Appalachian Community Histories – Big Four, McDowell County: Mines, Company Houses, and Railroad Tracks
Big Four is one of those communities in the southern West Virginia coalfields whose history is hidden behind several different names. In government records, mining reports, court testimony, railroad documents, and old postcards, the place appears as Big Four, Bigfour, Cirrus, and occasionally through the names of the mines and companies that operated there.
The community stood along the Norfolk and Western Railway approximately two miles west of Kimball in McDowell County. Its location placed it within the Pocahontas Coalfield, where railroad construction opened remote mountain valleys to industrial mining during the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Big Four’s early history survives because of an unusual source. A disagreement over the meaning of a railroad car eventually reached the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The resulting case preserved details about the community’s founding, its coal lease, its operators, its railroad connections, and the transfer of the mine from the Big Four Coal and Coke Company to the Cirrus Coal and Coke Company.
A Community Built Along the Railroad
Large scale coal development in McDowell County depended upon the arrival of the Norfolk and Western Railway. Between 1890 and 1892, the railroad constructed its Ohio Extension through the county, connecting the Pocahontas Coalfield with outside markets. Communities including Big Four developed along this expanding railroad system as mines opened beside the tracks and workers settled near the operations.
The transformation of McDowell County was rapid. Its population grew from 7,300 people in 1890 to 18,747 in 1900, then climbed to 47,856 by 1910. Miners and their families arrived from other parts of Appalachia, the American South, Europe, and elsewhere. African American workers also became a significant part of the county’s mining population.
Big Four emerged during this period of extraordinary industrial expansion. The railroad supplied the connection to market, the surrounding mountains held valuable coal, and private mineral leases provided companies with the legal right to remove it.
Andrew Belcher’s Coal Lease
The documented beginning of the Big Four operation came on August 15, 1899, when Andrew Belcher and his wife leased coal rights to the Big Four Coal and Coke Company.
Under the agreement, the company was required to pay Belcher a royalty of $1.50 for each railroad car of coal removed from the property, or its equivalent. The wording seemed straightforward when the lease was written, but changes in railroad equipment eventually created a serious disagreement about how much coal a single car represented.
The Big Four Coal and Coke Company operated the mine until September 24, 1904. On that date, the lease passed to brothers John Stanislaus Brophy and James Francis Brophy. They operated the property for the remainder of the year before transferring the lease to the Cirrus Coal and Coke Company on December 31, 1904.
Some later accounts give September 24, 1903, as the date of the transfer from Big Four to the Brophy brothers. The contemporary court record, however, repeatedly identifies September 24, 1904. The court record is therefore the stronger evidence for the change in ownership.
The Railroad Car Dispute
When the 1899 lease was signed, the Norfolk and Western Railway used coal cars capable of carrying approximately 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, or 60,000 pounds. As railroad technology improved, larger cars entered service. By the early twentieth century, the company was regularly using cars capable of holding 80,000 or 100,000 pounds of coal.
The larger cars created a problem. The mining companies argued that the lease required a payment of $1.50 for each physical railroad car, regardless of its capacity. Under that interpretation, a company could place twice as much coal in a larger car while paying the same royalty.
Belcher argued that the agreement was based upon the amount of coal carried by the cars in common use when the lease was made. Testimony introduced in the case indicated that the parties had treated 40,000 pounds as the standard car. At that weight, the $1.50 royalty amounted to approximately seven and one half cents for each ton of coal.
The dispute grew more important as the larger cars became common. Testimony showed that 80,000 and 100,000 pound cars had been used extensively after October 1903. By April 1905, nearly all the coal was reportedly being shipped in cars with a capacity of approximately 100,000 pounds.
Belcher eventually sued the Big Four Coal and Coke Company, the Brophy brothers, and the Cirrus Coal and Coke Company for unpaid royalties. The case reached the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals as Belcher v. Big Four Coal & Coke Company. The court treated the original railroad car as a unit of weight rather than allowing later operators to double or more than double the amount of coal shipped for the same payment.
The lawsuit was fundamentally about money, but it became one of the most important surviving records of Big Four’s beginnings. Without the dispute, the precise dates of the lease and the early transfers might have disappeared with the company’s other records.
Big Four Becomes Cirrus
The Cirrus Coal and Coke Company was formally incorporated on October 7, 1904, shortly before it assumed control of the Belcher lease. Its arrival introduced a new corporate name into the community, but it did not completely erase the older identity of Big Four.
The West Virginia Department of Mines documented the transition in its report covering the year ending June 30, 1905. The state identified the operation as the Cirrus No. 3 Slope Mine and assigned it mine number 458. The inspector specifically stated that the property had formerly been operated by the Big Four Coal and Coke Company.
The report named James Brophy as superintendent, J. M. Watt as mine boss, and J. H. Brumfield as fire boss. Their positions reflected the basic management structure of an early twentieth century coal operation. The superintendent oversaw the property, the mine boss directed underground work, and the fire boss inspected dangerous areas for gas and other hazards.
The Cirrus operation worked the Pocahontas No. 3 coal seam. According to the inspector, the seam averaged between four and five feet in thickness. The mine was entered by a slope, meaning that workers and equipment descended along an inclined passage to reach the coal.
Inside the Cirrus Mine
The 1905 inspection report described the roof as generally good after loose draw slate had been removed. Drainage was moderate, ventilation was considered good, and the mine had self closing doors intended to control the flow of air through the underground workings. The operation was inspected four times during the reporting year.
Such language should not be read as proof that mining was safe. State inspectors recorded conditions observed during particular visits, while underground conditions could change rapidly. Falling slate, gas, machinery, explosives, haulage systems, and unstable roofs remained constant threats throughout the Pocahontas Coalfield.
The presence of a designated fire boss demonstrated the importance of detecting explosive gases. The fire boss was expected to examine working areas before miners entered, test the air, and identify places where gas or inadequate ventilation might create danger.
In April 1906, James F. Brophy wrote from Bigfour, West Virginia, to the Engineering and Mining Journal during a professional discussion of colliery explosions. His participation shows that mine gas and explosion prevention were immediate concerns for the men managing the Cirrus operation, not merely abstract subjects discussed by distant engineers.
The state’s accident records also indicate that the hazards were real. A miner at the Cirrus Mine was killed during the year ending June 30, 1906, when falling draw slate struck him. The surviving reference should be compared with the original Department of Mines report, but it reflects one of the most common dangers faced by underground miners.
Cirrus, Bigfour, and Big Four
The changing names can make the community difficult to follow. Cirrus could refer to the coal company, the mine, the plant, or the post office. Big Four could refer to the earlier company, the settlement, the railroad location, or the later post office.
Local histories commonly state that the community received the name Big Four because of four men associated with its mining development. The identity of those four men is not firmly established by the strongest surviving primary records. The name may have originated with the Big Four Coal and Coke Company and then passed naturally to the settlement that grew around its operation.
Postal references suggest that Cirrus was used briefly before the community became known as Bigfour, written as one word, and later Big Four. The precise dates should ultimately be verified through the United States Post Office Department’s postmaster appointment records and site location reports. These records may also contain maps showing the post office in relation to the railroad, streams, roads, residences, and neighboring communities.
Whatever the exact postal sequence, the state mining reports demonstrate that Big Four had become the accepted community and post office name by the late 1910s. The mines continued to carry names such as Cirrus and Virginia, but their official mailing location was Big Four.
Two Mines Under One Post Office
By 1918, state records connected the Kimball-Pocahontas Coal Company with both the Cirrus and Virginia mines at Big Four. The Cirrus name is distorted in one digitized copy of the report as “Cimis,” but the surrounding entries and later records identify the operation as Cirrus.
The following year, the Department of Mines listed the Cirrus Coal and Coke Company’s Cirrus Mine with Big Four as its post office. The same report listed the Kimball-Pocahontas Coal Company’s Virginia Mine at Big Four.
Production figures show that both operations were active. The Cirrus Coal and Coke Company produced 29,858 tons, while the Kimball-Pocahontas Coal Company produced 32,613 tons. Together, the two companies accounted for 62,471 tons of coal during the reporting period.
These entries reveal an important development in the community’s identity. Big Four was no longer simply the name of the company that had first operated the Belcher lease. It had become a geographical place capable of containing mines operated by different corporations.
Companies could be reorganized, dissolved, purchased, or renamed. The community name endured because miners, families, postal workers, railroad employees, and government officials continued to use it.
Life Around the Mine
A circa 1912 postcard cataloged by West Virginia University preserves a view titled “Cirrus Coal and Coke Company Plant No. 2, Big Four, W. Va.” The title itself captures the layered identity of the place. Cirrus was the company, Big Four was the community, and the industrial plant dominated the landscape between the railroad and the surrounding mountains.
Big Four belonged to the wider world of the McDowell County company town. Mining communities commonly included rows of company housing, a store, churches, schools, boardinghouses, railroad sidings, and buildings connected with the processing and loading of coal.
Housing often reflected occupational status. Superintendents, engineers, and senior officials generally received larger or more prominent houses, while miners and laborers lived in smaller dwellings closer to the industrial operation. Across McDowell County, housing and community space could also be divided by race, ethnicity, occupation, and family status. The surviving records do not yet allow every countywide pattern to be assigned specifically to Big Four, but the community developed within that larger social and industrial system.
The community’s history was not limited to mine owners and corporate officers. Census schedules, death certificates, school records, church histories, newspapers, and family collections have the potential to recover the names and experiences of the miners, women, children, merchants, railroad workers, teachers, and ministers who made Big Four a community rather than simply an industrial site.
The Railroad After the Early Mining Era
Even after the earliest companies disappeared, Big Four remained an identifiable location on the Norfolk and Western Railway.
On May 10, 1956, a Norfolk and Western photographer captured an enormous eastbound coal train at Big Four. Five Alco RS-11 diesel locomotives pulled the train while three additional locomotives served as pushers. The train contained 127 loaded cars and weighed approximately 11,261 tons.
The photograph is believed to have been the first made by a Norfolk and Western photographer of a diesel powered train operating on the Pocahontas Division. By that time, the equipment had changed dramatically from the railroad cars involved in Andrew Belcher’s lawsuit half a century earlier.
The image offers an appropriate final chapter to Big Four’s industrial story. In 1899, the community’s history began with a lease written around cars holding roughly 40,000 pounds. By 1956, diesel locomotives were moving more than eleven thousand tons of coal through the same mountain corridor in a single train.
What Remains in the Archives
Much of Big Four’s history has not yet been fully recovered. The original McDowell County Circuit Court file associated with Belcher v. Big Four Coal & Coke Company may contain copies of the 1899 lease, company accounting records, exhibits, correspondence, and complete witness depositions.
McDowell County deed and lease books may preserve the original Belcher agreement, the September 24, 1904, assignment to the Brophy brothers, and the December 31, 1904, transfer to the Cirrus Coal and Coke Company.
The Virginia Tech Pocahontas Mines Collection contains at least two unscanned archival items concerning the Cirrus Mine. The collection includes mining maps, topographical plans, mechanical drawings, architectural records, and photographs. These materials may reveal the position of underground workings, surface structures, railroad sidings, and neighboring mining properties.
The West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office also holds records from the Coal Heritage Survey and its later update. Big Four was among the McDowell County communities included in the survey, which documented thousands of buildings, ruins, industrial sites, churches, schools, and other historic resources.
Postal records, historic maps, mine accident reports, newspapers, census schedules, and family photographs may add the human story that is often missing from corporate and legal documents.
Why Big Four Matters
Big Four was never one of the largest or most famous communities in the Pocahontas Coalfield. Its importance comes from how clearly its history reflects the forces that shaped industrial Appalachia.
The railroad arrived first. Mineral rights were leased. A company opened a mine. Workers and families created a settlement. Railroad cars grew larger, ownership changed, and a disagreement over royalties entered the courts. The company name changed from Big Four to Cirrus, but Big Four survived as the name of the community.
Its history also demonstrates how easily a place can disappear behind corporate records. Mining reports usually describe seams, ventilation, production, and officers. Court opinions focus upon contracts and money. Railroad photographs concentrate on locomotives and tonnage. None of these sources alone tells the full story.
Together, however, they reveal the outline of a McDowell County community born from coal, sustained by the railroad, and remembered through a name that outlived the company that created it.
Big Four’s earliest history survives because Andrew Belcher disputed the meaning of a railroad car. The lawsuit that followed preserved the dates, names, and business relationships behind the community’s beginning. More than a century later, that legal disagreement remains one of the strongest windows into the creation of Big Four.
Sources & Further Reading
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. n.d. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Brophy, James F. “Colliery Explosions.” Engineering and Mining Journal 81, no. 18. May 5, 1906. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/The_Engineering_and_Mining_Journal_1906-05-05-_Vol_81_Iss_18_%28IA_sim_engineering-and-mining-journal_1906-05-05_81_18%29.pdf
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3A%22West+Virginia+Place+Names%22+au%3A%22Hamill+Kenny%22
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” Microfilm Publication M841, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
Norfolk and Western Historical Society. “Big Four, West Virginia, May 10, 1956.” The Arrow, January–March 2014. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://www.nwhs.org/arrowdb/issueList.php?issue_id=195
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
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2001. Originally published 1963. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView: Historical Topographic Map Collection.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States Postal Service. “Additional Resources for Postal History.” Accessed July 17, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/research-sources.htm
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “PLD-1503.011, Pocahontas Coal Co. Cirrus Mine, Peerless Coal and Coke Co. Vivian Mine.” Pocahontas Mines Collection, Ms. 2004-002. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/109371
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report, Coal Mines in the State of West Virginia, for the Year Ending June 30, 1905. Charleston: State of West Virginia, 1905. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportcoal23west/annualreportcoal23west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1918. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1918. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde36west/annualreportofde36west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1919. Charleston: Tribune Printing Company, 1919. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde37west/annualreportofde37west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Encyclopedia. “McDowell County.” Last modified April 23, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. “McDowell County.” National Register of Historic Places Nominations. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://wvculture.org/agencies/state-historic-preservation-office-shpo/register-of-historical-places/national-register-of-historic-places-nominations/mcdowell-county/
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Belcher v. Big Four Coal & Coke Co. 68 W. Va. 716, 70 S.E. 712. 1911. https://app.midpage.ai/document/belcher-v-big-four-coal-8176710
West Virginia University Libraries. “Cirrus Coal and Coke Company Plant No. 2, Big Four, W. Va.” West Virginia History OnView, image 044560, ca. 1912. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://onview.lib.wvu.edu/?f%5Baquisition_source_sim%5D%5B%5D=Leatherwood%2C++Mrs.+Hazel&f%5Bmedium_sim%5D%5B%5D=postcard&f%5Bwvcp_subjects_sim%5D%5B%5D=Coal+Mines+and+Mining.
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “‘History of McDowell County,’ Mimeographed Copy; ‘Directory of McDowell County Officials, 1858–1958.’” William Archer Research Papers, A&M 4388, box 5, folder 6. Accessed July 17, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/96419
Author Note: Big Four’s history survives in fragments scattered across court opinions, state mine reports, railroad photographs, postal records, and company maps. This article brings those records together to recover the story of a McDowell County coal community whose name outlasted the companies that built it.