Appalachian Community Histories – Skygusty, McDowell County: Coal, the South Fork Railroad, and the Lost 24883 Post Office
Skygusty is one of those Appalachian communities whose name demands an explanation before its history can even begin.
Tucked into the mountains of McDowell County near South Fork, Black Wolf, Gary, and the road toward Munson, Skygusty never became one of the enormous company towns that made the Pocahontas coalfield famous. It did not develop on the scale of Gary, Keystone, or Northfork, and the surviving records do not point to a single coal company laying out the entire settlement at once. Instead, Skygusty appears to have grown from an older mountain community that was gradually drawn deeper into McDowell County’s industrial world.
That distinction matters because the railroad did not create Skygusty in the late 1940s, nor did coal suddenly produce the community from an empty hollow. Historic property records identify buildings there dating to the early twentieth century, cemetery evidence reaches even farther back, and residents were already using Skygusty as a postal address before the Norfolk & Western constructed the South Fork Branch between 1946 and 1949.
What the railroad and coal industry did was change Skygusty’s place in the surrounding coalfield. By the middle of the twentieth century, railroad tracks passed through the community toward one of U.S. Steel’s last great McDowell County mining developments. Skygusty had its own post office, its own elementary school, families deeply involved in coal mining, and eventually mining operations almost at its doorstep.
Its story is therefore not one of a coal camp suddenly created by a corporation, but of an older Appalachian settlement absorbed into the industrial landscape around it.
Where Did the Name Skygusty Come From?
The most tempting part of Skygusty’s history is also the part that requires the most caution. Regional tradition connects the name with the Harman family and the frontier nickname “Old Skygusty” or “Skygusta.”
The Harmans were among the early families associated with the upper Tug and Bluestone country. A surviving eighteenth-century government record confirms that the family was involved in frontier fighting in the region. In a February 16, 1789 report to Virginia governor Edmund Randolph, Walter Crockett described a recent skirmish involving Henry Harman and his two sons and wrote that they had “behaved like heroes.” Later historians connected that episode and other frontier encounters to the Skygusty tradition.
By the early twentieth century, the nickname had become firmly embedded in regional historical writing. David E. Johnston’s 1906 history of the Middle New River country repeated a story associated with the captivity of Jenny Wiley in which an Indigenous man referred to Captain Harman as “Old Skygusty.” Other writers disagreed over exactly which Harman carried the nickname, with some assigning it to Henry Harman and others connecting it with Mathias Harman. Historian Emory L. Hamilton specifically acknowledged that the title had been applied to both men.
That uncertainty is important. It is reasonable to say that regional tradition connects the unusual McDowell County place name with the older Harman and Skygusty stories, but it is much harder to prove exactly when the name was transferred to the community, who first applied it there, or whether Henry or Mathias Harman was the person originally intended.
The surviving evidence supports the tradition without settling every part of the naming story.
Skygusty Before the Railroad
Whatever the precise origin of its name, Skygusty existed as a recognizable community well before the great industrial expansion that reached the South Fork valley after World War II.
The McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey recorded a church at 12959 Skygusty Highway and estimated its construction at about 1915. Another surviving building at 13031 Skygusty Highway was dated to about 1920. These structures provide physical evidence that people were establishing institutions and permanent homes along the road decades before the South Fork railroad project.
The cemeteries tell an even longer story. A transcription of Skygusty Cemetery includes Ethel Lee, who died in 1903, and F. Burress Shrader, who died in 1923. Other graves preserve names that recur throughout the area’s twentieth-century history, including Woolridge, Dillon, Casey, Mitchem, Presley, and Spence. The cemetery survey also noted approximately fourteen graves marked only by rocks, a reminder that the surviving written record represents only part of the community that lived in these mountains.
Those names matter because Skygusty’s history cannot be reconstructed simply by looking for a company store or the opening of a single mine. The community existed through families whose houses stood along the highway and branches, whose churches served the surrounding settlements, and whose cemeteries accumulated generations of local residents. People moved between Skygusty, South Fork, Black Wolf, Gary, and other nearby places without necessarily recognizing the precise boundaries later maps would impose upon them.
A 1942 World War II draft registration cited in genealogical records illustrates how that geography worked. Carl Floyd Harman was recorded as living at South Fork while using “Skygusty PO” as his postal address and working for U.S. Coal & Coke at Gary. His 1951 death record later listed his residence as “Skygusta.” In one person’s records, South Fork, Skygusty, and Gary were all connected, which is almost a miniature version of the community’s twentieth-century history.
The South Fork Railroad Changes the Valley
After World War II, Skygusty’s relationship with the coal industry became much more visible.
U.S. Coal & Coke, the coal-producing subsidiary connected with United States Steel, was developing Gary No. 14 farther into the South Fork country near Munson. The isolated mine required transportation capable of moving coal and supplies through terrain where the mountains left little room for large industrial facilities, and the Norfolk & Western responded with the South Fork Branch of the Tug Fork Branch.
The professional McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey dates construction of the line from 1946 through 1949 and specifically identifies Skygusty and Munson as communities served by it. Skygusty therefore occupied the entrance to one of the final major coal developments created around U.S. Steel’s enormous Gary operations.
A Norfolk & Western mileage analysis prepared in 1971 shows precisely where the community stood within the railroad system. The South Fork of Tug Fork Branch separated from the Tug Fork Branch near Black Wolf, with Skygusty appearing only 0.77 miles from the junction. Munson stood at mile 5.23, while the branch ended at approximately 5.7 miles.
Those figures make Skygusty’s position clear. The community was not at the far end of the branch beside Gary No. 14, but near the beginning of the route into the South Fork valley. Coal trains heading toward or away from the new industrial development therefore moved directly through a landscape that Skygusty families had occupied before the branch was constructed.
The distinction between Skygusty and Munson is especially important. Munson was closely connected with the development of Gary No. 14 and represented a late example of a purpose-built coal community. Skygusty was older, and the railroad passed through an existing settlement while tying it more closely to the industrial complex expanding beyond it.
In that sense, Skygusty illustrates another side of McDowell County’s coal history. Sometimes the coal company built the town, while in other places the coal industry arrived where people were already living.
School Days in Skygusty
By the 1960s, Skygusty possessed one of the clearest signs that it had developed into a substantial family community: its own elementary school.
A federal directory of public elementary and secondary schools for the 1968 to 1969 school year listed Skygusty Elementary School under ZIP Code 24883. The school taught grades one through six and had 74 pupils with three teachers.
Seventy-four children may sound small compared with an urban school, but in a narrow McDowell County mountain community the number is significant. It meant dozens of households with school-age children were living within the area served by Skygusty. Each school morning brought children from homes along the highway, creek, branches, and surrounding hollows into a building that helped give the community an identity beyond its relationship with nearby mines.
The school also places Skygusty within a larger pattern that once defined the southern West Virginia coalfields. Small communities often had their own elementary schools because mountain geography made consolidation difficult. A few miles on a map could mean a long trip along winding roads or through a narrow creek valley, so schools became local institutions closely tied to particular hollows and settlements.
Their disappearance in later decades changed more than education. When a community lost its school, it also lost one of the places where generations met, children formed friendships, parents attended events, and a distinct local identity was reinforced year after year. Skygusty Elementary belonged to that older landscape.
Coal Was Never Far Away
Even though Skygusty was not simply a U.S. Steel company camp, coal surrounded its twentieth-century life. The evidence appears not only in mining records but in the occupations of the people who lived there.
A 1967 Congressional Record discussion of the McDowell County coal industry named Everett Evans of Skygusty among the county’s Department of Mines inspectors. The same account described a county inspection force responsible for examining more than 200 mines. The West Virginia Blue Book for 1972 provides another example, listing Clifford Mitchem and Sherman Harman of Skygusty among state mine-inspection personnel.
The names are revealing because Harman and Mitchem were already deeply rooted in the Skygusty area, appearing in family, cemetery, and other local records. By the twentieth century, members of those long-established families were participating professionally in the industry that had transformed McDowell County.
Coal employment could therefore connect old settlement families to the modern industrial economy without erasing the older community beneath it. Miners, inspectors, railroad employees, timbermen, equipment operators, and other workers left Skygusty each day for jobs scattered throughout a mining district that functioned as one interconnected economic landscape.
Gary might be the company headquarters, and Munson might have No. 14, but Skygusty supplied people who helped keep the larger coalfield working.
Freeman Branch and a New Era of Mining
Mining eventually came even closer to Skygusty.
In 1980, the Federal Register recorded a United Mine Workers petition involving employees of Freeman Branch Mining at Skygusty. The federal investigation described the operation as a producer of metallurgical coal and stated that production had begun in October 1978.
The date is significant because by 1978 the classic company-town era was already fading. Coal companies no longer needed to construct enormous settlements filled with company houses simply to keep hundreds or thousands of workers beside one mine. Better roads, automobiles, mechanized mining, and changing employment patterns had transformed the relationship between mine and community, but coal extraction itself had not disappeared.
A U.S. Geological Survey investigation of Freeman Branch near Skygusty recorded mining of the Pocahontas No. 4 and No. 5 seams and found that mountaintop and contour mining had been active there from 1978 through 1984. That activity represented a different phase of McDowell County coal history from the underground company mines that had driven the region’s early industrial development.
Mining could now take place across the mountains surrounding communities that had existed for generations, leaving changes in drainage, water quality, roads, slopes, and the appearance of the landscape even when relatively few new houses were built.
The federal government began measuring some of those changes. U.S. Geological Survey researchers established monitoring sites around the South Fork and Freeman Branch watersheds, collecting streamflow and water-quality information near Skygusty. The environmental record thus became another kind of historical source, preserving what was happening not only to the people of the community but to the water flowing past them.
The Post Office That Made Skygusty 24883
For much of the twentieth century, one institution gave Skygusty perhaps its clearest official identity: the post office.
Skygusty had its own ZIP Code, 24883, and postal records, personal documents, school directories, and addresses all preserved that number. A federal school directory used it for Skygusty Elementary, while family documents used Skygusty as a postal destination.
The importance of the post office is reflected in the papers of United States senator Jennings Randolph. His collection at the West Virginia State Archives contains a specific 1968 file titled “Post Office, Skygusty.” Although the finding aid does not reproduce the correspondence itself, the existence of a dedicated file suggests that postal matters in the community had reached the senator’s office.
On March 23, 1990, the Skygusty Post Office ceased operating. The United States Postal Service later recorded the exact change, listing Skygusty’s main office and ZIP Code 24883 as discontinued on that date. Federal records concerning suspended post offices independently give the same March 23, 1990 date.
The closure did not pass quietly. That day’s Welch Daily News carried an article whose title captured the reaction almost perfectly: “Skygusty, Community Feels Getting Raw Deal Over Post Off.” The West Virginia State Archives still preserves the article in its index of McDowell County historical materials.
Even without the entire article available here, the headline says something important about how residents regarded the institution. Losing the post office was not simply an administrative adjustment involving mail routes. It removed an institution that had officially placed Skygusty’s name on envelopes, government records, school documents, and everyday correspondence for years.
The Postal Service later established Skygusty as an acceptable place name using Welch ZIP Code 24801, allowing the community’s name to survive in mailing addresses even after its independent ZIP Code disappeared.
Water, Mining, and the Problems Left Behind
The beginning of the twenty-first century brought another reminder of how closely Skygusty’s daily life remained connected to the history of mining.
In 2001, the West Virginia Public Service Commission considered a major water project involving the McDowell County Public Service District. The proposal included extending public water service to approximately 150 customers in the Skygusty community, and the reason given was particularly telling.
Commission records stated that Skygusty residents were relying upon well-water systems considered poor in quality and of questionable reliability in light of mining activity in the area. The project called for thousands of feet of new water mains, a booster station, and a storage tank as part of a multimillion-dollar infrastructure investment.
The document connects two eras of Skygusty’s history. For generations, residents had lived among coal operations that provided employment and linked the community to the national industrial economy, but those same generations also inherited environmental and infrastructure problems associated with mining in steep mountain terrain.
By then, Skygusty’s history could be read in its water as surely as it could be read in railroad records or cemetery stones.
The Families Beneath the History
Government reports can explain when a railroad opened, or a post office closed, but they can make a place seem more mechanical than it really was. Skygusty was a community of families before it was a point on a Norfolk & Western timetable.
The cemetery provides one of the clearest surviving records of that human continuity. Woolridges, Mitchems, Presleys, Caseys, Dillons, Spences, and others appear across decades. Children lie beside parents, while coalfield workers rest near people whose lives began before the great expansion of the McDowell County mining industry. A World War I veteran, Albert Woolridge, is among those buried there, while other markers preserve infants and children whose lives lasted only days or a few years.
These graves make it difficult to reduce Skygusty to a simple coal story. Coal transformed the community, but it did not create every relationship within it.
Some families were established in the area before the railroad. Their descendants went into mines, became mine inspectors, attended Skygusty Elementary, received mail through ZIP Code 24883, and watched newer mining operations alter the surrounding mountains. The landscape accumulated history rather than replacing it, which may be the best way to understand Skygusty.
A Community Between Old Appalachia and Industrial Appalachia
Skygusty occupies an unusual place in McDowell County history because it stood between two versions of Appalachia.
One was the older world of mountain settlement, extended families, churches, cemeteries, farms, hunting grounds, rough roads, and communities whose boundaries were understood locally rather than drawn neatly on maps. The other was the industrial coalfield of railroads, U.S. Steel mines, metallurgical coal, mine inspectors, government regulations, mechanized surface mining, and national markets.
Skygusty belonged to both.
Its unusual name carries echoes of frontier tradition, although the exact naming story remains uncertain. Its cemetery and early buildings show that the settlement existed before the late 1940s railroad expansion, while the Norfolk & Western later placed Skygusty directly on the South Fork Branch leading toward U.S. Steel’s Gary No. 14 operation at Munson.
By 1968, children filled a local elementary school. By the late 1970s, metallurgical coal was being produced at Freeman Branch. In 1990, residents were fighting to retain a post office that had helped define their community, and by the beginning of the next century public officials were trying to bring dependable drinking water to homes whose wells had become questionable in a landscape altered by mining.
Those events might appear unrelated when found separately in school directories, railroad timetables, postal bulletins, mining studies, and government orders, but placed together they become a community history.
Why Skygusty Matters
Skygusty never needed to become one of McDowell County’s largest coal towns to matter. Its importance comes from the way its history reveals what happened to hundreds of smaller Appalachian places when industrialization reached communities that were already there.
Coal transformed Skygusty, but it did not erase its older families. The railroad passed through the community rather than creating it, while the post office gave an already established place an official address and a ZIP Code of its own.
When the school disappeared, the mines changed, and ZIP Code 24883 was discontinued, Skygusty did not simply vanish from the map. The community continued through houses, roads, cemeteries, churches, family names, and the memory of people who still understood exactly where Skygusty began and ended.
That may help explain why the 1990 post office closure mattered enough for residents to describe themselves as receiving a raw deal. Places like Skygusty were held together by institutions that could look insignificant from outside the mountains. A small elementary school, a rural post office, a church beside the highway, and a cemetery filled with familiar surnames all helped make the community more than a name on a railroad mileage chart.
Today, Skygusty’s history survives in fragments scattered across federal reports, West Virginia archives, Norfolk & Western records, old newspapers, mining documents, cemeteries, property surveys, and the paper trail of families who lived there. Taken together, those sources show a community considerably older and more complicated than a simple label such as “coal camp” suggests.
Skygusty was there before the South Fork railroad, lived through the height of McDowell County coal, and remained a recognizable mountain community long after its school and independent post office disappeared.
Sources & Further Reading
West Virginia State Archives. “Jennings Randolph Collection, Series 8: General Administrative Subject Files, ‘Post Office, Skygusty, 1968.’” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/randolph/randolphgasf.html
United States Postal Service. Postal Bulletin 22098. March 20, 2003. See the listing for Skygusty, West Virginia, ZIP Code 24883. https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2003/pb22098.pdf
United States Senate. Records of post offices suspended before March 16, 1998, including Skygusty, West Virginia, 24883, suspended March 23, 1990. Senate Hearing 106-617. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106shrg61701/pdf/CHRG-106shrg61701.pdf
“Skygusty, Community Feels Getting Raw Deal Over Post Off.” Welch Daily News, March 23, 1990. Indexed in West Virginia State Archives, McDowell County History Sources. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County History Sources.” West Virginia Archives and History. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Maps.” 1950 Census. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/howto/ed-maps.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
West Virginia Archives and History. “Vital Research Records.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia State Tax Department. “West Virginia Real Estate Assessment Data.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.mapwv.gov/Assessment/
West Virginia GIS Technical Center. “McDowell County Tax Maps.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://data.wvgis.wvu.edu/pub/Clearinghouse/planningLanduseCadastres/wv_tax_maps/PDF/27_McDowell_County/
Norfolk & Western Railway. Mileage Analysis. February 25, 1971. See South Fork of Tug Fork Branch entries for Skygusty and Munson. https://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/N%26W/N%26W%20Mileage%20Analysis%202-25-1971.pdf
Norfolk & Western Railway. Stations and Sidings. July 1, 1977. https://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/N%26W/N%26W%20Stations%20%26%20Sidings%207-1-1977.pdf
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Historic Property Inventory: Northfork to Vivian. 2018. See Skygusty properties on Skygusty Highway. https://www.aurora-llc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Coal_Heritage_Northfork_to_Vivian_HPI_Index_by_SurveyNo.pdf
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Directory of Public Elementary and Secondary Day Schools, 1968-1969: Southeast Region. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. See Skygusty Elementary School, ZIP Code 24883. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED039636.pdf
Friedl, Joseph J. A History of Education in McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858-1976. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1975. Listed in the West Virginia State Archives McDowell County bibliography. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
United States Congress. Congressional Record. 90th Cong., 1st sess., February 3, 1967. See discussion of McDowell County mine inspectors and Everett Evans of Skygusty. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1967-pt2/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1967-pt2-7-1.pdf
West Virginia Legislature. West Virginia Blue Book, 1972. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 1972. See mine-inspection personnel Clifford Mitchem and Sherman Harman of Skygusty. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1972.pdf
United States. Federal Register. April 25, 1980. See Freeman Branch Mining, Skygusty, West Virginia, and the United Mine Workers petition concerning metallurgical-coal production. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1980-04-25/pdf/FR-1980-04-25.pdf
Scott, Arthur G. Analysis of Characteristics of Simulated Flows from Small Surface-Mined and Undisturbed Appalachian Watersheds in the Tug Fork Basin of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Water-Resources Investigations Report 84-4151. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1984. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wri844151
U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division. Water Resources Data, West Virginia, Water Year 1981. Water Data Report WV-81-1. 1982. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wdrWV811
U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division. Water Resources Data, West Virginia, Water Year 1981, Appendix: Coal Areas and Special Projects. Water Data Report WV-81-A. 1982. Includes Tug Fork basin and coal-hydrology monitoring data. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wdrWV81A
U.S. Geological Survey. “Water Data for the Nation: McDowell County, West Virginia.” Accessed October 16, 2026. Includes historical monitoring locations associated with Skygusty, South Fork, Freeman Branch, and the Tug Fork. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/country/US/state/54/county/047
U.S. Geological Survey. Reconnaissance of Potential Alternate Water Supply Sources for the City of Gary, West Virginia. Open-File Report 2025-1037. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2025. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2025/1037/ofr20251037.pdf
West Virginia Public Service Commission. McDowell County Public Service District water-system proceeding concerning service to approximately 150 customers in the Skygusty community. 2001. https://www.psc.state.wv.us/scripts/orders/ViewDocument.cfm?CaseActivityID=93233&Source=Archives
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. 2007 Calendar Year Annual Report. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 2007. See Roadfork Loadout at Skygusty. https://minesafety.wv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2007-CY-Annual-Report.pdf
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2015. Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 2015. See Prime Processing’s Roadfork Loadout at Skygusty. https://minesafety.wv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Annual-Report-FY-2015.pdf
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Directory of Surface Mines, 2023.” Charleston, WV: State of West Virginia, 2023. See Low Gap Surface Mine and Cactus Ridge operations near Skygusty and Gary. https://minesafety.wv.gov/PDFs/Annual%20Reports/2023%20Spreadsheets/74%20SANNDIR_2023_updated.pdf
“Mrs. Sallie Mitchem Dies at Skygusty Home.” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, April 4, 1946. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-apr-04-1946-p-1/
“Carl Woolridge of Skygusty.” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 17, 1967. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-dec-17-1967-p-1/
“Vestal Kenneth Hensley, 23, of Skygusty, Killed in Mine Accident.” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, October 2, 1973. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-oct-02-1973-p-1/
Bluefield Daily Telegraph. “Gary Regional Water Project.” August 10, 2000. The project included Pageton, Skygusty, and surrounding communities. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-aug-10-2000-p-1/
McDowell County WVGenWeb. “Skygusty Cemetery.” Cemetery transcription. Accessed October 16, 2026. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/cemeteries/skygustycem.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia.” Accessed October 16, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnams.html
Solins, Mrs. Samuel, and Mrs. Paul Jones. McDowell County History: A Pictorial History of McDowell County, West Virginia. Fort Worth, TX: University Supply and Equipment Company, 1959. Listed in West Virginia State Archives, McDowell County History Sources. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
McDowell County Historical Society. The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858-1995. War, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1995.
Sowers, Auburn Daniel. Facts About McDowell County, West Virginia. 1912. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. Wheeling, WV: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://books.google.com/books/about/Wyoming_and_McDowell_Counties.html?id=MsgbAAAAMAAJ
Schust, Alex P. Billion Dollar Coalfield: West Virginia’s McDowell County and the Industrialization of America. Harwood, MD: Two Mule Publishing, 2010. https://search.worldcat.org/title/666823075
Schust, Alex P. Gary Hollow: A History of the Largest Coal Mining Operation in the World. Harwood, MD: Two Mule Publishing, 2005.
Sullivan, Charles Kenneth. Coal Men and Coal Towns: Development of the Smokeless Coalfields of Southern West Virginia, 1873-1923. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Coal+Men+and+Coal+Towns+Charles+Kenneth+Sullivan
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. https://utpress.org/9780870493416/miners-millhands-and-mountaineers/
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Crandall+Shifflett+Coal+Towns
Johnston, David E. A History of Middle New River Settlements and Contiguous Territory. Huntington, WV: Standard Printing and Publishing Company, 1906. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/historyofmiddlen00davi/historyofmiddlen00davi_bw.pdf
Virginia. Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts Preserved in the Capitol at Richmond. Vol. 4. See Walter Crockett to Governor Edmund Randolph, February 16, 1789, 564.
Hamilton, Emory L. “Henry Harman’s Fight with the Indians.” In Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and Holston Rivers. https://www.usgenwebsites.org/vagenweb/russell/indian/76.html
Hamilton, Emory L. “The Capture of Jenny Wiley.” Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia. https://usgenwebsites.org/vagenweb/russell/indian/84.html
Author Note: This article reconstructs Skygusty through postal records, railroad documents, mining reports, school records, historic surveys, newspapers, and the surviving traces of families who lived there. The evidence shows that Skygusty was an established mountain community before the South Fork railroad expansion, while the exact origin of its unusual name remains part history and part regional tradition.