Appalachian Community Histories – Yerba, McDowell County: Marine Smokeless Coal, the Railroad, and Life Along Big Davy Creek
In the narrow hollows of McDowell County, some communities left behind courthouses, schools, churches, downtown blocks, and thousands of newspaper references. Others survive in a much thinner documentary trail, scattered across mine reports, railroad maps, postal lists, company records, and a few remaining houses.
Yerba belongs to the second group.
Today, Yerba is an unincorporated community northeast of Davy, tucked into the Big Davy Creek country of McDowell County. Its name remains on maps and in government records, but the industrial system that gave the community much of its early identity has largely disappeared. To reconstruct Yerba during the coal boom, the historian has to follow the records of the Marine Smokeless Coal Company, its Marine No. 2 mine, and the Norfolk & Western Railway line that pushed into the hollow to serve the operation.
Those records reveal more than might be expected from such a small place. By 1918, the Norfolk & Western had extended its Superior Branch directly toward the Marine Smokeless operation. By 1921, Yerba appeared on West Virginia’s official list of post offices. In 1923, the West Virginia Department of Mines explicitly identified Marine No. 2 with the post office of Yerba, separating it from the company’s other mines at nearby Juverna. Decades later, railroad track charts still marked Yerba between Davy and Asco.
Taken together, those sources recover the outline of a McDowell County coal community whose history was written first in steel rails, coal seams, company payrolls, postal routes, and the movement of loaded cars out of the mountains.
The Railroad Comes Up the Hollow
The development of Yerba was part of the much larger transformation of McDowell County during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coal companies could own mineral rights and identify valuable seams, but without transportation there was little practical way to move large amounts of coal from isolated mountain valleys to distant industrial markets.
The Norfolk & Western Railway changed that equation.
Across McDowell County, railroad construction and coal development became closely connected. Main lines reached larger valleys, while branches and short extensions followed tributaries into narrower hollows where mining companies were preparing new operations. Communities then grew around the industrial landscape. Houses, stores, mine openings, tipples, schools, churches, and roads were fitted into the limited space between the creek, railroad, and steep mountainsides.
The 2018 Coal Heritage Survey Update described this relationship plainly, noting that the development of McDowell County’s coal towns followed the railroad. The survey associated the Superior Branch with Yerba and neighboring Asco and dated its construction to approximately 1920.
There is, however, an important correction that can be made from the railroad’s own contemporary records.
In an annual report published in March 1918, the Norfolk & Western stated that the Superior Branch had already been extended 1.79 miles to the operation of the Marine Smokeless Coal Company. Because this was the railroad reporting on its own construction, it provides stronger evidence for the specific chronology than the approximate date assigned many decades later by the heritage survey. By 1918, therefore, the railroad connection that would shape Yerba’s industrial development was already in place.
The distinction may seem small, but it matters. A date of about 1920 places Yerba within the general expansion of the postwar coal boom. The railroad report instead shows that Marine Smokeless had attracted significant railroad investment while the United States was still fighting the First World War.
Marine Smokeless Coal Company and Marine No. 2
The name that repeatedly appears beside Yerba in the surviving industrial record is Marine Smokeless Coal Company.
By 1923, the West Virginia Department of Mines separated the company’s operations according to mine and postal address. Marine Nos. 1 and 3 were listed at Juverna. Marine No. 2 was listed at Yerba.
That entry is one of the most important surviving pieces of evidence for understanding the community because it establishes the relationship without relying on later memories or modern place-name websites. In the official state mining record, Yerba was the postal identity associated with Marine No. 2.
The same annual report recorded 68,934 tons for Marine Smokeless Coal Company in its company production totals. That figure should not be treated as the production of Yerba’s No. 2 mine alone because the company also operated the numbered mines associated with Juverna. Even so, the number demonstrates that Marine Smokeless was an active commercial producer within the crowded McDowell County coal industry of the early 1920s.
This was also the period when McDowell County’s coal economy was approaching extraordinary scale. The 2018 heritage study reported that the county had grown from 31 coal companies and 31 mines in 1900 to 66 companies and 99 mines by the end of 1910. By 1923, the county reached 84 companies operating 138 mines. Yerba therefore emerged not in isolation, but during a generation when nearly every usable hollow in parts of McDowell County seemed connected to some combination of mines, railroad tracks, company housing, and coal shipments.
For the families who came to communities like Yerba, the physical geography of the hollow shaped nearly every part of daily life. Company housing was often constructed close to the mine and railroad because there was little flat land available. The broader McDowell County survey found that company towns usually relied on a small number of repeated house plans, while larger dwellings were commonly assigned to employees who held higher positions within the company. Boardinghouses could accommodate single miners, and schools, churches, stores, and social facilities sometimes grew alongside the industrial operation.
Exactly how each of those patterns appeared at Yerba will require deeper work in census schedules, deed books, company papers, school records, and mine maps. What can already be demonstrated is that the community formed within that larger company-town world and that its most clearly documented industrial anchor was Marine No. 2.
Yerba Becomes a Postal Community
Coal camps needed more than mines and railroad tracks. As workers and families established permanent households, postal service helped turn an industrial site into a recognized community.
The 1921 West Virginia Blue Book included Yerba on the state’s official list of post offices and identified it with McDowell County. This provides a firm date by which Yerba was functioning under its own postal name.
Two years later, the Department of Mines reinforced that identity when it used Yerba as the post office for Marine No. 2.
The exact establishment and discontinuance dates of the Yerba post office still need to be confirmed through Post Office Department appointment records and site-location reports. Those records could also identify Yerba’s postmasters and possibly describe the post office in relation to the railroad, road, creek, and neighboring settlements.
What is already clear is that Yerba had developed beyond being merely an unnamed mine site by the early 1920s. The state government recognized the place as a postal community, while the mining department used that postal identity to distinguish Marine No. 2 from the company’s other operations.
The origin of the name itself remains less certain. The surviving records establish that Yerba was in use by this period, but they do not yet provide a reliable explanation for why the name was chosen. Without a post-office petition, company correspondence, contemporary newspaper explanation, or another direct source, attaching a story to the name would amount to speculation.
Scrip and the Company Economy
One of the more tangible reminders of the Marine Smokeless operation survives not in a mine map or government report, but in coal-company scrip.
Later issues of the National Scrip Collectors Association publication Scrip Talk identify cataloged scrip attributed to Marine Smokeless Coal Company No. 2 at Yerba. An April 1989 listing identifies Yerba, West Virginia, with Marine Smokeless Coal Company No. 2 under the catalog designation WV 3113. Another collector reference published in 2016 again connected Marine Smokeless scrip with Yerba.
These references are later collector records rather than contemporary company ledgers, so they should be used alongside the government and railroad material rather than in place of it. The surviving tokens themselves, however, are pieces of material evidence from the company-store economy that developed throughout the coalfields.
McDowell County’s company towns frequently used scrip as part of their commercial systems. The 2018 heritage study notes that miners in company communities purchased goods at company stores using company-issued money, while expenses such as rent and utilities could be deducted from wages.
The existence of Marine Smokeless No. 2 scrip assigned to Yerba therefore connects the place to one of the most recognizable features of Appalachian coal-camp life. A small metal token could pass from the company to a worker and then across the counter of a store, purchasing food or another household necessity before eventually returning to the company’s accounting system.
For a community whose written record is relatively thin, such objects matter. They preserve the name of the company and operation in a form that people working and living around Yerba could actually have handled.
Marine Smokeless Goes to Court
Another fragment of the company’s history reached the highest court in the United States.
In October 1924, the Journal of the Supreme Court recorded a petition in Marine Smokeless Coal Company v. Norfolk & Western Railway Company. The petition came from the Circuit Court of McDowell County and was submitted on behalf of Marine Smokeless by attorney Thomas W. Shelton.
On November 17, 1924, the Supreme Court denied the company’s petition for a writ of certiorari. The published United States Reports entry gives little information about the underlying controversy. It establishes the parties, the McDowell County origin of the litigation, the attorney representing Marine Smokeless, and the Court’s refusal to review the case, but it does not by itself explain the dispute.
That makes the original McDowell County court file especially valuable.
If the lower-court record survives, it could contain contracts, correspondence, testimony, railroad documents, financial evidence, maps, or descriptions of the Marine Smokeless operation that never appeared in state mine reports. A surviving Supreme Court transcript of record has also circulated in reprinted form, suggesting that a substantial record was prepared during the appeal. Until that underlying material is examined, however, the precise nature of the case should not be guessed.
The lawsuit nevertheless demonstrates how closely the fortunes of the coal company were tied to the railroad. Marine Smokeless needed the Norfolk & Western to move its product, while the railway had invested in infrastructure specifically reaching the company’s operation.
Coal, Rails, and Electricity
The relationship between Marine Smokeless and the Norfolk & Western extended beyond the simple presence of railroad tracks.
A Norfolk & Western engineering drawing dated October 26, 1923, survives in the Norfolk & Western Historical Society archives. The drawing concerns electrification infrastructure and identifies proposed guy-anchor locations on lands belonging to Marine Smokeless Coal Company at Marine, West Virginia. The document originated in a Library of Virginia accession and is cataloged as N&W drawing N-8010.
The drawing does not identify the site specifically as Yerba, so it should not be used to place individual structures within Marine No. 2 without additional mapping. It does, however, demonstrate the physical extent of the company’s property and its involvement with the railroad infrastructure running through this part of McDowell County.
This surviving engineering record also hints at just how complicated the industrial landscape became. Railroads required bridges, culverts, rights-of-way, sidings, electrical equipment, drainage structures, grades, signals, and maintenance access. The mine itself required portals, haulage routes, ventilation systems, preparation or loading facilities, power, equipment, and buildings for workers.
A coal community therefore existed as part of a larger machine. Yerba’s houses and post office belonged to a landscape designed partly around the movement of coal from underground workings to railroad cars and then out of McDowell County.
Yerba Between Davy and Asco
The railroad continued to preserve Yerba’s location long after the community’s earliest period.
A Norfolk & Western Pocahontas District track chart dated January 1, 1968, shows the Superior Branch running from Davy through Yerba toward Asco. The chart marks the locations as D-0 Davy, D-1 Yerba, and D-2 Asco.
That simple sequence is remarkably useful.
It places Yerba within the industrial geography of the branch decades after the 1918 extension to Marine Smokeless. Davy served as the connection with the larger Norfolk & Western system. Yerba occupied the next named location along the branch. Asco lay farther beyond.
The track chart also records grades, roads, culverts, elevations, and other engineering information, allowing the branch to be reconstructed in much greater detail than an ordinary road map provides. In a narrow Appalachian hollow, those details help explain why buildings, roads, and houses developed where they did.
By then, the coal industry around Yerba had already experienced decades of change. The Great Depression had reduced production throughout McDowell County, while World War II temporarily renewed demand. Mechanization after the war increased productivity but steadily reduced the number of miners required underground. Across southern West Virginia, mines changed owners, consolidated, closed, or disappeared as economically recoverable seams were exhausted, and the industry changed.
Yet Yerba remained important enough as a geographic point for the railroad to keep its name on an operational chart.
What Survived at Yerba
The disappearance of a mine does not necessarily mean the disappearance of the community around it.
When architectural historians returned to McDowell County during the twenty-first century Coal Heritage Survey update, Asco and Yerba were specifically included among the communities examined during fieldwork. The project documented thousands of buildings and industrial resources across the county and sought to determine what remained of the landscape created during the coal boom.
The separate historic-property index records at least two Yerba resources dating approximately to 1920 that were recommended as eligible under a multiple-property approach.
One, survey number MD-0410, stood at 1845 Big Davy Creek-Asco Hollow Road. Another, MD-0992, was recorded at 83 Broad Camp Road. Both were assigned approximate construction dates around 1920.
Those dates correspond closely with the best-documented early period of Yerba’s development. The railroad had reached Marine Smokeless by 1918, Yerba was an official post office by 1921, and the Department of Mines associated the town with Marine No. 2 by 1923.
It would be tempting to label every surviving house from that period a Marine Smokeless company house, but the available index does not establish that connection. Deeds, tax records, company maps, or detailed Historic Property Inventory forms would be needed before assigning specific buildings to the company.
Still, their survival matters.
Across McDowell County, hundreds of early coal-era buildings have been demolished. The heritage survey found that 325 previously recorded resources could no longer be located because they had disappeared, while other communities retained only fragments of what had once been large industrial settlements.
A century-old building at Yerba therefore becomes more than an old house. It can preserve the scale, alignment, construction methods, and physical setting of a settlement built during the years when Marine Smokeless and the Norfolk & Western were reshaping the hollow.
A Community Hidden in Administrative Records
Yerba demonstrates one of the challenges of researching Appalachian coal communities.
The town does not appear prominently in broad state histories. It did not become a major commercial center like Welch, Keystone, or Northfork. It did not leave behind the enormous corporate archive associated with some of McDowell County’s largest operators. Much of its history instead survives because institutions needed to keep records for other reasons.
The Department of Mines needed to know where Marine No. 2 operated.
The post office needed to identify Yerba as a postal location.
The Norfolk & Western needed to document the branch serving Marine Smokeless and later to mark Yerba on engineering charts.
Courts needed records when Marine Smokeless and the railroad became involved in litigation.
Company stores needed tokens or other accounting systems for everyday transactions.
Historic preservation surveyors later needed to record what remained of the built landscape.
None of those records was created primarily to tell future generations the story of Yerba. Taken together, however, they allow much of that story to be recovered.
More remains to be found. Federal census schedules could identify the families who lived near Marine No. 2, their occupations, birthplaces, ages, and household arrangements. Mine maps could reveal portals, underground workings, sidings, and tipple locations. Deed books could establish when Marine Smokeless acquired its property and where its boundaries ran. Postal appointment records could name the community’s postmasters. Newspapers from Welch, Keystone, and Iaeger may contain accidents, marriages, deaths, school events, company announcements, and everyday references that place names and faces inside the industrial framework.
Those records would transform Yerba from a sequence of company and railroad entries into a community of individual people.
Why Yerba Matters
Yerba was never one of McDowell County’s largest coal towns, but that is precisely why its history deserves attention.
The great coalfield story was not created only in Gary, Welch, Keystone, Coalwood, or the other communities whose names remain familiar. It was also created in places like Yerba, where a railroad branch climbed into a hollow, a company opened a numbered mine, houses appeared along the road and creek, a post office gave the settlement an official identity, and generations of families lived within an industrial landscape built around coal.
Marine No. 2 tied Yerba directly to the Marine Smokeless Coal Company. The Superior Branch tied the mine to the Norfolk & Western Railway and the national industrial economy. The post office tied the name Yerba to the community itself. Company scrip provides evidence of the commercial world surrounding the operation. Railroad maps preserved the town’s location long after its formative years. Historic survey records show that pieces of its early twentieth-century landscape endured into the modern period.
The records remain incomplete, but they are sufficient to recover an important outline.
Yerba was a McDowell County coal community whose documented history grew from the relationship between Marine Smokeless Coal Company, Marine No. 2, and the railroad that entered the hollow to carry its coal away. Like many Appalachian communities, its past survives less as one complete narrative than as fragments left behind by government offices, railroad engineers, courts, collectors, and the buildings that remained standing after the busiest years of the coalfield had passed.
Put those fragments together, and Yerba comes back into view.
Sources & Further Reading
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston, WV: Department of Mines, 1923. Particularly important for identifying Marine Smokeless Coal Company’s Marine No. 2 with the Yerba post office. 1923 West Virginia Department of Mines report
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Annual Report of the Norfolk & Western Railway Company.” Reprinted in Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March 23, 1918. Important for the statement that the Superior Branch had been extended 1.79 miles to the Marine Smokeless Coal Company operation. 1918 Norfolk & Western annual report
Harris, John T., comp. and ed. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1921. The official post-office listing identifies Yerba as a McDowell County post office. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921 West Virginia Legislature
Norfolk & Western Railway. Pocahontas District Track Chart. January 1, 1968. The Superior Branch chart identifies Davy, Yerba, and Asco in sequence. 1968 Norfolk & Western Pocahontas District Track Chart
Marine Smokeless Coal Company v. Norfolk & Western Railway Company, 266 U.S. 601, 623 (1924). U.S. Supreme Court. Certiorari denied November 17, 1924. United States Reports, volume 266
Supreme Court of the United States. Journal of the Supreme Court of the United States, October Term 1924. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1924. Includes the Marine Smokeless Coal Company petition arising from McDowell County. Supreme Court Journal, October Term 1924
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Drawing N-8010: Sketch Showing Desired Location of Guy Anchors on Lands of Marine Smokeless Coal Co., Marine, W. Va.” October 26, 1923. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives, HS-B32253. Norfolk & Western Historical Society archival record
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia Division of Highways, 2018. An important professional study of McDowell County’s coal communities, industrial landscape, railroad development, and surviving resources. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Historic Property Inventory Form Index: McDowell County, War to Yerba. July 2018. Includes surviving Yerba properties dating approximately to 1920. War to Yerba Historic Property Inventory Index Aurora Research Associates
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Microfilm Publication M841, Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Useful for establishing the Yerba post office’s creation, discontinuance, and postmasters. NARA Record of Appointment of Postmasters National Archives
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126, Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Postal site reports may locate Yerba in relation to roads, streams, railroads, and neighboring post offices. NARA Post Office Reports of Site Locations National Archives
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County Court Records Microfilm Holdings.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Includes deeds, deed indexes, wills, probate files, court minutes, naturalization records, and other records useful for Marine Smokeless property and Yerba residents. McDowell County Court Records holdings West Virginia Culture
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Particularly valuable for pursuing litigation involving coal companies and the Norfolk & Western Railway. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files West Virginia Culture
West Virginia State Archives. “Naturalization Records at the West Virginia State Archives.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. Includes substantial McDowell County naturalization records from the coal-boom period. West Virginia naturalization records West Virginia Culture
The McDowell Times. Keystone, WV, 1904–1941. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. An important contemporary McDowell County newspaper for searching Yerba, Marine Smokeless, Marine No. 2, Davy, Asco, and Juverna. The McDowell Times at the Library of Congress The Library of Congress
U.S. Geological Survey. “topoView.” Historical Topographic Map Collection. Search the historic Welch quadrangles to trace Yerba, railroad alignments, roads, buildings, streams, and changes in the community landscape. USGS topoView USGS
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. “National Mine Map Repository.” U.S. Department of the Interior. Search Marine Smokeless Coal Company, Marine No. 2, Yerba, and related mine names for surviving mine maps and industrial plans. National Mine Map Repository
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Smokeless Coal Operators Association Historical Records.” A&M 0049. West Virginia University Libraries. Collection covering 1886–1961 with material on production and the Pocahontas smokeless coal industry. Smokeless Coal Operators Association records
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Smokeless Coal Operators Association Records.” A&M 1830. West Virginia University Libraries. Includes coal-company production, sales, distribution, working hours, and industry statistics. WVU Smokeless Coal Operators Association collections
National Scrip Collectors Association. Scrip Talk. Newman Numismatic Portal. Search Yerba, Marine Smokeless Coal Company, Marine No. 2, and catalog number WV 3113 for surviving company-store scrip associated with the community. Newman Numismatic Portal Scrip Talk collection
McGehee, C. Stuart. “Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last revised April 25, 2024. Useful background on the Pocahontas coalfield, Norfolk & Western expansion, smokeless coal, and the industrialization of McDowell County. Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam e-WV
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1963. A valuable firsthand-informed history of coal development, operators, company communities, and the southern West Virginia smokeless fields. WVU Press information on Tams
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. Useful scholarly context for company towns, outside capital, railroads, migration, industrialization, and Appalachian coal communities.
Schust, Alex P. Billion Dollar Coalfield: West Virginia’s McDowell County and the Industrialization of America. 2010. A major specialized study of McDowell County’s coal mines, railroads, branch lines, and industrial development. Norfolk & Western Historical Society book listing
Appalachian Regional Commission. “McDowell, West Virginia.” Confirms McDowell County as part of the federally designated Appalachian Region. ARC McDowell County profile
Author Note: Yerba survives in scattered mine, railroad, postal, legal, and architectural records rather than in one complete local history. I wrote this article to bring those fragments together and preserve the story of Marine No. 2 and the community that grew around it.