Appalachian Community Histories – Anawalt, McDowell County: Coal, Commerce, Gary No. 12, and the Making of a Coalfield Town
Anawalt sits in the narrow mountain country of eastern McDowell County, approximately twelve miles east of Welch. Steep, forested ridges rise above the community, leaving only a small amount of level ground for roads, houses, businesses, railroad tracks, and the coal operations that once sustained the town.
For much of the twentieth century, Anawalt was more than another mining settlement. It became a commercial and social center for families living in nearby company camps, particularly those connected to the mines of Gary Hollow. Miners came into town to shop, conduct business, visit friends, watch films, and spend their earnings. Local residents later remembered Anawalt’s streets being crowded on weekends from the 1940s through the 1960s.
The community’s surviving houses, vacant lots, altered streets, and wooded mine sites now tell a quieter story. They mark the remains of a town that grew alongside the railroad, served several coal operations, established its own bank, and endured decades of mine closures, population loss, and destructive flooding.
Before There Was an Anawalt
The transformation of the area can be seen clearly in maps created by the United States Geological Survey.
The 1892 Pocahontas quadrangle does not show a recognized settlement, railroad, or developed road network at the future site of Anawalt. The surrounding country was steep and isolated, although surveyors and investors were already becoming interested in the valuable coal seams beneath the mountains of southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.
A new survey completed in 1909 presents a dramatically different landscape. The name Anawalt appears on the map, along with railroad infrastructure, buildings, roads, and other signs of organized settlement. In less than two decades, an isolated mountain hollow had become part of the rapidly expanding Pocahontas coalfield.
The railroad made that change possible. Coal beneath the mountains had little commercial value until it could be moved efficiently to distant furnaces, factories, and steel mills. As Norfolk and Western Railway lines and industrial branches reached deeper into McDowell County, communities appeared beside stations, sidings, tipples, and mine portals. Anawalt was one of the places created by that larger transformation, but it did not develop as a conventional company town controlled entirely by a single operator.
From Jeannette to Anawalt
Before the community became known as Anawalt, it was called Jeannette, with the name sometimes spelled Jeanette in later accounts. The precise circumstances surrounding the earlier name remain unclear, but the change occurred during the period when coal companies, railroad interests, and supply corporations were establishing themselves in the region.
The new name honored James W. Anawalt, an executive of the Union Supply Company. Contemporary and later sources variously describe him as a manager or president of the company and refer to him by the titles Major or Colonel. The Union Supply Company operated stores serving mining communities associated with United States Steel and its subsidiaries.
James Anawalt had served as a physician with the 132nd Pennsylvania Infantry during the Civil War and returned to medical and business work after the conflict. His connection to the Union Supply Company placed him within the corporate network that supplied mining operations and their workers with food, clothing, household goods, tools, and other necessities.
Naming a community for a corporate official was common throughout the Appalachian coalfields. Town names often honored company presidents, engineers, landowners, investors, railroad officers, or members of their families. The name Anawalt therefore became a permanent reminder of the outside corporate system that helped shape the community.
Coal Comes to the Hollow
Several coal companies operated in and around Anawalt during the early twentieth century. Among them was the Central Pocahontas Coal Company, which worked mines in the surrounding area and maintained a presence near the town.
A photograph taken in August 1931 and preserved in the Norfolk Southern collection at Virginia Tech shows the Central Pocahontas Coal Company operation at Anawalt. The image is an important primary visual source because it records the relationship among the railroad, industrial buildings, mine structures, and mountain landscape during the community’s working years. State mine reports also list Central Pocahontas operations associated with Anawalt and nearby communities such as Capels.
The largest corporate influence came from the United States Coal and Coke Company, the coal-producing subsidiary of United States Steel. The company had already created the enormous Gary mining system west of Anawalt, with numbered mines and associated settlements spread through Gary Hollow.
In 1909, United States Coal and Coke began developing the operation that became known as Gary No. 12 near Anawalt. Later histories based on production records state that the mine began shipping coal in 1912. It worked the Pocahontas No. 3 seam, a thick deposit of low-volatile metallurgical coal prized for making coke and producing steel.
No. 12 was part of a much larger industrial chain. Coal left the mountain in mine cars, passed through a tipple where it was sorted and prepared, and entered railroad cars for shipment. From there, it traveled toward the coke works and steel mills that supplied the nation’s factories, railroads, bridges, ships, machinery, and weapons. The work performed near Anawalt therefore contributed directly to the expansion of American heavy industry.
The No. 12 Community
United States Coal and Coke constructed housing near the No. 12 operation for miners and their families. Historic photographs show rows of modest houses placed along the slopes and narrow areas beside the railroad. The mining complex included portals, tracks, machinery, utility structures, a tipple, and the other facilities required to move coal from the mountain into railroad cars.
Life in the No. 12 community followed the rhythms of the mine. Whistles, machinery, trains, and shift changes marked the working day. Men entered the mountain carrying lamps, tools, water, and food. Families waited through long shifts while living with the constant possibility of falls, explosions, machinery accidents, roof collapses, and occupational disease.
The original No. 12 mine was idled in 1924. It remained closed through much of the Great Depression before being reopened during World War II, when the demand for steel and metallurgical coal increased. A second Northside No. 12 operation was developed on the opposite side of the mountain during the 1940s.
Historic photographs dated June and October 1945 show miners at the North Portal and record the first cuts of coal made by mining machinery. These images preserve the names and faces of several men who worked there, turning an industrial history into a record of individual lives.
The operation suffered a major setback on September 15, 1947, when the No. 12 tipple burned. Production reportedly resumed later that year, but the original coal reserve was approaching exhaustion. The main No. 12 operation closed in January 1949, while the newer Northside workings continued for several more years before their available coal was depleted.
More Than a Company Town
Anawalt’s importance came partly from the fact that it was not merely the residential camp of Gary No. 12. It contained independently owned homes and businesses and served people from several surrounding mining communities.
The National Coal Heritage Area survey identifies Anawalt with places such as Northfork, Keystone, Welch, Iaeger, and War as one of McDowell County’s commercial and social centers. Residents of smaller company towns often depended on these larger communities for services, entertainment, banking, and stores that offered more variety than the local company outlet.
Anawalt’s business district grew near the railroad and the roads connecting the town with Gary, Jenkinjones, Capels, Leckie, and other communities. Local histories remember a movie theater, stores, eating places, and even a small soft drink operation. Photographs also show a substantial Union Supply Company store building, a visible symbol of the corporate retail system that served coalfield workers.
Unlike an isolated camp where nearly every structure belonged to one corporation, Anawalt offered a mixture of company influence and independent commerce. That difference helped the town remain active even when individual mines temporarily closed.
The First National Bank of Anawalt
One of the clearest signs of Anawalt’s commercial importance was its bank.
The Bank of Anawalt was converted into the First National Bank of Anawalt in 1913. The annual report of the United States Comptroller of the Currency recorded the institution under National Bank Charter No. 10392 with an initial capitalization of $25,000.
The bank accepted deposits, made loans, issued nationally chartered currency, and connected the local economy to the federal banking system. Surviving records show that the bank’s resources grew substantially during the prosperous coal years of the 1910s and early 1920s.
National bank notes bearing the Anawalt name circulated as legal currency. They carried the signatures of local bank officers and represented an unusual physical connection between a small McDowell County town and the national financial system.
The existence of a nationally chartered bank distinguished Anawalt from many nearby company camps. It suggests a community with enough business activity, local capital, customers, merchants, and property transactions to support a formal financial institution.
Work, Family, Race, and Community
Anawalt belonged to one of the most diverse industrial regions in West Virginia. Coal companies recruited workers from the Appalachian countryside, the American South, and overseas. African American families arrived during the great movement of Black laborers into the southern West Virginia mines. European immigrants came from countries including Italy, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, and other parts of central and eastern Europe.
Federal census schedules for the Anawalt area preserve evidence of this changing population. The records identify miners, railroad workers, merchants, clerks, physicians, teachers, widows, children, boarders, and laborers. They also record birthplaces, immigration histories, occupations, literacy, homeownership, and household relationships.
The larger Gary Hollow system was organized according to strict corporate and social hierarchies. Company housing differed according to occupation and status, with larger or better houses reserved for supervisors and skilled employees. Housing and schools were also segregated by race.
Anawalt’s independent businesses and residences gave it a somewhat different character from the numbered mining camps, but the town still existed within the racial and economic order of the southern coalfields. Black and white miners could work for the same industrial system while their families attended separate schools, worshiped in different churches, and lived in sections shaped by custom and corporate policy.
Churches, schools, athletic teams, fraternal organizations, and family networks created another side of community life. The Anawalt Wesleyan Church is documented in state court records, and other Baptist, Methodist, Holiness, Pentecostal, and African American congregations served families in the area. School records, yearbooks, church registers, cemetery markers, and family photographs preserve much of the community history that cannot be found in corporate reports.
How Many People Lived in Anawalt?
Population claims concerning early Anawalt require caution because the boundaries of the settlement, the mining camp, and the surrounding census district were not always the same.
Some later internet histories state that Anawalt had approximately 1,777 residents in 1920. The official 1927 West Virginia Blue Book, however, reported a 1920 population of 320 for Anawalt. The larger figure may include nearby mining settlements, a broader census precinct, or people living outside the place recognized as Anawalt by state officials. The discrepancy demonstrates why population numbers should be checked against original census publications rather than repeated from later local accounts.
The first federal census following Anawalt’s legal incorporation counted 1,383 residents in 1950. The town remained substantial in 1960, when the census recorded 1,062 people, but the decline that had begun with mine closures was already visible.
Over the following decades, the loss accelerated. The population fell as mines closed, employment disappeared, businesses failed, and younger residents left in search of work. The town had 272 residents in 2000 and 226 in 2010. West Virginia census tables list 165 residents and only 81 housing units in 2020.
The Incorporation Question
Anawalt existed as a recognized community for decades before it became a legally incorporated municipality.
Several local histories claim that the town was incorporated around 1912. Official West Virginia records do not support that date. The West Virginia Blue Book states that Anawalt was incorporated in 1949. Federal census publications also treat 1950 as the first census in which Anawalt appeared as an incorporated place.
The earlier date may refer to an attempted incorporation, an informal town organization, a postal designation, or the renaming of Jeannette. Unless an earlier charter, county court order, or incorporation election can be located, 1949 remains the best-supported legal date.
The timing was significant. Anawalt formally became a municipality during the same period that the original Gary No. 12 operation closed. The town gained legal government just as one of the industries that had supported its growth reached the end of its productive life.
Mine Closures and the Long Decline
The closing of Gary No. 12 did not immediately empty Anawalt. Other mines remained active in eastern McDowell County, and the town continued serving residents of the surrounding communities. Weekend crowds and commercial activity survived into the 1950s and 1960s.
The larger economic structure, however, was changing. Mechanization allowed companies to produce coal with fewer workers. Alterations in steel manufacturing, competition from other fuels and foreign producers, labor disputes, depleted reserves, and corporate restructuring weakened the Gary Hollow system.
United States Steel began selling or abandoning company property during the late 1960s. Houses and commercial buildings were sold, demolished, or left vacant. Mining continued elsewhere in Gary Hollow until the 1980s, but employment never returned to its earlier scale.
Each lost mine affected more than the men employed underground. Closures reduced business for stores, banks, restaurants, theaters, railroad workers, repair shops, schools, and churches. A town built to serve thousands of miners and their families gradually found itself supporting only a fraction of its former population.
Floodwater and the Loss of Historic Anawalt
Flooding added another layer of destruction.
Like many Appalachian communities, Anawalt was built along narrow waterways because the surrounding slopes left little usable land. Houses, businesses, roads, railroad tracks, and utilities were concentrated in the same valley bottoms through which floodwater had to pass.
In July 2001, intense rainfall caused record flooding throughout southern West Virginia. Rivers and creeks rose rapidly, washing away roads, bridges, houses, utilities, and vehicles. The Tug Fork reached record levels in parts of the region, and entire communities were isolated.
The National Coal Heritage Area survey concluded that Anawalt was devastated by the 2001 flood and lost many of its older buildings. The disaster did not create the town’s decline, but it erased physical evidence of the years when Anawalt had been a crowded coalfield business center. Buildings that had survived mine closures and decades of population loss disappeared in a matter of hours.
Traces of the Old Town
A historic resource survey completed in the 2010s documented surviving Anawalt properties dating primarily from the 1910s through the 1930s. The inventory included residences on Jenkinjones Road, Walnut Street, Sugar Maple Street, Railroad Avenue, Hillcrest Drive, Anawalt Ridge Road, and surrounding streets.
Some houses retained forms associated with the coal era even after porches, siding, windows, roofs, and interior arrangements had been changed. Other properties had already been demolished. The survey demonstrates how quickly the remaining historic landscape is disappearing.
The industrial structures of Gary No. 12 are largely gone, but mine maps, company records, state inspection reports, railroad plans, photographs, and abandoned workings preserve the underground and industrial geography of the operation. Old houses along the roads approaching Anawalt remain among the most visible reminders of the families who once depended upon the mines.
Beyond the town lies the Anawalt Lake Wildlife Management Area. The state-managed property covers approximately 1,792 acres of steep, wooded land and provides opportunities for hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation. The forested landscape now surrounding the lake presents a sharp contrast with the intensive mining, timber cutting, railroad traffic, and industrial construction that once defined the region.
Why Anawalt Matters
Anawalt’s story complicates the usual image of the Appalachian company town.
Coal was central to its development, but the town was not simply a collection of houses owned by one mining corporation. It became a crossroads where company miners, independent merchants, railroad workers, families, churches, and neighboring communities met. Its bank, stores, entertainment, and weekend crowds made it an important place within eastern McDowell County.
The town also demonstrates how quickly industrial Appalachia changed. The 1892 map showed no recognized settlement. By 1909, Anawalt and the railroad had appeared. Within a few years, mines, houses, stores, and financial institutions connected the hollow to the national steel industry. By 1950, the incorporated town contained 1,383 residents. Seventy years later, only 165 remained.
Anawalt survives as a small municipality, but beneath the quiet streets lies the history of a much larger community. Its story lives in census schedules, mine reports, bank records, railroad maps, church registers, family photographs, abandoned workings, and the memories of people who once watched the town fill with shoppers every weekend.
Remembering Anawalt means remembering that the coalfields were not composed only of mines. They were networks of communities where people worked, raised families, started businesses, built churches, attended schools, endured segregation, buried loved ones, and attempted to make permanent homes beside an industry that was never permanent itself.
Sources & Further Reading
Appalachian Regional Commission. “McDowell, West Virginia.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/states_counties/mcdowell-west-virginia/
Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p007656
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/
Englund, Kenneth J., and Roger E. Thomas. Coal Resources of Tazewell County, Virginia, 1980. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1913. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1913/report.pdf
Garay, Ronald G. U.S. Steel and Gary, West Virginia: Corporate Paternalism in Appalachia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. https://utpress.org/title/u-s-steel-and-gary-west-virginia-2/
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. Wheeling, WV: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006731317
Historic American Landscapes Survey. “Gary Hollow, 38 Church Street, Gary, McDowell County, WV.” Library of Congress. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/wv0557/
Library of Congress. “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
National Park Service. A Coal Mining Heritage Study: Southern West Virginia. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1992. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/coal-mining-heritage.pdf
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1913. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/annual-report-comptroller-currency-56/1913-19078/fulltext
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. https://www.worldcat.org/title/61443211
Trent, Virgil A., J. H. Medlin, S. L. Coleman, and R. W. Stanton. Chemical Analyses and Physical Properties of 12 Coal Samples from the Pocahontas Field, Tazewell County, Virginia, and McDowell County, West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1528. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1982. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b1528
Trent, Virgil A., and Frank D. Spencer. Geologic Map of the Anawalt Quadrangle, West Virginia-Virginia. Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-1668. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1990. https://pubs.usgs.gov/gq/1668/report.pdf
Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–1932. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p006642
United States Bureau of the Census. 1950 Census of Population, Volume 1: Number of Inhabitants, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1952. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-1/vol-01-51.pdf
United States Bureau of the Census. 1960 Census of Population, Volume 1: Characteristics of the Population, West Virginia. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961. https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/09768054v1p50ch2.pdf
United States Census Bureau. West Virginia: 2010, Population and Housing Unit Counts. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2012. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/2010/cph-2/cph-2-50.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Central Pocahontas Coal Co., Anawalt, WV.” August 1931. Virginia Tech ImageBase. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/36324
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997. Ms2004-002. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3408
Wallace, Joseph J., James J. Dowd, William H. Tavenner, John M. Provost, R. F. Abernethy, and D. A. Reynolds. Estimate of Known Recoverable Reserves of Coking Coal in McDowell County, West Virginia. Report of Investigations 4924. Washington, DC: United States Bureau of Mines, 1952. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38590/
West Virginia Legislature. West Virginia Blue Book, 1927. Charleston: State of West Virginia, 1927. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1927.pdf
West Virginia Legislature. West Virginia Blue Book, 2017–2018. Charleston: West Virginia Legislature, 2018. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/2017-2018/0943_WVS_BlueBook.pdf
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “Gary.” Last modified April 24, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2025
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County.” Last modified April 23, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
Author Note: This article reconstructs Anawalt’s history through maps, census records, mining reports, archival photographs, and scholarly studies. Where local dates and population claims conflict, it follows official records and the strongest surviving evidence.