Appalachian Community Histories – Upland, McDowell County: Upland Coal & Coke, the Crozers, and Life Along Elkhorn Creek
Along U.S. Route 52 in eastern McDowell County, Upland is easy to pass without realizing that an industrial community once climbed the hillsides around the road and railroad. The name survives on maps and in state records, but much of Upland’s early history has to be pieced together from documents that call the place something else. Mine directories often placed the Upland Coal and Coke Company at Elkhorn. Railroad records treated Upland as part of the same crowded Elkhorn Creek corridor occupied by Crozer, Houston, Powhatan, and neighboring coal operations.
That confusion tells part of the story.
Upland did not develop as an isolated mountain settlement that later happened to acquire a mine. It was created during the opening of the Pocahontas coalfield, when railroad tracks, mineral leases, Pennsylvania capital, coke ovens, company houses, and underground workings transformed the narrow valleys of eastern McDowell County within only a few years.
The company that gave Upland much of its identity belonged to the business world of the Crozer family of Pennsylvania. For more than half a century, Upland Coal and Coke Company extracted the Pocahontas seam along Elkhorn Creek. Its history stretched from the great rush into McDowell County around 1890 to the final years of the Second World War, when the original Elkhorn companies that had built the valley were disappearing one after another.
A Community Born Along the Railroad
Before large-scale coal development, McDowell County remained one of the more isolated parts of West Virginia. That changed when the Norfolk and Western Railway pushed westward toward the rich coal beneath Flat Top Mountain.
The professional McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey traces the railroad into the Elkhorn area during the late 1880s. Maybeury developed first, followed by Switchback, Elkhorn, Upland, and Powhatan along the Norfolk and Western main line. In 1890, the railroad began constructing its Ohio Extension farther west, opening still more of McDowell County to industrial development.
The transformation happened with remarkable speed. The same survey reports that McDowell County had no miners listed in the state Department of Mines report for 1888, followed by 740 miners in 1889 and 1,347 in 1890. The county’s population increased from only 3,076 people in 1880 to about 7,300 in 1890, then continued upward as miners, railroad workers, merchants, engineers, carpenters, clerks, and their families poured into the coalfield.
A federal study published by the United States Census Office in 1892 captured the Elkhorn district during this period of explosive growth. It described the district as the mining territory along Elkhorn Creek on the northeastern slope of Flat Top Mountain and placed Elkhorn about eighty-two rail miles from Radford, Virginia. The railroad already connected the coalfield eastward toward Norfolk, while the extension toward the Ohio River promised access to an enormous western market.
Upland emerged inside that transportation revolution. Without the railroad, the coal beneath the surrounding mountains had little commercial value. With the railroad beside Elkhorn Creek, that same coal could travel hundreds of miles to furnaces, factories, railroads, and ports.
The Crozer Land Empire
Behind Upland stood another force nearly as important as the railroad: control of the land.
The 1892 federal census study reported that virtually all coal lands being worked in the Pocahontas Flat Top field in 1889 were controlled by two major interests, the Flat Top Coal Land Association and the Crozer Land Company. The Crozer company alone controlled about 18,000 acres in West Virginia.
The arrangement was complicated. The companies holding the mineral land did not necessarily operate every mine themselves. Instead, tracts were leased to coal companies that developed mines, hired workers, erected tipples, laid tracks, and produced coal and coke.
At the end of 1889, nine leases in the Elkhorn district covered approximately 9,959 acres of actual coal land. The federal report noted that the leases required not only the mining of coal but also the construction of coke ovens.
Upland grew directly from this world of Crozer landholding and leasing.
Professional historic preservation research dates Upland Coal and Coke Company to about 1890. Corporate information derived from the West Virginia Secretary of State’s records gives January 14, 1891, as the company’s West Virginia registration date and identifies it as a Pennsylvania corporation. These dates are not necessarily contradictory. Development could begin before the completion of formal registration in West Virginia.
The company’s Pennsylvania connections become clearer in contemporary directories from Upland, Pennsylvania. An 1897 directory identified John P. Crozer as president of Upland Coal and Coke Company. By 1902, the directory listed John P. Crozer as president, Francis E. Weston as vice president, Louis R. Page as treasurer, and Edward Crozer as secretary. The same directory placed the company’s office on Upland Avenue in Pennsylvania.
The West Virginia coal camp appears to have taken its name from this Pennsylvania home of the Crozer interests, carrying the identity of an eastern industrial family hundreds of miles into the mountains of McDowell County.
Mining the Pocahontas Seam
What attracted those investors was the coal.
The famous Pocahontas seam was thick, valuable, and well suited to the industrial markets of the period. The 1892 federal report found that the seam generally averaged about seven to seven and a half feet where it was being worked along the Elkhorn.
This was unusually desirable coal. Pocahontas coal became known for its high heating value and relatively low smoke, qualities that helped make southern West Virginia an important supplier to railroads and heavy industry.
Upland was therefore not merely one small mine serving nearby households. Coal leaving the community entered a transportation and industrial network that extended far outside Appalachia.
A remarkable piece of evidence showing how the Upland mine itself operated survives in Adam Thomas Shurick’s 1922 engineering book Coal Mining Costs. Shurick included a diagram specifically captioned as the double entry system of mining used by Upland Coal and Coke Company. He explained that mines in the Pocahontas field operated under royalty leases and that landholding interests, including the Crozer Land Association, exercised considerable influence over the methods used to work the coal.
The drawing is important because it takes Upland beyond a company name in a directory. Underground, miners moved through an organized network of parallel entries, rooms, haulage routes, and pillars designed to extract as much coal as practicable while maintaining access and ventilation.
Above ground, another piece of Upland’s industrial machinery survives in an archive hundreds of miles away. Purdue University’s William A. Swartz collection contains a historic photograph of Upland Coal and Coke Company locomotive No. 4, evidence of the smaller rail equipment needed to move material around a mine complex before railroad cars carried the finished product away.
Fire in the Coke Ovens
Coal was only part of Upland’s business during its early decades.
Coke was made by heating coal under controlled conditions until volatile materials were driven away, leaving a carbon rich fuel particularly valuable to iron and steel producers. Across the late nineteenth-century coalfields, rows of beehive coke ovens became some of the most distinctive features of the industrial landscape.
The federal census study reported that the first coke ovens in the Elkhorn district had been constructed in 1888. By the end of the decade, hundreds of ovens were operating or being built throughout the district. The rapid expansion was so great that federal investigators predicted the Pocahontas Flat Top field would become one of the country’s leading coking districts.
Upland entered that industry almost immediately after the company was created. Contemporary industrial reporting from 1891 noted coke ovens operating there, while an 1892 newspaper account credited the young company with 9,885 tons of coal during its first year of production. Those newspaper references survive today through a detailed compilation of McDowell County coal company records and provide an unusually early glimpse of Upland as an active operation.
Local historical research places a substantial group of beehive ovens at Upland and says that the ovens finally went cold around 1919. The exact number of Upland ovens deserves further verification against original company and mine records, but there is no question that coke production formed an important part of the operation’s early history.
The industrial landscape must have been difficult to mistake. Coal cars moved beside the creek. Smoke rose from locomotives and mine facilities. Rows of coke ovens glowed along the railroad corridor. Company houses occupied the limited ground between track, road, creek, and mountainside.
Upland had become a coal town.
Upland and Elkhorn Were Almost Impossible to Separate
One reason Upland can be difficult to research today is that historical records regularly gave its address as Elkhorn.
The West Virginia Department of Mines’ 1923 mine directory listed the company as Upland Coal and Coke Company, the mine simply as Upland, and the post office as Elkhorn.
That small entry explains why someone searching only for a separate Upland post office or town center can miss so much of its history. Upland was its own community and company settlement, but economically and administratively it existed inside the larger Elkhorn industrial landscape.
The 2018 coal heritage survey reaches the same conclusion. Its history of Elkhorn identifies three closely related operations in the immediate area: Crozer Coal and Coke Company, established in 1887, Houston Coal and Coke Company, also dating to 1887, and Upland Coal and Coke Company, dating to about 1890.
The companies shared a valley, railroad corridor, workforce region, and larger system of Crozer-controlled land. A person might work at Upland while receiving mail at Elkhorn, travel past Crozer property on the way home, and shop or worship elsewhere within the same cluster of settlements.
The boundaries that look distinct on a modern list of place names were much less distinct to the people living along Elkhorn Creek.
Company Houses, Scrip, and Life Outside the Mine
Like other mining settlements in southern West Virginia, Upland was more than a collection of industrial buildings.
Coal companies entering McDowell County found very little existing infrastructure capable of supporting the thousands of people arriving to work. Operators built houses, stores, boarding facilities, schools, churches, roads, and utility systems. The coal heritage survey describes the typical company town as a place where housing and public buildings were constructed around the mine, with workers often buying goods at company stores and using company-issued scrip. Housing commonly reflected occupational rank, with larger residences reserved for managers, engineers, doctors, and other higher status employees.
Material evidence survives for that system at Upland. Collectors have documented Upland Coal and Coke Company scrip marked with Elkhorn, West Virginia, including a five-dollar denomination. The token is a small surviving object from an economy in which the company did not merely employ workers. It played a major role in where they lived and how many of their everyday needs were met.
Upland’s workforce also belonged to the increasingly diverse population reshaping McDowell County. African American miners and immigrants from many parts of Europe entered the Pocahontas coalfield during these decades. The professional survey notes that mining towns often separated racial and ethnic groups into different residential sections even when men worked beside one another underground.
An unusual clue to Upland’s place in immigrant labor networks appeared in the Hungarian American miners’ newspaper Magyar Bányászlap in 1916. Among its listings of West Virginia coal companies appeared “Upland Coal and Coke Co., Elkhorn, W. Va.”
The listing does not by itself tell us how many Hungarian miners lived at Upland, but it does show that the company existed within an information network aimed at immigrant coal workers far beyond McDowell County.
Railroad Bridges, Creek Banks, and an Industrial Landscape
The geography of Upland imposed limits on everything the company tried to build.
Elkhorn Creek occupied the bottom of a narrow valley. The railroad needed the same limited strip of level ground, as did the road, houses, tipples, mine tracks, coke ovens, stores, and other buildings.
Norfolk and Western engineering records show how closely all of this infrastructure was packed together. A surviving 1916 railroad plan is titled “Plan showing encroachment upon Elkhorn Creek by Upland Coal & Coke Co.” Railroad records connect the Upland property with bridges and locations along the Norfolk and Western main line.
Such drawings are more than technical curiosities. They preserve the physical structure of a coal camp whose industrial buildings have largely disappeared.
At Upland, the mine could not be separated from the railroad, and the railroad could not be separated from the creek. Each competed for space in a valley surrounded by steep Appalachian slopes.
That geography shaped the community for generations.
Upland in the Courts
The West Virginia State Archives preserves another side of company life through McDowell County Circuit Court records.
In 1897, Alexander Briggs brought a case against Upland Coal and Coke Company. Vincent Walker brought another in 1899. In 1906, the Pocahontas Coke Company appeared against Upland Coal and Coke Company in litigation, followed in 1907 by a case styled on behalf of Upland Coal and Coke Company against Pocahontas Coke Company and others.
The surviving online index does not provide enough detail to reconstruct every dispute without examining the original case files, but their existence is important.
Coal companies were tied together through leases, sales arrangements, railroad agreements, property boundaries, wages, contracts, and other legal relationships. Upland was therefore part of a complicated corporate coalfield rather than an independent mine operating in isolation.
The court files also offer future researchers one of the best opportunities to recover details that ordinary published histories may have lost. Depositions, deeds, contracts, maps, witness statements, corporate officers, and property descriptions can sometimes survive inside such cases.
For a small place like Upland, records created by conflict may preserve more history than records created during ordinary times.
Upland at Its Mature Peak
By the 1920s, Upland Coal and Coke Company had survived for roughly three decades.
The 1923 Department of Mines report continued to identify Upland as an operating McDowell County mine with Elkhorn as its post office. State production tables placed the company among the many substantial producers that made McDowell County one of the centers of American coal mining.
Local Upland history also dates the replacement of an older wooden tipple with a steel structure to 1923. That detail fits a larger period of modernization across the industry, when mines that had begun during the age of mules, wooden structures, hand loading, and beehive coke were investing in heavier machinery and more permanent industrial plants.
The company’s Pennsylvania owners remained involved as well. A 1926 biographical directory described John Price Crozer as a director of Upland Coal and Coke Company while also serving as president of Crozer Coal and Coke Company and Crozer Land Association.
More than thirty years after coal development began, the corporate connection between Pennsylvania wealth and the McDowell County mountains remained visible.
The Last Years of the Upland Mine
The Great Depression, changing coal markets, mechanization, consolidation, and the gradual exhaustion of older workings reshaped McDowell County during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Yet Upland remained active surprisingly late.
Federal records from 1942 show that the Upland Mine had not yet disappeared. A proceeding before the federal Bituminous Coal Division concerned price classification for coal from the Crozer Mine and from Upland Mine, identified as Mine Index No. 197. The hearing had been held in Washington in October 1941.
That document places Upland firmly inside the regulated national coal market on the eve of America’s full participation in World War II.
The end came shortly afterward.
The professional McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey concludes that Crozer, Houston, and Upland had all ceased operation by 1943. Corporate information derived from the West Virginia Secretary of State records gives February 3, 1944, as the formal dissolution date of Upland Coal and Coke Company.
Local accounts suggest that limited activity associated with neighboring Crozer interests may have persisted briefly afterward, but the industrial system that had created Upland was clearly disappearing.
For a company born at the beginning of the Pocahontas boom, the timing was remarkable. Upland Coal and Coke had existed through the rise of the coalfield, the age of beehive coke, the First World War, the mechanization of mining, the Great Depression, and almost to the end of the Second World War.
The Community Outlived the Company
Closing the mine did not erase Upland.
People continued living there after the coal company disappeared. The old company town gradually became something different as buildings were sold, altered, abandoned, or demolished and families found work elsewhere.
West Virginia’s archival place name collection recorded “Upland,” with the variant “Uplan,” in McDowell County in 1933, evidence that the settlement had acquired an identity beyond the corporation whose name it carried.
Later records show that community life continued.
By the second half of the twentieth century, newspaper references included an Upland PTA and an Upland Powhatan Methodist society. Public utility records provide still stronger official evidence. A 1979 West Virginia Public Service Commission proceeding identified Upland among the communities served by the Elkhorn Public Service Company, which supplied water and electrical service through the old Elkhorn coal corridor.
The State of West Virginia still includes Upland in its list of McDowell County communities today.
The mine had vanished, but the place had not.
Why Upland Matters
Upland is easy to overlook because it never became Welch, Keystone, Gary, or one of the larger coalfield towns whose names carried far beyond McDowell County.
That is exactly why its history matters.
Upland represents the smaller communities that made the Pocahontas coalfield work. Its story begins with outside investors acquiring mineral land and a railroad cutting through a mountain valley. It continues through coke ovens, company houses, mine locomotives, scrip, immigrant labor networks, lawsuits, railroad engineering plans, and generations of miners working underground.
It also illustrates how misleading a place name can be. Someone looking only for “Upland, West Virginia” might conclude that little documentation survives. Search for Upland Coal and Coke Company, Elkhorn, Crozer Land Association, railroad mileposts, court cases, mine reports, and Pennsylvania corporate officers, and an entire community begins to reappear.
Today the constant movement of mine cars and locomotives is gone. The coke ovens no longer burn. The tipple that once handled coal from beneath the mountain has disappeared from the valley.
Yet Upland remains part of the geography of McDowell County, and beneath its modern landscape lies the physical and documentary evidence of more than fifty years in which this small community participated in one of the great industrial transformations in Appalachian history.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Census Office. Manufactures: Production of Coke, Pocahontas Flat-Top Field. Census Bulletin No. 200. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1890/bulletins/manufacturing/200-manufactures-production-of-coke.pdf
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Department of Mines, 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 Department of Mines. List of Coal Mines in West Virginia, July 1, 1921. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University. https://pec.lib.wvu.edu/catalog/55%2Ffa%2Ff1%2F57%2F55faf157-447a-4e63-9689-dc061ec945da
West Virginia Department of Mines. List of Coal Mines in West Virginia, July 1, 1927. J. J. Rutledge Collection, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/ark:/99999/165693
West Virginia State Archives. “State of West Virginia ex rel. Pocahontas Coke Company v. Upland Coal & Coke Company.” McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, case 125:1699, 1906. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
West Virginia State Archives. “State of West Virginia for Upland Coal and Coke Company v. Pocahontas Coke Company et al.” McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, case 200:1884, 1907. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
West Virginia State Archives. “State of West Virginia ex rel. v. Crozer Coal & Coke Company.” McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, case 125:1698, 1906. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
West Virginia State Archives. “State of West Virginia for Crozer Coal and Coke Company v. Pocahontas Coke Company et al.” McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, case 200:1883, 1907. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Plan Showing Encroachment upon Elkhorn Creek by Upland Coal & Coke Co.” Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives, 1916. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=253131
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Right of Way Required for Proposed Station Grounds through Lands of Crozer Land Company.” Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=196367
Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. “Upland Coal & Coke Co.” William A. Swartz Collection, MSP 320, Series 4, Sub-Group 20, File 42, Box 63. https://archives.lib.purdue.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/81961
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. “Brown Family Collection, 1806–2020.” Collection 4341. https://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/b/Brown4341.html
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997.” Ms.2004.002. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3408
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Crozer Coal and Coke Co., Elkhorn, West Virginia.” Norfolk & Western Historical Photograph Collection. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=46&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Coal+Companies%2C+Mines%2C+Tipples&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CTitle
West Virginia University, West Virginia History OnView. “Crozer Company and Town of Elkhorn, W. Va.” Catalog no. 038964. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/038964
West Virginia University, West Virginia History OnView. “Coke Ovens in Elkhorn, W. Va.” Catalog no. 038960. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/038960
West Virginia University, West Virginia History OnView. “Winter View of Elkhorn Creek, McDowell County, W. Va.” Catalog no. 039273. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/039273
Library of Congress. “McDowell Progress (Elkhorn, W. Va.).” Chronicling America. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016270576/
McDowell Progress (Elkhorn, WV), March 7, 1891. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/2016270576/1891-03-07/ed-1/?sp=1&st=text
McDowell Progress (Elkhorn, WV), March 14, 1891. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/2016270576/1891-03-14/ed-1/
McDowell Progress (Elkhorn, WV), March 21, 1891. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/2016270576/1891-03-21/ed-1/
Roanoke Daily Times, January 15, 1890. Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RDT18900115.1.1
Pittsburgh Press. “Industrial Notes.” March 30, 1891, 4. Citation and source reference preserved in the McDowell County scrip research collection. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
Times Leader. “Coke Operations in Virginia.” August 12, 1892, 7. Citation and source reference preserved in the McDowell County scrip research collection. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
Shurick, Adam Thomas. Coal Mining Costs. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1922. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Coal_mining_costs_%28IA_coalminingcosts00shurrich%29.pdf
Campbell, Marius R. Pocahontas Folio, Virginia-West Virginia. Geologic Atlas of the United States, Folio 26. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1896. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gf26
United States Bituminous Coal Division. Proceedings concerning Crozer Mine and Upland Mine, Mine Index No. 197. Federal Register, May 19, 1942. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1942-05-19/pdf/FR-1942-05-19.pdf
West Virginia Secretary of State. “Business Entity Search.” Corporate records for the Upland Coal and Coke Company. https://apps.wv.gov/SOS/BusinessEntitySearch/
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “West Virginia Mine Map Archives.” https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/west-virginia-mine-map-archives/
West Virginia State Archives. “Place Names in West Virginia.” Entry for Upland/Uplan, McDowell County. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamu.html
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County History Sources.” https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia State Archives. “Vital Research Records.” https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
West Virginia Public Service Commission. Elkhorn Public Service Company, Case No. 9524, 1979. https://www.psc.state.wv.us/scripts/orders/ViewDocument.cfm?CaseActivityID=6236&Source=Archives
West Virginia Public Service Commission. Elkhorn Public Service Company, Case No. 80-544-W-42T, 1981. https://www.psc.state.wv.us/scripts/orders/ViewDocument.cfm?CaseActivityID=10775&Source=Archives
Kemp v. Boyd, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, 1981. https://law.justia.com/cases/west-virginia/supreme-court/1981/15000-3.html
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia Division of Highways, 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
National Park Service. “John J. Lincoln House.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. 1992. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/4258ac89-a22c-464f-b623-7f625a61903d
Chambers, S. Allen Jr. “John J. Lincoln House.” SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural Historians and University of Virginia Press. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-MD3
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Smokeless Coal Operators Association Historical Records, 1886–1961.” A&M 0049. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/agents/corporate_entities/124
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “William Archer Research Papers.” https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6481
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. https://wvupress.freesoftwarepc.com/node/35
Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. https://www.wvupressonline.com/9781940425795/life-work-and-rebellion-in-the-coal-fields/
Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. https://books.google.com/books/about/Coal_Class_and_Color.html?id=nF-963i4uiUC
Lambie, Joseph T. From Mine to Market: The History of Coal Transportation on the Norfolk and Western Railway. New York: New York University Press, 1954. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1821
Myers, Mark S. “McDowell County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
McGehee, C. Stuart. “Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1821
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “Norfolk & Western Railway.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1629
“Upland Coal & Coke Company.” Magyar Bányászlap, 1916. https://misc.bibl.u-szeged.hu/60529/1/magyar_banyaszlap_1916_038.pdf
McDowell Times, May 14, 1915. Dangerous Press digital collection. https://dangerouspress.org/papers/mcdowell-times/1915-05-14
McDowell Times, August 9, 1940. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1940-08-09/ed-1/seq-4/
Author Note: Upland is one of those McDowell County communities whose history survives more clearly in mine reports, railroad records, court files, and company documents than in conventional town histories. This article brings those scattered records together to preserve the story of the people, company, and industrial landscape that developed along Elkhorn Creek.