Appalachian Community Histories – Calvin, Lee County: Keokee, School Plans, and a Coalfield Community Kept in the Records
Calvin is one of those Lee County communities whose history is easier to find by looking around it than by looking straight at it. It was never an incorporated town with a courthouse, town council, or long municipal record. Instead, it appears in the records as a post office, a census locality, a map name, a possible school site, a mining neighborhood, and a place remembered alongside Keokee, Crab Orchard, Yokum Station, Blackwater, and the coal companies that shaped the upper end of Lee County. Postal-history records list Calvin, Lee County, Virginia, as a post office operating from 1924 to 1955, which gives the community one of its clearest documentary anchors.
That does not mean Calvin began in 1924. It means that by then the name had become important enough to be recognized in the postal system. The older story of the place runs through Crab Orchard, Keokee, the Southern Railway, and the coal lands that drew outside capital into Lee County. The common place-name explanation connects Calvin to Calvin Pardee, the Pennsylvania coal and land businessman whose wider business life included mining and related enterprises. Lafayette College’s Calvin Pardee Papers describe Pardee as the son of anthracite coal entrepreneur Ario Pardee, a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate, a Civil War veteran, a longtime superintendent in his father’s business, and later the founder of Pardee Brothers Company.
Before Calvin Was Calvin
The strongest older record trail leads to Crab Orchard and Keokee. The National Register nomination for Keokee Store No. 1 describes Keokee as formerly Crab Orchard and places it in the upper northeast corner of Lee County, between Appalachia in Wise County and Pennington Gap in Lee County. In June 1880, the nomination says, Crab Orchard had 128 heads of household, with nearly all of them engaged in farming. That is the older world Calvin grew out of, before the coal companies made this part of Lee County part of the industrial map of Southwest Virginia.
By the 1890s and early 1900s, that farm-and-valley landscape was being pulled into the Appalachian coal economy. The Keokee Store nomination explains that the development of the Southwest Virginia coalfields brought a larger labor force into the region and transformed Crab Orchard into part of Appalachia’s coal history. The nomination frames that change as part of a broad industrial pattern in which northern capital, local land, rail connections, and coal demand reshaped small mountain communities.
Keokee, Stonega, and the Company World Around Calvin
Calvin’s story cannot be separated from Keokee. Keokee Store No. 1, also known as the Keokee Commissary, was built in 1910 by the Stonega Coke and Coal Company, formerly the Keokee Coal and Coke Company. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources calls it a rare surviving coal mining-camp commissary from the earliest period of mining in Southwest Virginia. The building was not just a store. It was a sign of company power, a place where daily life, wages, buying, credit, and community memory met under one roof.
The National Register nomination says the Keokee commissary was the central focus of the community and a symbol of the company’s dominance. It was repaired in 1930, closed by Stonega in 1932, acquired by the Lee County School Board in 1938, and then converted with Works Progress Administration help into the Keokee Gymnasium in 1939. That shift from company store to school gymnasium tells much of the larger regional story. As mining declined or moved, the buildings that remained had to find new lives in education, public use, and memory.
The company records behind that story are especially important. The Keokee nomination cites Westmoreland Coal Company Records at Hagley Museum and Library, including Stonega Coke and Coal Company annual reports, store department records, and other files for the Keokee operation. Those records are the kind of source trail that matters for Calvin because smaller communities often appear inside company files rather than in stand-alone histories.
Calvin and the High School That Almost Was
One of the clearest Calvin-specific moments in the record comes from the Lee County School Board. On June 17, 1937, the board met in Jonesville and then visited schools at Dryden, Deep Springs, Seminary, Keokee, Calvin, Johnsons Mill, and Robbins Chapel. The purpose was to decide where to locate high schools on the north and south sides of Stone Mountain. Dryden was selected for the south side. Calvin was selected on the north side for a six-room school with an auditorium and gymnasium, if the needed land could be secured.
That plan did not hold. The record says Calvin was the preferred north-side site only if the ball ground site of five acres could be deeded by the company with a right-of-way. Otherwise, the board would move to Keokee for a site. By March 1938, the Virginia Coal and Iron Company and Stonega Coke and Coal Company conveyed two parcels in Keokee to the Lee County School Board for school purposes. In that one turn of the record, Calvin appears as a serious contender for a public institution, then disappears behind Keokee’s available buildings and land.
That decision matters because it shows Calvin was not just a name on a map. It was a place Lee County officials considered central enough for a high school site. The fact that Keokee ultimately got the school does not erase Calvin’s role. It shows how land, company ownership, roads, and existing buildings could decide the future of public life in coalfield communities.
Calvin in Federal Records and Maps
Federal records also help locate Calvin inside Lee County’s coalfield geography. The 1940 census enumeration district description for VA ED 53-23 lists “Yokum Station Magisterial District N of Southern Railway, Blackwater Coal and Coke Company Hospital, Calvin, Keokee.” That description places Calvin in the same census geography as Keokee and the Blackwater Coal and Coke Company Hospital, and it ties the community to the railroad division that shaped movement through the district.
Maps tell the same story in another language. The 1955 USGS Keokee quadrangle shows Calvin in the mapped landscape of northeastern Lee County, near strip mines and other coalfield features. Later, the 1971 USGS Geologic Map of the Keokee Quadrangle by Ralph L. Miller and John B. Roen placed the Calvin and Keokee area within a detailed federal study of the geology of the Virginia-Kentucky border country. The USGS publication record identifies that map as Geologic Quadrangle 851, published in 1971 at the Keokee quadrangle scale.
Those map sources are important because Calvin’s history is partly a history of terrain. The community sat in a mountain coalfield where roads, rails, slopes, hollows, mine openings, and company property shaped the lives of residents. In places like Calvin, geography was not background. It was one of the forces that decided where people worked, where children went to school, which post office they used, and how they were counted by outsiders.
Coal, Work, and Memory
A later newspaper clue shows Calvin’s name still attached to coal after the first company-town era had passed. A 1962 item in the Richlands Press stated that “Dixie Gem” coal was mined by Jeb Pocahontas at Calvin and Purcell, Virginia. That reference does not tell the whole mining history of Calvin, but it is useful because it shows the community name still being used in connection with coal production after the Calvin post office had closed in 1955.
Other newspaper traces show Calvin as a remembered community tied to Keokee’s school and family networks. A 1977 Appalachia Independent item mentions former teachers at Keokee and Calvin, while later Keokee-area pieces kept alive the local relationship between the two places. These are small references, but small references matter when writing about an unincorporated Appalachian community. They show that Calvin lived not only in company ledgers and maps, but in the memory of teachers, families, churches, cemeteries, and former residents.
The Larger Coal-Camp World
The larger company-town context helps explain why Calvin’s paper trail is scattered. Yale’s Energy History gallery on Stonega describes company towns as places where the company owned the mine, houses, commissary, and community facilities, using them both to attract workers and to exercise control over employees and families. Christopher Lloyd Tomlinson’s 2024 dissertation on Stonega Coke and Coal Company describes the company as the largest coal operator in Virginia during the twentieth century and explains how it used welfare capitalism to build loyalty among miners and their families.
That context fits Calvin because Calvin was not a courthouse town or a commercial Main Street town. It belonged to the kind of landscape where people often lived between named places. A family might worship in one community, buy goods in Keokee, appear in a Yokum Station census district, work for a coal company, be buried at a nearby cemetery, and receive mail through Calvin. The community’s history is therefore not a single line. It is a web.
A Place Kept in Surrounding Records
Calvin’s history is thin only if the researcher expects every Appalachian community to leave behind a town charter, a mayor’s book, and a local newspaper. Its record is actually there, but it is hidden in the records of other systems. The post office gives Calvin a formal name from 1924 to 1955. The 1940 census geography places it with Keokee and the Blackwater Coal and Coke Company Hospital. The Lee County School Board minutes show it was once considered for a north-side high school. The USGS maps hold it in the landscape. The coal records at Hagley and the Keokee Store nomination place it inside the broader world of Stonega Coke and Coal, Keokee, and the company-controlled communities of Southwest Virginia.
That is the story of Calvin, Lee County. It was not a large town, but it was not nothing. It was a named place in a coalfield neighborhood, close enough to Keokee to share its school story, close enough to the mines to appear in coal references, and important enough to be counted, mapped, remembered, and nearly chosen for a major public school. Like many small Appalachian communities, Calvin survives in the spaces between larger records, waiting for someone to read the surrounding pages.
Sources & Further Reading
Cox, W. Eugene, Joyce Cox, and Michael J. Pulice. “Keokee Store No. 1.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2007. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/052-0066_KeokeeStore_2007_-NRfinal.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Keokee Store No. 1.” Virginia Landmarks Register, DHR No. 052-0066. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/052-0066/
Lee County School Board. Minutes, 1937-1939. Lee County School Board Records, Lee County, Virginia. Cited in W. Eugene Cox, Joyce Cox, and Michael J. Pulice, “Keokee Store No. 1,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/052-0066_KeokeeStore_2007_-NRfinal.pdf
Lee County Circuit Court Clerk. Lee County, Virginia Deed Books 28, 51, 97, 122, and 123. Jonesville, Virginia. https://www.leecova.org/
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, Virginia, Lee County, ED 53-23, ED 53-24, ED 53-25.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_Virginia_-_Lee_County_-_ED_53-23,_ED_53-24,_ED_53-25_-_NARA_-_5885095.jpg
United States Census Bureau. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: Lee County, Virginia, Population Schedules. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
United States Census Bureau. Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950: Lee County, Virginia, Population Schedules. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950
Jim Forte Postal History. “Post Offices, Lee County, Virginia.” Entry for Calvin, Lee County, Virginia. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=Lee&state=VA&task=display
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837-1950. Microfilm Publication M1126. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
United States Geological Survey. “USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Keokee, VA, 1955.” https://prd-tnm.s3.amazonaws.com/StagedProducts/Maps/HistoricalTopo/PDF/VA/24000/VA_Keokee_185568_1955_24000_geo.pdf
Miller, Ralph L., and John B. Roen. “Geologic Map of the Keokee Quadrangle, Virginia-Kentucky.” U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-851. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1971. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-keokee-quadrangle-virginia-kentucky
Campbell, Marius R. Geology of the Big Stone Gap Coal Field of Virginia and Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 111. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b111
TopoZone. “Calvin Topo Map in Lee County VA.” https://www.topozone.com/virginia/lee-va/city/calvin-13/
TopoZone. “Keokee Topo Map in Lee County VA.” https://www.topozone.com/virginia/lee-va/city/keokee/
Hagley Museum and Library. “Westmoreland Coal Company Records, Accession 1765.” https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/resources/980
Stonega Coke and Coal Company. Annual Reports for Keokee, 1910-1947. Westmoreland Coal Company Records, Accession 1765, Hagley Museum and Library. https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/resources/980
Stonega Coke and Coal Company. Store Department Records, 1930-1936. Westmoreland Coal Company Records, Accession 1765, Hagley Museum and Library. https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/resources/980
Hagley Museum and Library. “Westmoreland Coal Company Photographs.” Hagley Digital Archives. https://digital.hagley.org/1993233
Hagley Museum and Library. “Stonega Coke and Coal Company.” Hagley Digital Archives. https://digital.hagley.org/taxonomy/term/12815
Yale Energy History. “Stonega Coal Mines and Company Camp, 1915-1930.” https://energyhistory.yale.edu/stonega-coal-mines-and-company-camp-1915-1930-gallery/
Encyclopedia Virginia. “Company Store Owned by the Stonega Coke and Coal Company.” https://encyclopediavirginia.org/8101hpr-f9c8e02316f2582/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “The Coal Industry in Wise County and Southwest Virginia.” https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/blog-posts/coal-industry-history-wise-county-southwest-virginia/
Lafayette College Special Collections and College Archives. “Pardee, Calvin, Papers, 1856-1861.” https://archives.lafayette.edu/findingaids/pardee-calvin-papers-1856-1861/
University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. “Calvin Pardee Family Letters.” https://findingaids.library.upenn.edu/
Prescott, E. J. The Story of the Virginia Coal and Iron Company, 1882-1945. Big Stone Gap, VA: Virginia Coal and Iron Company, 1945. https://archive.org/
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://utpress.org/title/coal-towns/
Tomlinson, Christopher Lloyd. “Contentment and Control: The Stonega Coke & Coal Company & Pioneering Welfare Capitalism in Southwest Virginia.” PhD diss., West Virginia University, 2024. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/12368/
Herrin, Dean A. “The Company Town in Appalachia: A Study of Stonega, Virginia.” University of Delaware, 1984. https://udspace.udel.edu/
La Lone, Mary Beth. “Coal Mining and the Resource Community Cycle: A Longitudinal Assessment of the Economic and Social Consequences of Coal Extraction in Southwest Virginia.” https://scholar.google.com/
Keokee Extension Service. Village of Keokee. Keokee, VA, 1975. Cited in W. Eugene Cox, Joyce Cox, and Michael J. Pulice, “Keokee Store No. 1,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/052-0066_KeokeeStore_2007_-NRfinal.pdf
FamilySearch. “Lee County, Virginia Genealogy.” https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lee_County,_Virginia_Genealogy
Find a Grave. “Hoover Hill Cemetery, Calvin, Lee County, Virginia.” https://www.findagrave.com/
Virginia Chronicle. The Big Stone Gap Post. Search terms: Calvin, Keokee, Crab Orchard, Stonega, Pardee, Virginia Coal and Iron, and Stonega Coke and Coal. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Virginia Chronicle. The Richlands Press. Item mentioning Dixie Gem coal at Calvin and Purcell, Virginia, August 30, 1962. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RLP19620830.1.12
Virginia Chronicle. Appalachia Independent. Item mentioning former teachers at Keokee and Calvin, October 27, 1977. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=AI19771027.1.3
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “County Economic Status in Appalachia, Fiscal Year 2026: Virginia.” https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CountyEconomicStatusFY2026Virginia.pdf
Author Note: Calvin is the kind of Appalachian community that has to be rebuilt from surrounding records rather than one single town history. I hope this piece helps preserve a small Lee County place whose name still appears in maps, school minutes, postal records, and coalfield memory.