Appalachian Community Histories – Amonate, Tazewell County: Faraday, Pocahontas Fuel, and Coal Camp Memory on the Border
Amonate sits in the northwestern part of Tazewell County, Virginia, close to the West Virginia line and tied historically to the Pocahontas coalfield. It is one of those Appalachian places where the map does not tell the full story. On paper, Amonate belongs to Virginia. In mining history, it also belongs to McDowell County, West Virginia, to the Norfolk and Western Railway, to Pocahontas Fuel Company, and to the generations of families who lived in a company town built around coal.
The community was once known as Faraday. In the 1920s, as the Pocahontas coalfield continued expanding, the Pocahontas Fuel Company developed Amonate as a planned coal camp to serve a new mining operation. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources later described Amonate, Bishop, and Jewell Ridge as among the most evocative surviving settings from Tazewell County’s company town era.
That phrase matters because Amonate was more than a cluster of houses near a mine. It was a built environment created by the coal company. The roads, houses, store, school, church, recreation spaces, rail spurs, and mine works formed one connected system. The same company that offered work also shaped daily life.
Before Amonate
Coal mining in Tazewell County reaches back to the early 1880s, when commercial production in the Pocahontas field began transforming the mountains along the Virginia and West Virginia border. The coal beds in northwestern Tazewell County became part of a larger industrial landscape that depended on railroads, underground mines, company housing, and outside markets.
Amonate’s rise came later than the early mines at Pocahontas, Virginia. By the 1920s, coal companies had learned how to build towns quickly around new operations. A new mine did not only need miners. It needed a railroad spur, a tipple, repair shops, company houses, a store, a school, a doctor, and social institutions that could keep families in place.
Railroad records show how closely Amonate’s story was tied to transportation. Norfolk and Western Railway drawings from 1924 and 1925 document proposed spur tracks up Beech Fork and tipple track layouts for the Pocahontas Corporation. Related drawings refer to Operation No. 31 north of Amonate, on the McDowell County, West Virginia side of the border. Those records reveal Amonate as a border coal community from the beginning, with Virginia homes and West Virginia mine works linked by rail, creek, and mountain.
From Faraday to Amonate
In 1925, the Clinch Valley News announced that the Pocahontas Corporation had gotten out its first car of coal from the new operation. The article described “Amonate” as the name of a new coal brand, a name connected to Pocahontas. What had been Faraday in earlier references became Amonate in the public language of the company and the coal market.
The change of name reflected a larger act of company identity. Pocahontas Fuel Company and its related corporate predecessors had built their reputation on the high quality smokeless coal of the Pocahontas field. Naming a coal brand and a community after Pocahontas tied Amonate to one of the most famous coalfield names in America.
The community grew quickly. The Tazewell County architectural survey states that by 1925 Amonate had a population of about 700. It also had paved sidewalks, telephones, electric lights, a company store, a post office, a barber shop, a tennis court, a baseball field, a depot, and a meeting hall that served at different times as a church, movie house, and union hall.
That list shows why Amonate could be remembered as a model coal camp. To families arriving from farms, other coal towns, or nearby hollows, electricity, sidewalks, sports fields, and a company store could make the camp feel modern. Yet the same system also made the company central to everything. Work, housing, credit, transportation, recreation, and community identity all revolved around coal.
Life in the Company Town
Coal camps were places of both opportunity and control. The company town offered employment, housing, and community, but it also placed families inside a system where the employer controlled much of the built world around them. In Amonate, the company store stood at the center of that world. The school, church, post office, and recreation spaces helped turn the camp into a community rather than a temporary work site.
The houses told part of the story. Historic survey records list company houses, duplex company houses, a superintendent’s house, a doctor’s house and office, stores, and the Amonate Methodist Church. These buildings show the social order of a coal camp in wood, brick, and road layout. Managers, doctors, workers, and families all lived near the mine, but not always in the same kind of house or under the same conditions.
The Methodist church became one of the most recognizable buildings in the community. The architectural survey describes it as a Gothic Revival style frame church associated with the period of improved production around 1929. A new brick school also appeared during this period, showing that Amonate had become a family settlement with children, teachers, church services, and public gatherings.
In camp life, work underground and life aboveground could not be separated. A miner’s shift shaped the rhythm of the household. The sound of trains, coal cars, whistles, and machinery formed part of the daily background. Women managed homes, children walked to school, and men entered the mine knowing that the mountain provided a paycheck only at great risk.
The Mine, the Plant, and the Pocahontas System
Amonate served mines connected to the Pocahontas Fuel Company system, especially the No. 31 operation. Archival sources at Virginia Tech preserve maps, mine plans, mechanical drawings, architectural drawings, photographs, and ledgers from the Pocahontas Mines Collection. These include records connected to the Amonate mine area, Amonate shop plans, mine work ledgers, and drawings for coal cleaning facilities.
A photograph in West Virginia History OnView shows the Amonate Preparation Plant of the Pocahontas Fuel Company, with coal cars outside the large plant. The image captures the industrial side of Amonate that ordinary road travel can miss. A coal camp was not only houses and a store. It was also a system of extraction, cleaning, loading, and shipment.
The preparation plant linked local labor to national markets. Coal cut from seams under the border mountains moved through underground entries, haulage systems, tipples, cleaning plants, railroad tracks, and finally to customers far from Tazewell County. Amonate’s daily life was local, but its product traveled far beyond the valley.
The U.S. Geological Survey later mapped the Amonate quadrangle in detail. Those studies placed Amonate within a coal bearing landscape that crossed Buchanan and Tazewell counties in Virginia and McDowell County in West Virginia. The geology explains why the town existed where it did. The coal seam, not scenic convenience, determined the pattern of settlement.
Injury, Medicine, and the Cost of Coal
The human cost of mining appears clearly in federal photographs from the 1946 to 1947 Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry. Several images connected to the Pocahontas Corporation at the Amonate Mine show injured miners receiving treatment in Richlands, Virginia.
One photograph identifies Paris Duty, an Amonate Mine worker, in a hospital ward after a mine coal car accident broke his leg. Another identifies Robert Lee Donley, who worked at the Amonate Mine and lost a leg after being crushed. Other images show medical treatment, hospital rooms, and the larger world of coalfield health care.
These photographs are difficult but important. They remind us that mine history is not only production totals, company names, and rail maps. It is also broken bones, amputations, widows, children, hospital bills, and long recoveries. Every coal camp had men who came home hurt, men who did not come home at all, and families who measured coal’s value against what it took from them.
The 1957 No. 31 Mine Explosion
On December 27, 1957, disaster struck the Pocahontas Fuel Company No. 31 Mine near Amonate. The official mine disaster record lists a gas explosion at Amonate with eleven deaths. The Bureau of Mines final report identified the mine as No. 31 of the Pocahontas Fuel Company in McDowell County, West Virginia, near Amonate, Tazewell County, Virginia.
The explosion occurred in the evening. Eleven miners were killed by burns and the force of the blast. Fourteen other men were trapped when the explosion damaged ventilation structures. They built a barricade and waited until a recovery crew reached them later that night.
Investigators concluded that methane had accumulated in part of the mine and was ignited by an electric arc or spark from equipment or a power conductor. Coal dust helped carry the explosion. The language of the report is technical, but the meaning for Amonate was personal. Eleven men did not return to their families.
The disaster also shows how complicated Amonate’s geography could be. The community was in Virginia, but the mine was officially tied to McDowell County, West Virginia. Coal did not follow county lines neatly. Neither did grief.
Decline and Memory
Like many coal camps, Amonate changed as the coal industry changed. Mechanization reduced the need for labor. Markets shifted. Company towns lost the all encompassing structure that had once defined them. Some buildings disappeared. Others survived under new uses. Houses that began as company property became private homes. The store, school, church, and rail features became memory anchors for people who had lived through the camp years.
The later history of the No. 31 mine continued into environmental and industrial records. The Environmental Protection Agency’s abandoned coal mine methane database includes Amonate No. 31 in Tazewell County and lists it as sealed in 1994. Even after a mine closes, the underground world it created can remain part of the landscape through subsidence, drainage, methane, sealed portals, and memory.
Amonate’s story did not end with decline. Community memory remained strong. Photographs, family stories, archival maps, church records, school memories, and coal camp reunions helped preserve the place in the minds of former residents and descendants. More recently, local preservation energy has gathered around Amonate Always, a nonprofit formed to clean up the community, help neighbors, hold events, and make Amonate safer and stronger for people of all ages.
Virginia Tech’s Community Design Assistance Center has also worked with Amonate on preservation and revitalization planning. Its recent report, Amonate: A Coal Camp Through Time, documents the past and present of the community and identifies possible paths for preservation, rural tourism, and community renewal. That work treats Amonate not as an abandoned relic, but as a place with history, residents, and a future.
Why Amonate Matters
Amonate matters because it tells the story of the Appalachian coal camp in one concentrated place. It shows how geology shaped settlement, how corporations built towns, how railroads opened mountains, how miners and families built community inside company systems, and how disaster became part of local memory.
It also shows why preservation matters in the coalfields. A company house is not just an old building. A church is not just a church. A store foundation, a road curve, a rail grade, a school site, or a mine map can hold the story of how people lived, worked, prayed, played, organized, suffered, and survived.
For Tazewell County, Amonate stands with places like Bishop, Pocahontas, Boissevain, and Jewell Ridge as part of a larger coalfield inheritance. These communities were tied to some of the most important coal seams in the United States, but their deepest history belongs to the people who made homes there.
Today, Amonate is quieter than it was when coal cars rolled from the plant and children walked past company houses to school. Yet the old camp still speaks. It speaks through maps in archives, through government reports, through photographs of miners and hospitals, through the memory of the 1957 explosion, and through neighbors still working to care for the place.
Amonate was built for coal, but its history is about more than coal. It is about a mountain community that rose from a company plan, endured the dangers of the mine, and left behind one of the clearest surviving stories of coal camp life along the Virginia and West Virginia border.
Sources & Further Reading
Park, William R., Edward M. Lewis, John Zeleskey, and United States Bureau of Mines Health and Safety District C. Final Report of Major Mine Explosion Disaster: No. 31 Mine, Pocahontas Fuel Company, Incorporated, McDowell County, West Virginia, near Amonate, Tazewell County, Virginia, December 27, 1957. Mount Hope, WV: Bureau of Mines, Health and Safety District C, 1957. https://search.worldcat.org/title/21480515
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “WV Mine Disasters 1884 to Present.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/wv-mine-disasters-1884-to-present/
Worsham, Gibson. Historic Architectural Survey of Tazewell County, Virginia. Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2001. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/TZ-045_Tazewell_AH_Survey_2001_GWorsham_report_cost_share.pdf
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms-2004-002. ArchivesSpace Public Interface. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3408
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Amonate No. 31: Fine Coal Cleaning Plant Clarified Water Pump House Drawing, Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., 1953/12/07.” Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms-2004-002. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/110100
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Map of McDowell Co., West Virginia, and Tazewell Co., Virginia, Featuring Little and Big Stone Ridge, Jacob’s Fork, Amonate, Canebrake, etc.” Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms-2004-002. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/109021
West Virginia University Libraries. “Amonate Preparation Plant, Pocahontas Fuel Company.” West Virginia History OnView. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/003390
Windolph, John F., Jr. Maps Showing Coal Resources of the Amonate Quadrangle, Buchanan and Tazewell Counties, Virginia and McDowell County, West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map 1730. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1986. https://doi.org/10.3133/mf1730
Windolph, John F., Jr. Geologic Map of the Amonate Quadrangle, Virginia-West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 83-446. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1983. https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr83446
Windolph, John F., Jr. Geologic Map of the Amonate Quadrangle, Buchanan and Tazewell Counties, Virginia, and McDowell County, West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 1597. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1987. https://doi.org/10.3133/gq1597
Englund, Kenneth J., and Roger E. Thomas. Coal Resources of Tazewell County, Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1913. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1991. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1913/report.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Amonate.” Geographic Names Information System. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/1492468
U.S. Geological Survey. Amonate Quadrangle, Virginia-West Virginia, 7.5-Minute Series. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 2019. https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/USTopo/PDF/VA/VA_Amonate_20190823_TM_geo.pdf
U.S. Census Bureau. “Gazetteer Files.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/time-series/geo/gazetteer-files.html
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Abandoned Coal Mine Methane Opportunities Database. EPA 430-R-16-002. Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2016. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-03/documents/amm_opportunities_database.pdf
Gilboy, Elizabeth, Harry Gleason, Karine Dupre, Sneha Kakkadan, Gonzalo Muñoz-Vera, Jennifer Thomas, Lisa Tucker, Shaun Rosier, Caitlyn Ekberg, Carah McMahon, et al. Amonate: A Coal Camp Through Time, Part II: A Comprehensive Inventory. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Community Design Assistance Center, 2026. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/items/4bcb98b0-e480-407f-9baa-4f3de280ee3a
Virginia Tech News. “Faculty Members Help Shape the Future of a Town That Helped Shape Southwest Virginia’s Coal History.” May 6, 2026. https://news.vt.edu/articles/2026/05/outreach-aad-amonate.html
Amonate Always. “Welcome to Amonate Always.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://amonatealways.com/
Library of Virginia. “Virginia’s Coal Towns.” The UncommonWealth, January 21, 2026. https://uncommonwealth.lva.virginia.gov/blog/2026/01/21/virginias-coal-towns/
Library of Virginia. “Life in the Coal Camps.” Virginia’s Coal Towns. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/coaltown/life/
Library of Virginia. “Company Towns: Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Photographs.” Virginia’s Coal Towns. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/coaltown/towns/town_img2.htm
Library of Virginia. “The Coal Fields.” Virginia’s Coal Towns. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/coaltown/fields/
Clinch Valley News. “Pocahontas Corporation Gets Out First Car Coal.” September 25, 1925. Virginia Chronicle. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Virginia Chronicle. “Search Results for Amonate, Faraday, Pocahontas Fuel, and No. 31 Mine.” Library of Virginia. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Lee, Russell. “Paris Duty Who Works for the Pocahontas Corporation at the Amonate Mine, Received a Broken Leg in Mine Coal Car Accident.” Photograph, August 28, 1946. National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_Duty_who_works_for_the_Pocahontas_Corporation_at_the_Amonate_Mine,_received_a_broken_leg_in_mine_coal_car…_-_NARA_-_541091.jpg
Lee, Russell. “Robert Lee Donley Who Works for the Pocahontas Corporation, at the Amonate Mine, Lost a Leg When He Was Crushed between Cars and Electric Motor.” Photograph, August 23, 1946. National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Lee_Donley_who_works_for_the_Pocahontas_Corporation,_at_the_Amonate_Mine,_lost_a_leg_when_he_was_crushed…_-_NARA_-_541090.jpg
National Archives and Records Administration. “Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://visit.archives.gov/whats-on/explore-exhibits/power-light-russell-lees-coal-survey
DocsTeach. “A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry.” National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://docsteach.org/document/medical-survey-bituminous-coal-industry/
Craft Memorial Library. “Eastern Regional Coal Archives.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://craftmemorial.lib.wv.us/eastern-regional-coal-archives
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. Accession List. Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, WV. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
Mullins, Terry Wayne. A Coal Camp and Its Classroom: A Historical Study of a Virginia Coalfield Community and Its School, 1888–1987. PhD diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1996. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/items/5e578726-48da-4326-a0cf-2cb4bceb0e1a
Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research. Virginia Coal: An Abridged History and Complete Data Manual of Virginia Coal Production and Consumption from 1748 to 2007. Blacksburg: Virginia Tech, 2008. https://energy.vt.edu/content/dam/energy_vt_edu/vccer-publications/Virginia_Coal_an_Abbridged_History.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Pocahontas Mine No. 1.” Virginia Landmarks Register. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/092-0011-0284/
Virginia Department of Energy. “Pocahontas Exhibition Mine.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://energy.virginia.gov/public/Pocahontas-Exhibition-Mine.shtml
CoalCampUSA. “Amonate, VA.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.coalcampusa.com/sowv/flattop/amonate-coal-mine/amonate-coal-mine.htm
Tazewell County, VA GenWeb. “Amonate Company Store.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.ctssites.com/vatazewell/store.html
Tazewell County, VA GenWeb. “Coal Mining.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.ctssites.com/vatazewell/CoalMining.htm
Internet Archive. “Original Pocahontas Coal.” Accessed June 25, 2026. https://archive.org/details/6138_Original_Pocahontas_Coal_01_34_10_27
West Virginia University Libraries. Coal Mining Disaster Reports Collection. West Virginia & Regional History Center. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/3696
Author Note: This article was built from mine reports, historic maps, government records, archival photographs, preservation surveys, and community sources connected to Amonate. If your family lived or worked in Amonate, Faraday, Bishop, or the No. 31 Mine area, your photographs and memories can help preserve a history that official records only partly tell.