parallel the rise and eventual disappearance of the original Little War Creek mining operation.
The company was therefore not merely mining near an existing settlement. Its corporate office, mine identity, mailing address, and community became closely intertwined under the name Litwar.
Building the Tipple
One of the first major pieces of industrial construction at Litwar ended up before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
Little War Creek Coal Company hired contractor R. E. Creasy to construct a coal tipple for $8,700. The tipple was the structure through which coal could be processed, sorted, and loaded for shipment, making it essential to the operation of a commercial mine.
Construction began during the summer of 1921. Creasy employed a group of millwrights that included J. E. Creasey, Bittle Linkous, H. V. Peters, A. J. O’Connell, D. J. O’Connell, and J. W. King. According to the later court record, they were paid through roughly the beginning of December but then continued working without receiving additional wages.
The tipple was completed around February 2, 1922. By then, approximately $1,600 in wages remained unpaid. The laborers filed liens against Little War Creek Coal Company’s property, producing the litigation recorded in O’Connell v. Little War Creek Coal Co.
The case preserves an unusual ground-level view of Litwar’s construction. Instead of simply recording that a coal mine opened in 1921, it gives names to some of the men who physically assembled the machinery and timber structure that made large-scale coal shipment possible.
It also illustrates how rapidly Litwar was being transformed. Within months of the company’s organization, contractors and millwrights were building industrial infrastructure beside the Norfolk & Western main line.
Financing a New Coal Operation
Building a coal mine required considerably more than constructing a tipple.
J. C. Sullivan emerged as one of the central figures behind Little War Creek Coal Company. A 1925 West Virginia court case described Sullivan as treasurer, general manager, and perhaps president of the company. He also controlled or owned a majority interest in the Bank of Wyoming.
In June 1921, Sullivan and another bank official traveled to Beckley seeking $30,000 in additional financing for Little War Creek. The company already owed the Bank of Wyoming approximately $23,000, according to the court record.
The financing continued the following year. On January 21, 1922, Little War Creek entered an agreement with the Eastern Coal & Export Corporation of Richmond, Virginia. Eastern Coal & Export agreed to provide $100,000. In return, it became the exclusive sales agent for Little War Creek’s coal until one million tons had been shipped and sold.
The agreement connected a small McDowell County mining community to a much wider commercial network. Coal dug from the mountains around Litwar did not end its journey at the tipple or the railroad siding. It entered a system of brokers, railroads, industrial consumers, banks, and investors stretching well beyond the Tug Fork.
Recruiting Miners to Litwar
Finding enough workers was another challenge.
An especially revealing advertisement appeared in the Hungarian-language newspaper Magyar Bányászlap on July 27, 1922. Little War Creek Coal Company was recruiting Hungarian miners and directed interested workers to contact the superintendent at Litwar. The advertisement emphasized that the operation stood along the Norfolk & Western main line between Panther and Iaeger.
That small notice places Litwar within the much larger migration that reshaped the Appalachian coalfields.
Coal operators throughout southern West Virginia recruited workers from other Appalachian states, the American South, and immigrant communities. The ethnic and racial diversity of McDowell County became one of the defining characteristics of its industrial era. The 2018 Coal Heritage Survey notes that miners of different backgrounds frequently worked alongside one another even while company-town housing and community institutions could remain segregated.
At Litwar, the Hungarian advertisement offers direct evidence that Little War Creek was participating in that international labor market almost immediately after the mine opened.
Coal, the Company Store, and Scrip
The company town extended beyond the mine portal.
A 1938 federal court decision makes direct reference to Little War Creek’s store building. During litigation over company expenses, the court discussed heaters and pipe fittings purchased for the store, confirming that the company’s commercial operation formed part of the Litwar complex.
Material evidence survives as well. The National Scrip Collectors Association records twelve known scrip entries for Little War Creek Coal Company at Litwar.
Coal scrip was company-issued currency or credit that could be used at company stores. Across the coalfields it became one of the most recognizable symbols of the company-town economy, where an employer could influence not only a worker’s wages but also housing, shopping, transportation, and sometimes recreation.
Whether the surviving building identified as MD-4469 was definitely Little War Creek’s company store remains unresolved. The 2018 survey classified it only as a possible company store and specifically recommended additional research into its original function.
That caution is important. Litwar’s history is strong enough without turning an architectural possibility into a certainty.
Murder at a Litwar Store
Coal-company records tell one part of Litwar’s story. Newspapers reveal another.
On the morning of June 10, 1924, merchant Lewis Collins was discovered dead in a bedroom behind his Litwar store.
The Welch Daily News reported that Collins, about fifty-five years old, had been expected for breakfast earlier that morning. His son-in-law, George Conley, went to the store around 7:30 and found that a window sash had been removed. Inside, Collins was dead.
The newspaper described Collins as a widely known merchant with friends throughout McDowell County. News of the killing spread quickly between Litwar and nearby Iaeger, and Sheriff Hatfield and Coroner Camper traveled toward the community as authorities began their investigation.
Conley was soon arrested and charged with the killing. The McDowell Recorder described intense excitement in Litwar and Iaeger and recorded testimony about the store, neighboring houses, family relationships, and people who had been present around Collins on the evening before his death.
Later newspaper accounts followed the case into the courtroom. Conley was ultimately acquitted.
The murder is remembered because it was dramatic, but historically its greater value may be the picture it provides of Litwar as an actual community. The reporting describes houses within walking distance of one another, local merchants, families caring for sick relatives, neighbors hearing events at night, travel between Litwar and Iaeger, and a population deeply engaged with what happened around them.
Litwar was not simply rows of company houses attached to a mine. It possessed a social world of its own.
Trouble Behind the Coal Boom
Little War Creek’s rapid development did not mean that the company was financially secure.
Its arrangements with Eastern Coal & Export deteriorated. According to the 1938 federal case, the sales company failed to remit roughly $40,000 in proceeds it had received from Little War Creek’s coal. Bankruptcy proceedings followed, and receivers assumed operation of Little War Creek’s business in 1925. The relationship between the two companies was severed.
The financial dispute would continue for years and eventually contribute to the federal tax litigation that preserved so much information about the mine.
Yet production continued.
That survival is important because Litwar’s history cannot be reduced to a company that simply failed after a few difficult years. Instead, the operation emerged from receivership and entered its most productive period.
Litwar Reaches Its Peak
The production statistics recorded by the federal court show how dramatically the mine grew.
Little War Creek produced 81,138 tons of coal in 1922. Production climbed steadily during the decade, reaching 307,360.25 tons in 1929. The court concluded that the mine reached its maximum development around late 1928 or early 1929.
The numbers provide a useful measure of Litwar’s transformation. In less than a decade, a newly organized company with an unfinished tipple and workers filing unpaid-wage liens had developed into an operation producing more than 300,000 tons of coal a year.
An extraordinary visual record survives from almost exactly that moment.
The Eastern Regional Coal Archives at Craft Memorial Library holds the Roy Lowe Collection, Accession 87-47, described as a four-foot-wide panoramic photograph of the workforce of miners at Litwar in 1930.
Few documents could better represent the human side of the production statistics.
The federal court can tell us that more than 300,000 tons left Litwar in 1929. The panoramic photograph reminds us that every ton depended on miners, machinists, trackmen, supervisors, tipple workers, and others whose bodies filled that four-foot image.
Death Beside the Mine
Litwar’s community remained tightly connected to its mine officials.
In May 1927, Little War Creek superintendent Samuel Edwards was shot and killed following a dispute involving neighboring families. A contemporary Bluefield Daily Telegraph account identified Edwards specifically as superintendent of Little War Creek Coal Company at Litwar and reported that the shooting occurred within sight of the homes of the men involved.
Like the Lewis Collins case three years earlier, the account offers more than a record of violence. It shows how closely homes, employment, and community relationships existed beside one another in Litwar.
The superintendent was not a distant corporate figure sitting in another state. He lived in the same small settlement where the mine operated, close enough to other families that a neighborhood quarrel could become a company tragedy.
Mining the Big Eagle Seam
Little War Creek continued expanding its underground territory.
On May 1, 1927, Hardy Coal Company leased the Mohawk, also known as the Big Eagle, seam beneath 112 acres to Little War Creek Coal Company. Another lease executed in 1933 covered the same seam under an additional 305.1 acres.
Federal records continued to associate Litwar directly with the Big Eagle seam. A 1937 Federal Register coal-industry table lists Little War Creek Coal Company at Litwar and identifies Big Eagle as the relevant seam.
Expansion underground, however, could not indefinitely overcome the physical limits of a maturing mine.
The 1938 court decision described longer underground hauls, retreating working faces, widening mine areas, and increasing difficulty maintaining production and unit costs. By the late 1930s, the mine that had risen so rapidly during the previous decade was showing its age.
Depression and Decline
The Great Depression devastated the economy of the American coalfields, but Little War Creek did not immediately collapse.
After reaching 307,360.25 tons in 1929, production declined during the 1930s, although it occasionally rebounded. The operation produced 304,764.10 tons in 1933, almost equaling its previous peak. By 1937, estimated production had fallen to approximately 215,000 tons.
Those figures show both resilience and decline. Litwar remained a significant coal producer through some of the worst years of the Depression, but the direction of the operation was becoming clear.
The wider McDowell County coal industry was also changing. The county’s number of mines and coal companies had climbed rapidly during the early twentieth century, reaching 138 mines operated by 84 companies in 1923. The Depression brought contraction, while union organization expanded during the 1930s. Mechanization in later decades allowed coal production to continue with progressively fewer workers.
Litwar’s own coal story followed the first stages of that larger pattern.
The River Becomes Part of the Record
Coal was not the only reason Litwar entered federal records.
In May 1930, the United States Geological Survey began keeping records at a stream-gaging station on the Tug Fork at Litwar. The station stood about half a mile downstream from the community and approximately 2.2 miles northwest of Iaeger.
The gage became one of the long-running streamflow stations used to study flooding in the Tug Fork basin. Later federal studies relied upon its records when examining the river’s flood history.
Its presence is another indication of Litwar’s place in the geography of the Tug Valley. Coal made the settlement economically important, but the river, railroad, branches, bridges, and narrow strips of buildable land determined where the community could exist.
Litwar belonged to the Tug Fork as much as it belonged to Little War Creek Coal Company.
The End of the Original Mine
Secondary coalfield histories and corporate compilations place the end of the original Little War Creek operation around 1942. CoalCampUSA likewise identifies the old Litwar mine as closing that year, while carefully distinguishing it from the later Litwar preparation plant that operated in the area.
The distinction is essential.
Later coal infrastructure at Litwar should not automatically be treated as the same mine that J. C. Sullivan and Little War Creek Coal Company developed during the early 1920s. Coal mining landscapes were frequently reused. Preparation plants, refuse facilities, newer mines, and modern operations could occupy land near earlier workings without representing a continuous corporate history.
The Litwar name survived even when the original company did not.
What Survived at Litwar
When architectural historians returned to Litwar during the McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey, they found pieces of that earlier landscape still standing.
The inventory documented the Norfolk & Western bridge over Negro Branch, the possible company-store building, several early houses, and a worker’s house along what is now Splendor Valley Road. Some of the estimated construction dates reached back to about 1915, with others around 1920.
The survey’s conclusions for McDowell County were sobering. Hundreds of historic coal-related structures documented in the original 1991 survey had disappeared by the time researchers returned in 2016. Stores, houses, industrial structures, schools, and other pieces of coalfield life were being lost as population declined and buildings deteriorated.
Litwar therefore represents both survival and disappearance.
The mine tipple that brought the company to life is gone. The Little War Creek Coal Company is gone. Its post office is gone. Yet the railroad corridor, houses, bridges, archaeological traces, court records, scrip, newspapers, and photographs preserve fragments of a community that once revolved around the loading of coal trains.
Remembering Litwar
Litwar never became a city like Welch or a nationally recognized company town like Coalwood. Its history is valuable precisely because it was neither.
It represents the smaller communities that filled the valleys between McDowell County’s better-known places. These camps supplied the labor and coal that made the county one of the most productive industrial landscapes in Appalachia.
The surviving records are unusually personal. We know the names of millwrights who completed the tipple in 1922 and then fought for wages they were owed. We can follow company officials borrowing money to keep the operation moving. We can read a Hungarian-language advertisement inviting immigrant miners into the valley. We can stand, through the newspaper record, outside Lewis Collins’s Litwar store on the morning his body was discovered. We can read about Superintendent Samuel Edwards dying within sight of miners’ homes. We can trace production from 81,138 tons to more than 307,000 tons. Most remarkably, an archive still holds a four-foot photograph filled with the faces of Litwar’s miners in 1930.
Those fragments turn an industrial statistic into a community.
Today Litwar remains along the Tug Fork west of Iaeger, occupying the same narrow geography that first attracted the railroad and coal companies. Modern maps may show little indication of how busy the place once was, but the documentary record tells another story.
For two decades, coal cars left Litwar carrying the Big Eagle seam away from McDowell County. Behind them remained houses, families, stores, debts, tragedies, and memories. The original Little War Creek mine eventually disappeared, but Litwar did not vanish completely. It became one of the many Appalachian places where the mountains still hold the shape of an industry, even after most of the machinery has gone.
Sources & Further Reading
West Virginia Department of Mines. Forty-First Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston, WV: Department of Mines, 1923. See the McDowell County listings for Little War Creek Coal Company, Litwar Mine, and Litwar post office. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Annual_report_of_the_Department_of_Mines_for_the_year_ending_…_%28IA_annualreportofde41west%29.pdf
O’Connell et al. v. Little War Creek Coal Co. et al., 95 W. Va. 685, 122 S.E. 158 (1924). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, March 11, 1924. https://law.justia.com/cases/west-virginia/supreme-court/1924/95-w-va-685.html
Little War Creek Coal Co. v. United States, 25 F. Supp. 764 (S.D.W. Va. 1938). U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, September 22, 1938. https://openjurist.org/25/fsupp/764/little-war-creek-coal-co-v-united-states-8768519
United States v. Little War Creek Coal Co., 104 F.2d 483 (4th Cir. 1939). U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, June 12, 1939. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/104/483/1492935/
Raleigh County Bank v. Bank of Wyoming, 100 W. Va. 342 (1925). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. https://openjurist.org/100/wva/342/raleigh-county-bank-v-bank-of-wyoming
G. W. C. Land Co. v. Gebhardt, 128 W. Va. 87, 35 S.E.2d 785 (1945). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, October 30, 1945. https://openjurist.org/128/wva/87/g-w-c-land-co-v-gebhardt-4227693
United States Government. Federal Register 2, no. 234, December 3, 1937. Entry for Little War Creek Coal Company, Litwar, and the Big Eagle seam. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/fedreg/fr002/fr002234/fr002234.pdf
“Little War Creek Coal Company.” Recruitment advertisement. Magyar Bányászlap, July 27, 1922. National Széchényi Library Electronic Periodicals Archive. https://efolyoirat.oszk.hu/05100/05152/00135/pdf/EPA05152_magyar_banyaszlap_1922_30_jul_27.pdf
“Merchant At Litwar Killed In Bed.” Welch Daily News, June 10, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/crime/collinslewis01.html
“Son-in-Law of Lewis Collins, Murdered at Litwar, Is Arrested.” McDowell Recorder, June 13, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/crime/collinslewis02.html
“No Bond Is Secured for George Conley, Held for Murder of His Father-in-Law, L. Collins.” McDowell Recorder, June 27, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Archives Lewis Collins newspaper collection
“Mrs. Conley Suffers Loss of Arm Thru Discharge of Gun.” McDowell Recorder, July 25, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Archives Lewis Collins newspaper collection
“Continuance Is Secured by State in Conley Case; Petit Jurors Discharged by the Court.” Welch Daily News, August 17, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Archives Lewis Collins newspaper collection
“George Conley On Trial for the Murder of His Father-in-Law, Lewis Collins.” Welch Daily News, November 7, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Archives Lewis Collins newspaper collection
“George Conley Acquitted of the Murder of Father-in-Law, Lewis Collins.” Welch Daily News, November 8, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. West Virginia Archives Lewis Collins newspaper collection
“Samuel Edwards Official of Mine Shot and Killed.” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, May 20, 1927, 1. Transcription at Genealogy Trails. The original newspaper image or microfilm would be preferable for final archival verification. https://genealogytrails.com/wva/mcdowell/news_crime.html
“To Organize Company.” Charleston Daily Mail, February 20, 1920, 3. This contemporary article concerns J. C. Sullivan’s acquisition of coal and timber lands west of Iaeger that preceded Little War Creek Coal Company. A citation trail to the article is preserved in Artifacts of Appalachia. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
“Two Miners Lose Lives in Mishaps.” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, March 29, 1935, 7. Includes the death of Little War Creek miner Morris Morgan. Citation information preserved by Artifacts of Appalachia. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “Roy Lowe Collection.” Accession 87-47. Four-foot-wide panoramic photograph of the Litwar, West Virginia, mining workforce, 1930. Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, WV. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
Craft Memorial Library. “Eastern Regional Coal Archives.” Bluefield, WV. Accessed September 12, 2026. https://craftmemorial.lib.wv.us/eastern-regional-coal-archives
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://www.npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Historic Property Inventory Form Index: McDowell County, Jenkinjones to McDowell. July 2018. See survey numbers MD-4468 through MD-4474 for Litwar. https://www.aurora-llc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CoalHeritage_Jenkinjones_to_McDowell_Index_by_SurveyNo.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Tug Fork at Litwar, WV, Monitoring Location USGS-03213000.” Water Data for the Nation. Accessed September 12, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-03213000/
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia.” Charleston: West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Accessed September 12, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnaml.html
National Scrip Collectors Association. “Coal Scrip Records.” Entry for Litwar, locality 1652, Little War Creek Coal Company. Accessed September 12, 2026. https://www.scripcollectors.org/records
PostalHistory.com. “McDowell County, West Virginia Post Offices.” Entry for Litwar, 1921–1942. Accessed September 12, 2026. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=McDowell&pagenum=4&searchtext=&state=WV&task=display
West Virginia Legislature. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1921. See the Wyoming County banking register for J. C. Sullivan and the Bank of Wyoming at Mullens. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1921.pdf
Artifacts of Appalachia. “McDowell County Scrip A–L: Litwar, Little War Creek Coal Co.” Accessed September 12, 2026. Useful as a finding aid for company scrip and contemporary newspaper references. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
Author Note: As someone from the Appalachian coalfields, I have always been interested in the smaller communities whose histories can disappear long before their names leave the map. Litwar’s surviving court records, newspapers, photographs, and coal records offer an unusually detailed look at one of those McDowell County communities.