Appalachian Community Histories – Cucumber, McDowell County: Litz-Smith Coal, the Cucumber Branch, and the Mine Disaster of 2007
Cucumber is one of those southern West Virginia communities whose unusual name often receives more attention than its history. Hidden among the steep mountains and narrow waterways of southern McDowell County, the community developed where coal, land, water, and railroad engineering came together during the industrial transformation of the Pocahontas coalfield.
The historic Cucumber community cannot be understood solely through the boundaries of the modern census-designated place. The name once described a creek, a ridge, a post office, a mining settlement, and a railroad branch. Each of those places overlapped, but they were not necessarily identical.
Long before coal companies entered the hollow, Cucumber already existed as a name on the landscape. Later, the Litz-Smith Pocahontas Coal Company established a mine associated with the Cucumber post office, while the Norfolk and Western Railway constructed a branch line through the surrounding mountains. Together, those developments turned an old mountain place-name into an industrial coal community.
A Name Older Than the Coal Camp
The documentary history of Cucumber begins before the construction of its railroad or the opening of its best-known mine.
Dyer’s Index to Land Grants in West Virginia includes a McDowell County entry for approximately 94 acres associated with Cucumber Creek. Although the index is not the original land patent, it points toward an earlier government land record and demonstrates that Cucumber Creek was recognized as a geographic location before the twentieth-century coal camp appeared.
Another early reference came from Charles B. Coale’s 1878 book, The Life and Adventures of Wilburn Waters, the Famous Hunter and Trapper of White Top Mountain. Coale described a land claim located on the elevated heights of Cucumber Ridge in McDowell County. His account shows that the Cucumber name had already been applied to the surrounding mountain landscape during the nineteenth century.
These records do not provide a definitive explanation for how the name originated. Local traditions sometimes connect West Virginia places called Cucumber with the cucumber magnolia tree, which grows in the Appalachian Mountains. The surviving evidence establishes something more certain. Cucumber Creek and Cucumber Ridge existed as recognized names before a coal company, railroad branch, or census community called Cucumber developed.
By 1911, a Rand McNally map of West Virginia identified Cucumber in southern McDowell County. The map appeared during the period when investors, land companies, and railroad engineers were turning the surrounding coalfield into one of the most productive industrial regions in the United States.
Coal Beneath Cucumber Creek
The mountains around Cucumber contained part of the Pocahontas coal seam, a deposit that helped transform southern McDowell County and neighboring portions of Virginia.
In 1897, geologist Marius R. Campbell described the area in the United States Geological Survey’s Tazewell Quadrangle folio. At the mouth of Cucumber Creek, Campbell reported that the Pocahontas coal bed stood approximately 180 feet above stream level. The seam measured about six feet and three inches thick at that location.
The measurement was significant. It showed that a commercially valuable coal bed was exposed well above the valley floor, where it could be studied and potentially reached from the mountainside. The 1907 Mineral Resources of Virginia repeated the Cucumber Creek measurement while comparing coal exposures across the larger Pocahontas field.
These geological surveys were created before the surrounding mountains had been fully developed. They provided companies and investors with scientific descriptions of the coal seams hidden beneath the ridges. At Cucumber, the reports confirmed what would soon attract industrial attention. A thick section of Pocahontas coal lay within reach of the creek valley and the transportation network that was beginning to spread through southern McDowell County.
Coal alone, however, could not create a mining community. The mountains had to be crossed, streams had to be bridged, roads had to be moved, and railroad tracks had to be constructed before coal could leave the hollow in commercially useful quantities.
Building the Cucumber Branch
The industrial development of Cucumber depended on the Norfolk and Western Railway.
In 1914, the railway prepared detailed engineering plans for the Cucumber Branch. One surviving drawing, dated August 15, showed land required to change a county road across property belonging to the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company. Related right-of-way sheets documented the proposed track alignment, roads, property lines, waterways, and adjoining landowners.
A contemporary newspaper report published in the World News on October 26, 1914, described the branch while it was under construction. According to the report, the project required three iron bridges supported by concrete piers, along with several concrete culverts. These were substantial improvements for a narrow mountain valley. They reveal the amount of labor and capital required to connect Cucumber with the larger Norfolk and Western system.
The surviving railroad plans also demonstrate that the Cucumber Branch was part of a larger network involving Jacobs Fork and neighboring coal properties. A massive Norfolk and Western right-of-way map, later revised in 1932, covered the Jacobs Fork Branch and Cucumber Branch at a scale of one inch to 200 feet. The complete drawing measured more than ten feet in length.
Supporting maps identified numerous landowners and corporate interests, including the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, the Berwind Land Company, and several members of the Brewster family. Another drawing documented a revised railroad location across land associated with A. Z. Litz, whose name became connected with the Litz-Smith mining operation.
The railroad maps preserve more than the route of a track. They record the transformation of the landscape. Private farms, mountain roads, streams, company holdings, and family properties were reorganized around an industrial transportation corridor. The railroad gave coal operators access to the national market, but it also changed how residents traveled through the hollow and how the land itself was divided.
The Litz-Smith Pocahontas Coal Company
By the closing years of World War I, government mine reports directly connected Cucumber with the Litz-Smith Pocahontas Coal Company.
The West Virginia Department of Mines annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, listed the company as the Litz-Smith Pocahontas Coal Company. Its operation was identified as the Litz-Smith Mine, and its post-office address was given as Cucumber.
The same report recorded production of 65,556 tons of coal. The following annual report again listed the Litz-Smith company and mine at Cucumber. Production increased to 69,295 tons during the next reporting period.
These entries provide some of the clearest surviving evidence that Cucumber had become an active mining community by the late 1910s. The name was no longer limited to a creek or ridge. It served as the postal location for a coal operation producing tens of thousands of tons each year.
A mine of that scale required more than underground workers. It depended on engineers, foremen, electricians, track crews, carpenters, mechanics, clerks, railroad employees, merchants, teachers, and family members. Although production tables rarely described everyday community life, the figures represent the work of people whose homes and routines were organized around the mine.
Like other McDowell County coal communities, Cucumber probably extended beyond a neatly defined cluster of buildings. Families could live along roads, branches, and neighboring hollows while receiving mail through the Cucumber post office or working at the Litz-Smith Mine. This helps explain why the community may appear differently in railroad records, mine reports, census descriptions, and later maps.
Life in a Southern McDowell Coal Community
Cucumber developed within the larger social world of the Pocahontas coalfield.
During the early twentieth century, southern McDowell County drew workers from rural Appalachia, the American South, Europe, and other mining regions. African American families became especially important to the workforce and community life of the county’s coal towns. Immigrant miners and their descendants also established homes throughout the region.
The surviving source inventory for Cucumber points toward records that could recover these individual stories. Federal census schedules can identify miners, railroad workers, widows, children, boarders, merchants, and foreign-born residents. County marriage and death records can reveal family relationships, while naturalization files may document immigrant miners. School records could provide the names of teachers and children who attended institutions associated with Cucumber or Litz-Smith.
Newspapers provide another path into community life. The McDowell Times, published in Keystone, covered the county during the period when the Cucumber Branch and Litz-Smith Mine were developing. The newspaper is particularly valuable because it served McDowell County’s African American population during a time when Black miners and their families were frequently overlooked in company histories.
The McDowell Recorder, Welch Daily News, Industrial News, and other regional newspapers may contain reports of marriages, school programs, mine accidents, church gatherings, road projects, labor disputes, and deaths connected with Cucumber. These smaller events rarely appeared in government production reports, but they formed the daily history of the community.
Cucumber in the 1940 Census
Federal census records show that Cucumber remained a recognized community during the middle of the twentieth century.
The official description for McDowell County Enumeration District 24-24 in the 1940 census placed part of Cucumber within Big Creek Magisterial District. The same district description also included portions of Brewsterdale and Squire. Its boundaries followed waterways, roads, Jacobs Fork, and other physical features rather than the later boundaries of the Cucumber census-designated place.
The words “Cucumber, part” are important. They warn researchers against assuming that every resident of the historic community lived inside one census district. Some families associated with Cucumber may have been counted under neighboring settlements or elsewhere in Big Creek Magisterial District.
This uncertainty is common in coalfield research. A person might describe Cucumber as home, receive mail through another post office, work at a mine bearing a company name, and appear in the census under a magisterial district. Community identity followed family connections, roads, schools, churches, mines, and creeks more often than official boundaries.
The original census schedules for the district can help reconstruct Cucumber household by household. They record names, ages, occupations, birthplaces, education, income, housing, and family relationships. When combined with mine records, newspapers, and county documents, they can restore the human story hidden behind the production totals.
The Railroad and Mine Landscape Changes
The coal industry did not remain fixed at Cucumber.
Companies reorganized, transportation systems changed, and individual mine operations opened and closed. Some railroad lines were altered or abandoned as production shifted. Mechanization reduced the number of workers required to produce coal, while the decline of older underground operations weakened the economic foundation of many McDowell County communities.
The old landscape nevertheless continued to shape Cucumber. Jacobs Fork, Cucumber Creek, mountain roads, railroad grades, and former industrial properties remained physical markers of the community’s history.
Federal water studies continued to identify Jacobs Fork at Cucumber as a monitoring location. The United States Geological Survey included the site in its hydrological studies of the eastern coal region, preserving measurements and geographic information connected with the watershed.
These environmental records are part of Cucumber’s history. Coal mining changed the relationship between mountains and water throughout southern West Virginia. Mine drainage, altered slopes, railroad construction, road building, and flooding all affected communities located along narrow streams. At Cucumber, the same waterways that guided early settlement and railroad engineering continued to define the community long after the first Litz-Smith production reports were written.
The Cucumber Mine Disaster of 2007
Coal mining remained part of the Cucumber area into the twenty-first century.
The modern Cucumber Mine was operated by Brooks Run Mining Company. It was a separate operation from the early Litz-Smith Mine and should not be treated as a direct continuation of the original company. The shared name reflected their geographic connection to the Cucumber area and the continued importance of the Pocahontas coal seams.
Mining began at the operation in February 2006. By January 2007, the mine employed 138 people and produced approximately 6,000 tons of raw coal each day. Workers mined the Pocahontas No. 3 seam using continuous-mining equipment.
On January 13, 2007, a roof fall killed two miners, James David Thomas, age 48, and Pete Poindexter, age 33. The men were repositioning mobile roof-support machines during retreat mining when a section of mine roof collapsed.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration investigated the deaths. Investigators concluded that miners had been permitted to work closer to the unsupported area than the minimum safe distance required by the mine’s roof-control plan. The accident became part of the painful history of mining at Cucumber and of the continuing dangers faced by Appalachian coal miners.
The tragedy occurred nearly ninety years after the West Virginia Department of Mines first listed the Litz-Smith operation at Cucumber. The companies, machinery, regulations, and mining methods had changed, but underground coal remained tied to the community’s identity and its losses.
Thomas and Poindexter should be remembered as more than names in a regulatory report. They were miners whose deaths affected families, coworkers, and a region that had already sacrificed generations of workers to the coal industry.
Cucumber Today
The United States Census Bureau counted 74 residents and 38 housing units within the Cucumber census-designated place in 2020. Those figures describe the modern federal boundary, not the complete population of the older coal settlement, postal community, railroad branch, or Cucumber Creek area.
The small population stands in contrast to the industrial activity once represented by the Litz-Smith Mine, railroad construction crews, coal shipments, and the families who lived throughout the surrounding hollow.
Yet population decline does not mean that Cucumber disappeared. The name remains connected to the creek, roads, homes, family memories, mine records, maps, and railroad documents. Former residents and their descendants continue to carry connections to a place that may look small on a modern census map but occupied a much larger space in the industrial history of McDowell County.
Why Cucumber’s History Matters
Cucumber represents the way many Appalachian coal communities developed.
Its story did not begin when a coal company arrived. The name was already rooted in the mountain landscape through Cucumber Creek and Cucumber Ridge. Geological surveys then documented the valuable coal beneath the surrounding mountains. Railroad engineers built bridges, culverts, tracks, and new road alignments to reach that coal. The Litz-Smith Pocahontas Coal Company opened an industrial operation, and Cucumber became a postal and residential community associated with the mine.
The community’s history continued through changing company ownership, shifting census boundaries, environmental studies, population decline, and the deaths of two miners in 2007.
No single document tells the complete story. It survives in land-grant indexes, geological reports, railroad maps, mine-production tables, census descriptions, newspapers, county records, and accident investigations. Read together, those sources reveal a community created through the meeting of an old mountain landscape and a powerful industrial system.
Cucumber may be one of McDowell County’s smaller places, but its surviving records tell a much larger Appalachian story. They show how coal companies entered remote valleys, how railroads reshaped the land, how communities formed around mines, and how the consequences of that development continued for generations.
Sources & Further Reading
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Aurora Research Associates. “McDowell County, West Virginia, Historic Resource Survey.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.aurora-llc.com/portfolio/mcdowell-county-survey/
Campbell, Marius R. Tazewell Folio, Virginia-West Virginia. Geologic Atlas of the United States, Folio 44. Washington, DC: United States Geological Survey, 1897. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gf44
Coale, Charles B. The Life and Adventures of Wilburn Waters, the Famous Hunter and Trapper of White Top Mountain. Richmond, VA: G. W. Gary and Company, 1878. https://archive.org/details/lifeadventuresof00coal_0
Dyer, Morgan Homer. Dyer’s Index to Land Grants in West Virginia. Charleston, WV: Moses W. Donnelly, 1896. https://archive.org/details/dyersindextoland01dyer
Friedl, Joseph James. A History of Education in McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1976. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1975. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/microfilm-and-microfiche/w-microfilm
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Fatality Nos. 2 and 3, January 13, 2007, Fall of Roof, Cucumber Mine.” United States Department of Labor. https://arlweb.msha.gov/FATALS/2007/fab07c0203.pdf
Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Fatal Roof Fall Accident, Cucumber Mine, January 13, 2007.” United States Department of Labor. https://arlweb.msha.gov/fatals/2007/ftl07c0203.asp
Myers, Mark S. “McDowell County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Revised April 23, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1577
National Archives and Records Administration. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, West Virginia, McDowell County, ED 24-21 through ED 24-24.” National Archives Identifier 5888415. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5888415
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update: McDowell County, West Virginia. Aurora Research Associates and EnviroScience, 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
National Coal Heritage Area Authority. “National Coal Heritage Area.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://coalheritage.wv.gov/
Norfolk and Western Railway. “Cucumber Branch, Plat of Land Required for Change of County Road from the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Drawing C-1649B, August 15, 1914. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=246739
Norfolk and Western Railway. “Cucumber Branch, Right of Way Required from New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Drawing C-1649A Revised. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=133738
Norfolk and Western Railway. “Map Showing Right of Way on Jacobs Fork Branch and Cucumber Branch, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Drawing D714, revised January 21, 1932. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=133738
Norfolk and Western Railway. “Revised Location of Jacobs Fork Branch Right of Way Required from A. Z. Litz et al., McDowell County, West Virginia.” Drawing C-1653. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=133738
Scott, A. G. Interim Report on the Investigation of Flooding in the Tug Fork Basin of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Open-File Report 80-1188. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 1980. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr801188
Society of Architectural Historians. “Coal Country.” SAH Archipedia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://sah-archipedia.org/essays/WV-01-0003
Stanley, Talmage A. The Poco Field: An American Story of Place. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. https://bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780252078392
United States Census Bureau. “State of West Virginia Census Designated Places, 2020 Census.” Cucumber CDP. https://tigerweb.geo.census.gov/tigerwebmain/Files/acs24/tigerweb_acs24_cdp_2020_tab20_wv.html
United States Department of Justice. “Raymond Dawson Sentenced in Connection with Cucumber Mine Investigation.” United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia, February 2, 2012. https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/wvs/press_releases/Feb2012/attachments/020212Raymond_Dawson_sentencing.html
United States Geological Survey. Hydrology of Area 13, Eastern Coal Province, West Virginia. Open-File Report 82-505. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 1982. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr82505
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/domestic-names
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView Historical Topographic Maps.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Virginia Geological Survey. Mineral Resources of Virginia. Edited by Thomas Leonard Watson. Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell Company, 1907. https://archive.org/details/mineralresource00commgoog
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “McDowell County Histories, A&M 3244.” West Virginia University Libraries. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1543
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “McDowell County History Sources.” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “McDowell County Newspapers on Microfilm.” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/newspapers/mcdowell.html
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “McDowell County Court Records on Microfilm.” West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html
West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1918. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1918. https://archive.org/details/annualreportofde36west
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1919. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1919. https://archive.org/details/annualreportofde37west
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Double Fatal Roof Fall Accident, Brooks Run Mining Company, Cucumber Mine, January 13, 2007.” https://minesafety.wv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/brooksrunfat.pdf
“Cucumber Branch.” World News, October 26, 1914, 2. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TWN19141026.1.2
Author Note: Cucumber’s history survives in scattered land, railroad, mining, census, and accident records rather than in a single community chronicle. This article brings those records together to remember the families, workers, and landscapes shaped by coal along Cucumber Creek and Jacobs Fork.