Appalachian Community Histories – Algoma, McDowell County: Coal, the No. 7 Mine Disaster, and the Company Store That Survived
In the narrow valley north of Northfork, the community of Algoma grew from one of the most valuable coal seams in the Appalachian Mountains. Railroad tracks, mine portals, company houses, coke ovens, offices, and a company store once crowded the limited ground between the hills. Thousands of tons of coal passed through the camp, while generations of miners entered workings that stretched beneath the mountains of McDowell County.
Algoma was never a large incorporated town. It was a company-built community whose existence depended upon coal. The Algoma Coal and Coke Company controlled much of the local economy, provided many of the services residents needed, and shaped the physical appearance of the settlement. The company store became Algoma’s commercial and social center, while the mine supplied the wages that kept the community alive.
The surviving company store is the most visible reminder of that world. Its yellow tile, red brick bands, broad display windows, and modern commercial design reflect an era when coal companies still expected the southern West Virginia coalfields to remain productive for decades. Yet Algoma’s history cannot be told only through the store. It is also the story of railroad expansion, immigrant labor, corporate power, industrial danger, changing mining technology, and the seventeen men who died in the Algoma No. 7 mine explosion in September 1902.
A Coal Camp Beside Northfork
Algoma developed in the mountainous eastern portion of McDowell County, near Northfork and the Norfolk and Western Railway. The surrounding landscape left little level ground for settlement. Houses, businesses, mine buildings, railroad facilities, and roads had to be fitted into the valley beside the waterway and beneath steep wooded slopes.
The location placed Algoma within the Pocahontas coalfield, one of the most productive and commercially important coal regions in the United States. The Pocahontas seams became famous for high-quality smokeless coal that burned with relatively little smoke and possessed qualities desired by railroads, steelmakers, manufacturers, and naval customers.
Before industrial development, this part of southern West Virginia was sparsely populated and geographically isolated. Large-scale mining became possible only after railroad construction connected the coalfield with distant markets. The railroad did more than carry coal away from the mines. It brought machinery, building materials, merchandise, company officials, miners, and their families into communities that had previously been difficult to reach.
Algoma grew as part of that transformation. Its history was tied from the beginning to the relationship between coal and rail transportation. The mine produced the fuel, the railroad carried it to market, and the company town supplied the labor force required to keep production moving.
Organizing the Algoma Coal and Coke Company
The Algoma Coal and Coke Company was organized in 1890. West Virginia corporate records identify Algoma as the company’s principal place of business. The original corporation was later amended in 1940 so that its existence could continue perpetually, although the company ultimately filed for voluntary dissolution on April 2, 1957.
One of the important figures in Algoma’s early history was William Harris Thomas. Thomas was part of the network of businessmen, investors, engineers, and coal operators who developed the Pocahontas field during the late nineteenth century. In 1890, he became general manager of the Algoma Coal and Coke Company, which he had helped organize. His later career connected Algoma with the wealthy coal operators associated with Bramwell, where industrial fortunes were displayed in some of the most elaborate residences in southern West Virginia.
The company began shipping coal from the Pocahontas No. 3 seam in 1891. The arrival of production required more than a mine opening. The company needed railroad sidings, loading facilities, equipment, offices, housing, storage buildings, and a dependable workforce. It also needed a way to supply that workforce with food, clothing, tools, and household necessities.
Those needs led to the construction of Algoma as a company community. The settlement was not simply a town that happened to stand beside a mine. It was an industrial landscape planned around the extraction and transportation of coal.
The Making of a Company Town
Coal companies established communities throughout southern West Virginia because existing towns were often too distant to house and serve the large numbers of workers required by industrial mining. A company might provide houses, a store, offices, a school, a church building, medical services, and recreational facilities. These services made permanent settlement possible, but they also gave the company extraordinary influence over daily life.
A miner might work in a company-owned mine, rent a company-owned house, purchase goods from a company-owned store, and receive treatment from a company-supported physician. In some camps, even the roads, water systems, and gathering places stood on company property.
Algoma followed this pattern. A simple store probably served the earliest workers, but the company constructed a more substantial wooden store in 1894. The building became a place where miners’ families could obtain groceries, clothing, household goods, tools, and other necessities without traveling to a distant commercial center.
The store also contained or stood near other company functions. Algoma’s business offices, post office, and medical services became connected with the commercial center of the community. Residents visited the store not only to shop, but also to collect mail, conduct business, receive information, and encounter neighbors.
Competition from nearby Northfork encouraged the Algoma company store to offer a wider range of goods and services than stores in more isolated camps. Coal operator William Beury later argued that the presence of independent merchants nearby forced the Algoma store to become more modern and competitive. His perspective was that of management, but it suggests that residents were not always entirely dependent upon a single company outlet.
Life Beneath the Mountains
The people who built Algoma came from many backgrounds. Some were local Appalachian families who had lived in the mountains before industrial mining arrived. Others came from neighboring states or from mining regions elsewhere in the country. Immigrants from Europe and Black workers from the American South were recruited into the expanding coalfield.
The census schedules, company records, mine reports, newspapers, and death records associated with Algoma reveal the outlines of a diverse industrial community. Miners lived beside foremen, store clerks, railway employees, physicians, teachers, boardinghouse operators, and company officials. Women maintained households, raised children, took in boarders, worked in domestic service, taught school, and participated in the religious and social life of the camp.
Daily life followed the schedule of the mine. Whistles, shifts, railroad movements, and production demands shaped the rhythm of the community. Men entered the workings before daylight or returned after dark. Coal dust settled on clothing and buildings. Loaded cars moved toward the tipple, where coal was sorted and transferred for shipment.
Every family understood that underground mining could turn deadly without warning. Roof falls, machinery, explosives, haulage equipment, fire, gas, and coal dust threatened workers even in mines considered well operated. At Algoma, that danger became unmistakable in September 1902.
The Algoma No. 7 Mine Explosion
On the morning of September 15, 1902, an explosion tore through the Algoma Coal and Coke Company’s No. 7 mine. Seventeen miners lost their lives. The disaster became one of the early fatal explosions officially recorded in West Virginia’s long history of coal-mining tragedy.
The state mine investigation reconstructed a dangerous sequence of events inside the workings. The No. 7 operation was a drift mine in the Pocahontas seam. Investigators reported that explosive gas had not previously been considered a serious problem throughout most of the mine, but gas had been encountered in a developing section far from the drift entrance.
A ventilation fan had been positioned near the affected area. The fan was not operated continuously over the weekend. When work resumed on Monday morning, miners entered the mine and the fan was started. According to the state investigation, the movement of air pushed accumulated gas toward an entry where workers carried open lamps.
The gas ignited. The resulting explosion damaged ventilation doors and brattices, disrupting the controlled movement of air through the mine. Smoke and afterdamp spread through the workings. Afterdamp, the poisonous mixture of gases left after an explosion, could overcome miners who survived the initial blast.
Rescue and recovery work continued through the night. The final victim was reportedly brought from the mine during the early morning hours of September 16. The coroner’s jury concluded that gas had been ignited by an open lamp carried into the dangerous area, although such conclusions must be read within the larger history of mine management, ventilation practices, safety enforcement, and the use of open flames underground.
The disaster left families without husbands, fathers, sons, and wage earners. Death certificates, census records, cemetery records, newspapers, and possible coroner’s files may preserve additional information about the victims, but many details of their lives remain outside the best-known published accounts.
The tragedy also occurred before the creation of the modern federal mine-safety system. State inspectors investigated disasters and issued recommendations, but enforcement remained limited. Coal companies and mine officials possessed considerable control over working conditions, while miners frequently faced pressure to accept hazardous work because their families depended upon their wages.
Recovery and Continued Production
The 1902 explosion did not end mining at Algoma. As happened after many coalfield disasters, production eventually resumed. The company repaired damaged workings, continued developing the property, and remained an important producer in McDowell County.
By 1930, the Algoma mines had been operating for approximately forty years. A contemporary article in the West Virginia Review marked the company’s long history, while Norfolk and Western Railway photographers documented the mine entrance, tipple, tracks, and industrial buildings. One surviving photograph, dated 1930, shows the Algoma mine entrance as part of a mature coal operation connected directly to the railroad system.
The railroad remained essential. Coal companies depended upon freight rates, available railcars, and access to industrial customers. During the Great Depression, Algoma joined other coal producers in a legal challenge involving emergency railroad charges. The 1935 case identified Algoma as one of 179 mining corporations from West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee that shipped coal in interstate commerce. The dispute demonstrated how decisions made by railroads, regulators, and federal courts could affect the survival of individual mining communities.
Algoma’s production connected the community to a much larger industrial economy. Coal taken from beneath McDowell County could power locomotives, factories, furnaces, and other facilities hundreds of miles away. Yet the wealth created by that coal did not remain entirely in the community. Profits moved through corporate offices, rail networks, investment groups, and distant markets, while miners and their families lived with the physical costs of extraction.
The Store at the Center of Algoma
For decades, Algoma’s wooden company store served as the community’s commercial heart. Its shelves held the goods required for everyday life, while its offices connected residents to the administrative machinery of the coal company.
Company stores have often been remembered only through stories of scrip and economic control. Those issues were real. A company that controlled employment, housing, and local commerce possessed considerable power over its workers. Store credit could bind families to future wages, and prices could become a source of anger or resentment.
At the same time, the store was also a social institution. People met there, exchanged news, collected mail, arranged medical care, and learned about events throughout the camp. Children accompanied parents on shopping trips. Miners stopped before or after shifts. Store porches, steps, and nearby roads became informal gathering spaces.
The importance of the building reflected the limited geography of the coal camp. There was no broad downtown district. The company store filled many of the roles that a courthouse square or commercial street might have served elsewhere.
The Fire of 1947
On November 30, 1947, fire destroyed Algoma’s older wooden store and company offices. The loss removed one of the community’s central buildings, but the company quickly planned a replacement.
Rather than reconstructing another traditional frame store, Algoma entered the postwar period with an ambitious modern building. The new store was completed in 1948 and designed by Bluefield architect Hassel T. Hicks. Later architectural research estimated its cost at approximately $250,000, a considerable investment that reflected confidence in the future of the mining operation.
The new building stood two stories tall beneath a flat roof. Its exterior combined glazed yellow tile with horizontal bands of red brick. Large display windows faced the road, while a sheltered entrance welcomed customers into the commercial level. The building’s clean lines and horizontal emphasis reflected the Streamlined Moderne influence found in mid-twentieth-century architecture.
The side facing the railroad included a delivery entrance that allowed merchandise to be moved efficiently from railcars or trucks into the store. Elevators carried goods between levels. Offices and medical facilities occupied the upper floor, preserving the older relationship between commerce, company administration, and health care.
Inside, the store adopted features associated with the emerging self-service supermarket. Customers could move through grocery departments and carry selections toward checkout counters rather than relying entirely upon clerks to retrieve merchandise. This placed the Algoma store at the meeting point between the traditional coal-camp commissary and the modern American retail store.
Its size and design made a statement. The company was not constructing a temporary building for a declining camp. It was creating a durable commercial center with modern materials, advanced equipment, and space for several community functions.
A Modern Building in an Old Industrial System
The store’s modern appearance did not change the economic foundation of Algoma. Coal still determined whether families had wages, whether houses remained occupied, and whether businesses could survive.
The late 1940s and 1950s brought rapid changes to the coal industry. Mechanized cutting, loading, and transportation increased the amount of coal that each worker could produce. Mechanization could improve efficiency and reduce some forms of physical labor, but it also reduced the number of workers needed to operate a mine.
Communities built to house large manual workforces became vulnerable. A mine might produce as much or more coal while employing fewer people. Families moved in search of work, school enrollment declined, and houses once filled with miners stood empty.
Corporate consolidation also changed Algoma. Larger companies acquired properties that had been developed by independent operators. Management decisions increasingly came from offices outside the community.
Island Creek and the End of the Original Company
Island Creek Coal Company acquired the Algoma operation in 1957. Contemporary descriptions presented the property as a mechanized mine with hundreds of employees and substantial daily production. The acquisition occurred during the same year that the original Algoma Coal and Coke Company formally dissolved.
The sale did not immediately end mining or erase the community. The store, houses, railroad facilities, and mine structures continued to serve the operation. Yet ownership had changed, and Algoma was now part of a larger corporate system.
United Pocahontas Coal Company later acquired the property during the 1960s. The Algoma store continued to contain offices and remained connected with regional mining operations. United Pocahontas reportedly maintained its headquarters at Algoma for several years before transferring administrative functions elsewhere.
These ownership changes reflected a broad transition across the Appalachian coalfields. Companies merged, sold properties, reorganized subsidiaries, and concentrated production in the most profitable mines. Communities that had once been closely identified with a single company name passed through several owners within a generation.
The Store Becomes a Health Clinic
After its period as a company store, the Algoma building found a new use as a medical facility. The Tug River Health Association occupied the property and adapted portions of the building for clinical services.
The transition was appropriate in one sense. Medical care had long been connected with the store and company offices. The building continued serving residents, although no longer as the center of a company-controlled commercial system.
The Algoma Coal and Coke Company Store was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 17, 1992. Its nomination recognized both its architectural importance and its relationship to the history of coal-company commerce in McDowell County.
The National Register designation did not freeze the building in time or guarantee its preservation. Like many coalfield landmarks, the store faced the challenges of vacancy, declining population, limited investment, weather exposure, and the high cost of maintaining a large historic structure.
What Remains at Algoma
Algoma today is quieter than the industrial community recorded in early twentieth-century photographs. Much of the mining landscape has disappeared or become difficult to recognize beneath vegetation. Railroad grades, slate dumps, foundations, altered hillsides, mine openings, and scattered buildings still reveal portions of the old community.
The company store remains Algoma’s most prominent landmark. Even in deterioration, its broad facade and modern design distinguish it from the surrounding landscape. The building recalls the final period when coal companies invested heavily in the commercial and social infrastructure of their camps.
Historic photographs preserve other parts of Algoma that have vanished. Images in the Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection show mine entrances, tipples, railroad connections, and industrial structures. Mine drawings held by Virginia Tech may reveal underground workings, ventilation systems, property boundaries, and engineering plans that cannot be understood from the present surface landscape alone.
The Eastern Regional Coal Archives in Bluefield holds an Algoma file, an Algoma photograph file, and broader collections concerning company stores and southern West Virginia mining. Many of these materials have not been fully digitized. The most complete history of Algoma may therefore remain scattered across corporate papers, ledgers, maps, newspapers, photographs, court files, census schedules, and family records.
Remembering the Seventeen
The miners killed on September 15, 1902, deserve a place at the center of Algoma’s history. Industrial histories can become dominated by companies, production figures, buildings, and prominent operators. Those records are important, but they can make the people who performed the work appear secondary.
Each of the seventeen dead belonged to a household or community. Their deaths altered the lives of widows, children, parents, siblings, friends, and fellow workers. The disaster was not only an event in a state mining report. It was a rupture that families carried long after the mine reopened.
Recovering the victims’ individual stories would require careful work in death records, census schedules, newspapers, church registers, cemetery records, immigration files, and probate documents. Such research could reveal where the men were born, how long they had lived at Algoma, whom they left behind, and where they were buried.
Their absence is itself part of the historical record. It reminds us that the growth of the Pocahontas coalfield demanded a human cost that cannot be measured only in tonnage or corporate profit.
Why Algoma Matters
Algoma represents the full history of the southern West Virginia coalfields in one small community. It began during the railroad-driven industrial expansion of the late nineteenth century. It attracted investment, workers, and families to an isolated mountain valley. It produced valuable coal for national markets and developed the institutions of a company town.
It also endured one of the region’s deadly mine explosions. The community rebuilt, continued producing coal, modernized its facilities, and constructed an unusually ambitious company store after World War II. Later, mechanization and corporate consolidation reduced the need for the kind of company community that had created Algoma in the first place.
The surviving store stands between those eras. Its form reflects modern retailing and postwar optimism, but its purpose belonged to the older company-town system. It was designed to serve a community whose work, homes, health services, commerce, and transportation were all connected to coal.
Algoma’s story is not simply one of decline. It is a story of labor, endurance, adaptation, and memory. The physical town may be smaller, but the records left by its miners, families, companies, photographers, architects, inspectors, and physicians remain extensive.
The mountains around Algoma no longer echo with the same constant movement of mine cars and railroad traffic. Yet beneath those mountains lie the workings where generations labored, where seventeen men died in 1902, and where the coal that helped power industrial America was cut from the earth.
The company store still faces the old transportation corridor, its windows looking toward the landscape that once sustained it. It remains not merely as an abandoned commercial building, but as a monument to a community created by coal and forever changed by its passing.
Sources & Further Reading
Sone, Stacy. “Algoma Coal and Coke Company Store.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Charleston: West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office, December 16, 1991. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Algoma-coal-and-coke-company-store.pdf
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. “Coal Company Stores in McDowell County.” National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, 1991–1992. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/64500726.pdf
Aurora Research Associates, LLC. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia Division of Highways, November 15, 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
West Virginia Secretary of State. “The Algoma Coal and Coke Company.” Business Organization Search. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/organization.aspx?org=99294
West Virginia Chief Mine Inspector. Twenty-First Annual Report: Coal Mines in the State of West Virginia, U.S.A., for the Year Ending June 30, 1903. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1904, 117–122. https://archive.org/details/annualreportdept21west
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “West Virginia Mine Disasters, 1884 to Present.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/wv-mine-disasters-1884-to-present/
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Mining in West Virginia: A Capsule History.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/mining-in-west-virginia-a-capsule-history/
Forbes, J. J., and C. W. Owings. Coal-Mine Explosions in West Virginia, 1883–1933. Information Circular 6802. Washington, DC: United States Bureau of Mines, 1934. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67009/
Fay, Albert H. Coal-Mine Fatalities in the United States, 1870–1914, with Statistics of Coal Production, Labor, and Mining Methods. Bulletin 115. Washington, DC: United States Bureau of Mines, 1916. https://archive.org/download/cu31924003627878/cu31924003627878.pdf
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Algoma Coal & Coke Co., Algoma, West Virginia.” Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection, identifier NW1414, August 1931. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/36319
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Algoma Coal and Coke Company, Algoma, West Virginia, Mine Entrance.” Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection, identifier NW1416, 1930. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/36321
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Algoma, West Virginia, Coal Tipple.” Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection, identifier NW1417, February 1930. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/36322
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997.” Manuscript Collection MS 2004-002. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3408
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “Eastern Regional Coal Archives.” Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://craftmemorial.lib.wv.us/eastern-regional-coal-archives
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Record Group 28, Microfilm Publication M1126. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Chambers, S. Allen Jr. “Algoma Coal and Coke Company Store.” SAH Archipedia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-MD6
Algoma Coal & Coke Co. v. United States. 11 F. Supp. 487. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 1935. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/11/487/1975851/
Algoma Coal & Coke Co. v. Alexander. 136 W. Va. 521, 66 S.E.2d 201. Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, 1951. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/algoma-coal-coke-co-886753307
Beury v. Beury. 127 F. Supp. 786. United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, 1954. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/127/786/1664016/
Pocahontas Operators’ Association. The Story of Pocahontas, 1863–1915: A Good Coal. Roanoke, VA: Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company, 1915. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.storyofpocahonta00poca/
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/Billion-dollar-coalfield-%3A-West-Virginia%27s-McDowell-County-and-the-industrialization-of-America/oclc/666823075
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/
Lewis, Ronald L. Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. https://uncpress.org/9780807862971/transforming-the-appalachian-countryside/
Tams, William Purviance Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Originally published 1963. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2001. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35
Ferrell, G. M. Hydrologic Characteristics of Abandoned Coal Mines Used as Sources of Public Water Supply in McDowell County, West Virginia. Water-Resources Investigations Report 92-4073. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 1992. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/wri924073
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. Hydrogeology, Groundwater Flow, and Groundwater Quality of an Abandoned Underground Coal-Mine Aquifer, Elkhorn Area, West Virginia. Bulletin 46. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 2012. https://downloads.wvgs.wvnet.edu/pubcat/docs/Bulletin_46_Hydrogeology%2C%20Groundwater%20Abandoned%20Coal%20Mine%20Aquifer%2C%20Elkhorn%2C%20WV_%282012%29.pdf
Jarrett, Rick. “Coal Mine Disasters.” The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last modified April 24, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1307
“The Coal Industry.” The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1301
National Park Service. “Introduction to the West Virginia Mine Wars.” Last updated September 27, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/introduction-to-the-west-virginia-mine-wars.htm
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection and topoView.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Fatalities in West Virginia Coal Mines, 1883–1925.” J. Davitt McAteer Papers Regarding Mining Safety, box 176, folder 61. West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/228835
DellaMea, Chris. “Algoma, West Virginia.” Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/flattop/algoma-wv-coal-camp/algoma-wv-coal-camp.htm
“Algoma.” Abandoned. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://abandonedonline.net/location/algoma/
Author Note: Algoma’s history survives through mine reports, photographs, court cases, corporate records, and the landmark company store that still overlooks the old railroad corridor. Readers with family photographs, workplace records, or stories from Algoma are encouraged to help preserve the community’s fuller history.