Appalachian Community Histories – Kimball, McDowell County: Coal, Black Hospitals, and the World War Memorial
Kimball sits along Elkhorn Creek in McDowell County, where the mountains close tightly around U.S. 52 and the former Norfolk & Western Railway. Like so many communities in the southern West Virginia coalfields, the town grew because railroad tracks, coal seams, company investment, and labor were brought together in a narrow Appalachian valley.
Yet Kimball became much more than another mining settlement.
Its history includes the Norfolk & Western Railway, the mines of Carswell Hollow, one of McDowell County’s notable company stores, a nationally important Black hospital, a prominent African American high school, and a War Memorial built to honor Black veterans of World War I. During the twentieth century, Kimball developed into a small service town surrounded by mining communities while also becoming one of the places where the strength of Black institutional life in the southern West Virginia coalfields was particularly visible.
Even the documentary record is unusually rich. A 1927 Sanborn fire insurance map preserves a street-by-street picture of the community, federal photographer Ben Shahn photographed Kimball in October 1935, and The McDowell Times recorded local schools, churches, clubs, businesses, and families in detail. Shahn’s photograph survives today in the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collection.
Together, those records allow Kimball to be seen not simply as a place where coal was mined, but as a community where miners, railroad workers, physicians, teachers, merchants, veterans, students, and families built institutions of their own.
The Railroad and the Pocahontas Coalfield
The history of modern Kimball begins with the industrial transformation of southern West Virginia during the late nineteenth century.
The Norfolk & Western Railway was one of the principal forces behind that transformation. After the railroad reached the Pocahontas coal deposits in Virginia in 1883, its leaders continued pushing westward. Completion of the Elkhorn Tunnel through Flat Top Mountain allowed the line to enter McDowell County, and by the early 1890s the Norfolk & Western had crossed the county on its way toward the Ohio River. Mines and branch lines soon appeared throughout the valleys connected to the main railroad.
The railroad’s president, Frederick J. Kimball, understood that the future of the Norfolk & Western depended heavily on coal. He and other Philadelphia investors had already become involved in purchasing and developing coal lands associated with the rich Pocahontas field. The town that developed along Elkhorn Creek eventually carried his name.
The quality of the coal explains much of what followed. The Pocahontas No. 3 seam became famous for its thick deposits of low-volatile, low-sulfur coal, especially valuable for industrial uses and steam transportation. Exploitation of that seam helped create or transform communities throughout McDowell County, including Kimball, Keystone, Northfork, Welch, and Gary. The demand for workers brought native Appalachians together with African Americans recruited from the South and immigrants arriving from Europe.
Kimball therefore emerged within one of the most diverse industrial regions in Appalachia.
When Was Kimball Incorporated?
Kimball’s early municipal history contains a small but important historical problem.
Modern sources commonly state that Kimball was established or incorporated in 1911. The recent National Register documentation for the Henrietta Dismukes Hospital Nurses Home gives that date and identifies the community as one of the many coal and railroad towns developing in McDowell County during the period.
An older account gives a different answer.
A county history published in 1923 states that Kimball was incorporated as a town in December 1906 and gives an estimated population of 907 at the time.
Rather than treating either date as unquestionable, the surviving evidence suggests caution. What can be established with certainty is that Kimball was already developing as a railroad and commercial community during the early twentieth century and that the West Virginia Legislature enacted a specific municipal charter for Kimball in 1925 as Chapter 17 of that year’s municipal charters.
The legal distinction between an earlier incorporation, later reorganization, and the 1925 charter deserves further investigation in McDowell County’s original municipal records. For the broader history of the town, however, there is little doubt that Kimball’s growth belonged to the first great generation of Pocahontas coalfield development.
Carswell Hollow and the Company Store
Coal communities extended into the hollows surrounding Kimball, and one of the most important was Carswell Hollow.
The Houston Coal Company developed operations there and constructed a substantial company store around 1923 near the mouth of the hollow along the main route through Kimball. The building was more architecturally ambitious than many coalfield stores, with brick walls, arched openings, a tile roof, and Renaissance Revival influences.
Its location tells much about the geography of the community.
Company houses stretched along the narrow hollow behind the store. The building served Houston Coal Company employees and their families and stood close enough to Kimball that residents could move between the mining settlement and the larger service town. National Register documentation describes Kimball during this period as a thriving service center for the surrounding coal camps.
Like company stores elsewhere in the coalfields, the Houston store was more than a place to purchase food or household goods. Company stores could contain business offices and post offices while also serving as informal gathering places. At Carswell, the store later passed to the Koppers Coal Company, whose name became closely associated with the hollow and its mines.
The surviving store is important precisely because so much of that industrial landscape has disappeared. Company houses, mine structures, railroad sidings, and businesses could vanish after an operation closed. The Carswell store remained as a physical reminder of a time when industrial life filled the hollow.
Disaster at the Carswell Mine
Mining also brought danger into daily life.
On January 22, 1941, an explosion struck the Carswell Mine of the Koppers Coal Company at Kimball. Investigators from the United States Bureau of Mines produced a detailed federal report on the disaster.
Five men died. Four were killed by burns and the force of the explosion, while a fifth died two days later. Thirteen additional men in the affected section suffered burns or carbon monoxide poisoning. There were 145 miners underground when the explosion occurred, but 127 men working elsewhere in the mine escaped after being contacted and told what had happened.
Federal investigators concluded that the explosion was relatively localized. Evidence suggested that gas entering the working area had been ignited by an electrical arc associated with a mining machine cable. Rock dusting appears to have prevented the explosion from spreading through a much larger part of the mine.
The Carswell disaster captures the contradiction at the center of coalfield prosperity. Coal supported towns, businesses, schools, hospitals, and families, but extracting it placed miners in an environment where gas, dust, machinery, roof falls, and fire could turn an ordinary shift into catastrophe.
For families living around Kimball, those dangers were never abstract. They were part of the landscape.
Black Kimball and Harrison Memorial Hospital
One of the most important parts of Kimball’s history developed outside the mine portal.
African Americans formed a major part of the population and workforce of the Pocahontas coalfield. Coal companies had recruited Black workers from southern states as mining expanded, and communities across McDowell County developed Black churches, businesses, schools, professional organizations, newspapers, and medical institutions. McDowell eventually became the center of West Virginia’s Black population during the industrial era.
Kimball became home to one of the hospitals created to serve that community.
Dr. Roscoe Conkling Harrison, a Black physician trained at Meharry Medical College, established a medical practice in the southern West Virginia coalfields and opened Harrison Memorial Hospital in Kimball. Whatever uncertainty exists over the hospital’s earliest organizational date, a primary source leaves no doubt that it was operating by 1915. In its March 26, 1915 issue, The McDowell Times carried an advertisement for Harrison Memorial Hospital offering medical and surgical treatment in Kimball.
Modern research by West Virginia University’s William A. Neal Museum describes Harrison as a physician who had worked in the mines while obtaining his education and later returned to the coalfields because he understood the need for medical care there. Harrison’s hospital served Black patients at a time when segregation limited access to many other institutions.
Harrison died unexpectedly in 1923.
His death could have ended the institution. Instead, another physician came to Kimball and began a chapter of medical history whose significance reached well beyond McDowell County.
Dr. Dismukes and a Remarkable Hospital
Dr. Henry Dodford Dismukes came to Kimball in 1924 after Harrison’s death left the hospital without its leading physician.
Dismukes was an Alabama native who had attended Selma University and earned his medical degree from Howard University. He had experience at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington before moving into the West Virginia coalfields.
He soon envisioned something larger than the institution he inherited.
Construction began in April 1929 on a new hospital designed by prominent regional architect Hassel T. Hicks. When the Henrietta Dismukes Hospital opened later that year, it contained about fifty beds and represented an investment of roughly $75,000. Contemporary reporting in the Pittsburgh Courier described it as the largest privately owned Black hospital in the United States.
The hospital was particularly important in a mining region where industrial injuries could be severe. Later medical scholarship has drawn attention to Dismukes and assistant surgeon Dr. Joseph E. Brown for their work with injured coal miners and their place in the early history of reconstructive surgery among Black physicians.
Yet the institution’s history also demonstrated the barriers confronting Black medical professionals.
Dismukes became involved in a contract dispute with Bluefield Sanitarium over the treatment of Black patients. He sued for $150,000, alleging that an agreement to direct patients to his hospital had not been honored. Contemporary newspaper reports followed the 1931 trial, and the jury eventually awarded Dismukes $4,070. Financial difficulties continued, and the National Register research places the hospital’s closure in 1932.
The hospital building itself was eventually lost to fire in 2013, but the adjacent Nurses Home survived. That modest building at 21 Lavania Street had housed members of the hospital staff and today preserves a physical connection to Kimball’s extraordinary medical history. The Nurses Home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in January 2026.
Kimball High School and Community Life
The surviving newspapers reveal another Kimball that can easily disappear when coal production becomes the entire story.
There were teachers and school programs, choirs and churches, parent organizations and clubs, athletic teams and social events.
A November 1939 column in The McDowell Times titled simply “From Kimball” reported revival services at Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, a musical held by young people at the American Legion building, school faculty preparing to attend the state teachers’ association, a PTA Halloween social at the Memorial Building, club meetings, church choirs, visitors, illnesses, and families traveling between communities.
It reads less like the record of an industrial outpost than the social page of a fully developed community.
Kimball’s Black schools were an important part of that world. In February 1941, Kimball High School devoted an entire week of programming to Negro History Week. The program included an address on the history of McDowell County’s Black schools, student readings, dramatic performances, music, lectures, and recordings of Black classical performers. The school’s history and dramatics departments presented a pageant called “Two Races,” while its glee club performed during the week’s events.
The same newspaper issue advertised a basketball game between the Kimball Terrors and the Gary team, demonstrating how athletics helped connect neighboring coalfield communities.
Photographs from February 1950 preserve the students and teachers of Kimball Negro High School directly. One image shows a classroom, while companion photographs document the school’s basketball team and cheerleaders.
These sources matter because they restore ordinary life to coalfield history. Kimball was not inhabited only by miners entering and leaving a mine. Children attended school. Teachers built careers. Families worshiped. Clubs met. Basketball teams played rivals. Musicians rehearsed. Businesses advertised. People visited neighbors and traveled to Bluefield, Welch, Gary, and communities beyond McDowell County.
The Kimball War Memorial
No building expresses that community history more powerfully than the Kimball World War Memorial.
During World War I, approximately 1,500 Black men from McDowell County served in the armed forces. After the war, Black veterans petitioned county officials for a memorial recognizing their service. The county approved the request and appropriated $25,000 for construction.
Architect Hassel T. Hicks designed the building, the same architect later associated with the Dismukes hospital project. The two-story Classical Revival memorial stood above the main highway with a large portico and four prominent columns. Its interior contained an auditorium, trophy room, lounge, library, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, and recreational space.
Hundreds gathered for its dedication on February 11, 1928.
Contemporary accounts and the later National Register documentation identified the Kimball building as the first memorial building in the United States dedicated specifically to Black veterans. The significance was difficult to miss. Black miners who had helped produce the coal that powered American industry had also left the mountains to serve their country, then returned home to demand that their military service be publicly remembered.
The memorial did not remain merely a monument.
The Luther Patterson American Legion Post, named for an African American McDowell County soldier killed during the war, met there. The building hosted civic organizations, recreation, music, meetings, and other community events. National Register documentation describes it as a place used by both Black and white residents and as one of the central social and cultural institutions of the area.
That importance is visible in the local newspapers. When the Kimball PTA organized its Halloween social in 1939, it held the event at the Memorial Building. In 1941 the PTA again planned a meeting in the American Legion building. The structure honoring veterans had become part of the ordinary rhythm of community life.
Fire, Decline, and Restoration
Coal production eventually required fewer workers, mines closed, and McDowell County entered a long period of population loss.
As people left the coalfields, institutions that had once served thousands of residents struggled to survive. The Kimball War Memorial deteriorated as maintenance became increasingly difficult. By the 1980s there was discussion of selling the property, but preservation efforts instead began to gather support.
Then came another disaster.
A fire in April 1991 gutted the memorial, leaving the historic building largely as a roofless shell. Even in that condition, preservationists argued that its historical importance was too great to allow the site to disappear. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
The story did not end with the fire. Restoration efforts eventually returned the building to use, and the memorial again serves as an active landmark in Kimball.
Its survival is particularly striking in a county where so many structures associated with the coal boom have vanished.
The Flood of 2001
Kimball’s decline was made worse by one of the most destructive floods in the modern history of the southern West Virginia coalfields.
On July 8, 2001, torrential rainfall sent water rushing through communities in McDowell and neighboring counties. Along U.S. 52, Elkhorn Creek rose out of its banks and inundated Kimball, Keystone, Landgraff, Welch, and other communities.
Contemporary reporting from Kimball described shattered storefronts, destroyed merchandise, damaged homes, and water marks several feet high. One longtime resident pointed out the locations of businesses that had been wrecked, while Mayor Jack Premo responded to questions about whether Kimball would rebuild by saying that the town’s future was uncertain.
WVU’s West Virginia and Regional History Center preserves contemporary video under the title The Great Flood of July 8th, 2001: Tape 7, Kimball July 8. The existence of that footage gives historians something uncommon for a small Appalachian town: a moving visual record of a disaster as it unfolded.
Flooding did not create Kimball’s economic difficulties, but it struck a community already dealing with decades of coalfield contraction.
Buildings could be repaired. Population and commerce were harder to replace.
What Remains in Kimball
Modern Kimball is far smaller than the service town that once stood amid active mines and crowded coal camps.
Yet the historical landscape has not disappeared completely.
The Houston Coal Company Store still recalls Carswell Hollow and the company-town economy. The restored World War Memorial preserves the story of Black veterans whose service demanded recognition in 1928. The surviving Henrietta Dismukes Hospital Nurses Home marks the location of an institution that once stood near the forefront of Black medical care in the United States. Archival photographs preserve Kimball High students, teachers, athletes, streets, railroad scenes, and residents who would otherwise exist only as names in newspapers and census schedules.
The newspapers may be the most revealing records of all.
They show Kimball as its residents actually experienced it. A church revival ended on Sunday. A school faculty prepared for a teachers’ meeting. A PTA organized a social. A basketball team prepared to play Gary. A physician treated coal miners. An undertaker advertised his services. Veterans met in a memorial hall. Families traveled, married, became sick, recovered, mourned, worshiped, studied, and went to work.
Those details turn industrial history back into human history.
Why Kimball’s History Matters
Kimball’s story brings together many of the forces that shaped twentieth-century Appalachia.
The railroad opened the coalfield. Coal created employment and drew thousands of people into McDowell County. Company investment pushed communities into narrow mountain hollows. African Americans migrating from the South became miners, teachers, physicians, merchants, undertakers, veterans, and civic leaders. Segregation imposed barriers, but Black residents answered by building schools, hospitals, businesses, churches, newspapers, professional networks, and organizations of their own.
Then the economic foundation beneath much of that world weakened.
Mines mechanized or closed. Jobs disappeared. Families left. Buildings deteriorated. Fire damaged the War Memorial. Floodwater devastated the town in 2001. The population that remained inherited a landscape containing the remnants of one of America’s great industrial regions.
That is why Kimball deserves to be remembered as more than a former coal town.
Few small Appalachian communities can point to a history containing a major coal railroad, an important company-store landscape, a federally investigated mine disaster, a thriving Black high school, one of the country’s most significant early Black hospitals, and the first memorial building erected specifically to honor African American veterans of World War I.
Kimball’s surviving buildings and archival records tell the same larger story from different directions. Coal explains why the town grew, but it does not fully explain what the people of Kimball built once they arrived.
The deeper history lies there, in the community that rose beside the railroad and the mines and created institutions strong enough that, even after much of industrial Kimball disappeared, their importance can still be seen.
Sources & Further Reading
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://www.aurora-llc.com/portfolio/mcdowell-county-survey/
Battlo, Jean. McDowell County in West Virginia and American History. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1998. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=%22McDowell+County+in+West+Virginia+and+American+History%22
Calvin, F. J. “Dr. Dismukes Tells of His $75,000 Hospital.” Pittsburgh Courier, October 25, 1930.
“Dr. Dismukes Sues White Hospital for $150,000.” Pittsburgh Courier, February 21, 1931.
“East Portion and Part of Norfolk and Western Railroad Yards; Kimball, W. Va.” Ca. 1913. West Virginia History OnView, West Virginia University Libraries. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/043125
“Filling In the Gaps: Retelling the History of Black Representation in Plastic Surgery.” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open. PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10566862/
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. Wheeling, WV: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006731317
Highsmith, Carol M. “Kimball World War Memorial, Kimball, West Virginia.” Photograph. 2015. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2015634406/
Highsmith, Carol M. “Zion Church of the Heavenly Sunlight, Kimball, West Virginia.” Photograph. 2015. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2015634404/
Humphrey, H. B. Historical Summary of Coal-Mine Explosions in the United States, 1810–1958. Bureau of Mines Bulletin 586. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1960. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12768/
McDowell County Commission. Town of Kimball Annexation Proceedings. 1994. West Virginia GIS Technical Center. https://data.wvgis.wvu.edu/pub/BAS/McDowell/annexation%20records%20from%20county%20commission.pdf
McDowell Times. “Harrison Memorial Hospital.” March 26, 1915. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1915-03-26/ed-1/seq-4/
McDowell Times. September 4, 1936. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1936-09-04/ed-1/seq-1/
McDowell Times. “From Kimball.” November 3, 1939. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1939-11-03/ed-1/seq-3/
McDowell Times. February 14, 1941. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1941-02-14/ed-1/seq-1/
McDowell Times. April 4, 1941. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1941-04-04/ed-1/seq-3/
McDowell Times. April 21, 1939. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1939-04-21/ed-1/seq-4/
McGehee, C. Stuart. “Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1821
Myers, Mark S. “McDowell County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
Norfolk & Western Historical Society. “Archives and Research Materials.” https://www.nwhs.org/
“Norfolk & Western Railway.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1629
“Recognition and Respect: Contextualizing the History and Contributions of Black American Plastic Surgeons.” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open. PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10419338/
Sanborn Map Company. Kimball, McDowell County, West Virginia. Fire insurance maps. 1927. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/digital_objects/2021
Shahn, Ben. “Kimball, West Virginia.” Photograph. October 1935. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017730741/
Shahn, Ben. “[Untitled Photograph, Probably Kimball, West Virginia].” Photograph. October 1935. Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017730738/
Stafford, Margo. “Kimball War Memorial.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1162
Town of Kimball. “Fire Department History.” Town of Kimball, West Virginia. https://kimball.wv.gov/emergency/fire-department/Pages/Fire-Department-History.aspx
Town of Kimball. “Houston Company Store.” Town of Kimball, West Virginia. https://kimball.wv.gov/visitors/Pages/Houston-Company-Store.aspx
United States Bureau of Mines. Final Report, Explosion, Carswell Mine, Koppers Coal Company, Kimball, McDowell County, West Virginia, January 22, 1941. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1941. https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/carswell_1941.pdf
West Virginia. Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia, 1925: Municipal Charters. “Chapter 17: Kimball Charter.” Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1925. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/acts/Acts_1925_MunicipalCharters.pdf
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1921. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1921.pdf
West Virginia and Regional History Center. The Great Flood of July 8th, 2001: Tape 7, Kimball July 8. Audiovisual Media Collection. West Virginia University. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/194683
West Virginia and Regional History Center. William Archer, Journalist, Research Papers Regarding McDowell and Mercer Counties, A&M 4388. West Virginia University. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6481
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. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Annual_report_of_the_Department_of_Mines_for_the_year_ending_…_%28IA_annualreportofde41west%29.pdf
West Virginia History OnView. “Cheerleaders at Kimball Negro High School.” Photograph. February 13, 1950. West Virginia University Libraries. https://wvhistoryonview.org/bookmarks/013345
West Virginia History OnView. “Edward Joseph Cabbell, Kimball High School.” Photograph. 1964. West Virginia University Libraries. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/038005
West Virginia History OnView. “Kimball Negro High School Basketball Team.” Photograph. February 13, 1950. West Virginia University Libraries. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/013343
West Virginia History OnView. “Students and Teachers in a Kimball Negro High School Classroom, McDowell County.” Photograph. February 13, 1950. West Virginia University Libraries. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/013342
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. Coal Company Stores in McDowell County, West Virginia. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/64500726.pdf
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. Henrietta Dismukes Hospital Nurses Home. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. 2025. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/WV_McDowellCo_DismukesNursesHome_form.pdf
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. Houston Coal Company Store. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Houston-coal-company-store.pdf
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. Kimball World War Memorial. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, National Register No. 93000227. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/World-war-memorial.pdf
William A. Neal Museum of the Health Sciences. “Taking Care of Their Own: African American Hospitals in West Virginia, 1900–1955.” West Virginia University, November 4, 2024. https://nealmuseum.wvu.edu/learn/2024/11/04/taking-care-of-their-own-african-american-hospitals-in-west-virginia-1900-1955
Author Note: As an Appalachian historian, I am interested in communities like Kimball where the history of coal cannot be separated from the schools, hospitals, businesses, veterans, and families who built lives around the mines. I hope this article helps preserve the Black community history that makes Kimball one of the most historically significant places in McDowell County.