Appalachian Community Histories – Elbert, McDowell County: U.S. Coal and Coke, Mine No. 7, and Life in Gary Hollow
The mountains close tightly around Elbert, pressing the road, Sand Lick Creek, and the old railroad route into a narrow strip of land near the upper end of Gary Hollow. The great mine structures that once dominated the settlement have largely disappeared, but rows of company houses still follow the shape of the valley. Their repeated forms offer a surviving outline of the industrial community that U.S. Coal & Coke Company built there during the opening years of the twentieth century.
Elbert is no longer an independent town. It is now one of several former coal settlements incorporated into the city of Gary, alongside Wilcoe, Gary, Thorpe, Ream, and Filbert. Yet Elbert retains its own identity within the hollow. Its houses, roads, abandoned industrial ground, and place in local memory preserve the story of a community created to feed Pocahontas coal into the furnaces of American industry.
The Historic American Landscapes Survey described Gary Hollow as an industrial landscape built around fourteen historic underground mines and their supporting communities. U.S. Steel formed the U.S. Coal & Coke Company in 1902 and began transforming the hollow into one of the country’s largest integrated mining operations. Elbert developed as one part of that larger system, but its surviving landscape tells a distinct story about the relationship between mining, railroads, company housing, and mountain geography.
U.S. Steel Comes to McDowell County
The coal beneath Gary Hollow had little commercial value until railroads opened the Pocahontas field to national markets. The Norfolk & Western Railway began serving the region during the late nineteenth century, connecting southern West Virginia coal to steel mills and industrial cities far beyond the mountains.
In 1902, U.S. Coal & Coke Company acquired control of approximately 50,000 acres along the Tug Fork and its tributaries. The company was a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, which needed a dependable supply of high-quality metallurgical coal and coke. Gary Hollow was named for Judge Elbert H. Gary, the first chairman of U.S. Steel, and the company moved quickly to open mines, extend railroad branches, build houses, and create entire settlements for its workforce.
The scale of construction was remarkable. Within eight years, U.S. Coal & Coke had developed twelve operating mines in ten communities. During those first years, the Gary operations produced more than nine million tons of coal and employed over 3,000 people. Elbert emerged amid this period of rapid expansion, when former mountain land was being reorganized around mine portals, tipples, rail sidings, company roads, and rows of nearly identical houses.
State preservation researchers place Elbert’s initial development in the first decade of the twentieth century. A surviving photograph from approximately 1908, titled “Homes Lining Street in Elbert, W. Va.,” shows a row of similarly designed dwellings. The image documents the company-town pattern while the community was still young. The houses were not scattered farmsteads built according to individual preference. They were part of a planned industrial settlement constructed by the company for the people whose labor kept its mines operating.
The Sand Lick Branch and the Building of Elbert
Elbert could not have developed without the railroad. Coal had to move from the mine opening to processing facilities and then onward to distant markets. Workers, machinery, building materials, merchandise, and mail also depended on reliable transportation through terrain where broad roads were difficult to construct.
The Sand Lick Branch of the Norfolk & Western was extended through the hollow during the early twentieth century. Preservation records associate the opening of the branch between 1904 and 1908 with the development of Ream, Elbert, and Filbert. Railroad construction joined these settlements into a continuous industrial corridor while still allowing each community to grow around its own mine works and housing areas.
A Norfolk & Western map dated February 23, 1907, depicts the Right Fork Spur of the Sand Lick Branch between Gary and Elbert. It is one of the most important surviving primary sources for understanding the settlement’s early geography. The drawing places Elbert within a working transportation system rather than treating it as an isolated coal camp.
A second Norfolk & Western drawing, prepared in September 1920, shows a proposed road crossing for U.S. Coal & Coke property at Elbert. It identifies the Sand Lick Branch, the Right Fork Spur, the company road, and the railroad mileage point. Together, the railroad drawings reveal how closely the community’s daily landscape was tied to corporate and industrial planning. Roads, houses, tracks, streams, and mine property had to share the same narrow valley floor.
Elbert’s geography shaped nearly every part of the town. Houses were placed in rows where usable ground existed. The railroad followed the creek. Mine openings and waste areas occupied the smaller valleys extending into the mountains. The arrangement was practical for the company, but it also meant that residents lived within sight and sound of the industry that employed them.
The Question of Mine No. 6, No. 7, and No. 8
One of the most important questions in Elbert’s history concerns the number of the mine around which the community developed. The available records do not provide a single, uncomplicated answer.
The 2018 McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey states that Elbert’s creation coincided with the opening of U.S. Coal & Coke Mine No. 6 in 1903. This account would place the settlement among the earliest communities established during the company’s rapid development of Gary Hollow.
A contemporary Norfolk & Western photograph presents different evidence. The image, dated January 1, 1918, is cataloged as “USC&C (USS) No. 7 at Elbert, WV on Sand Lick Branch.” Because it is a railroad photograph produced while the operation was active, it provides strong primary evidence connecting Elbert with U.S. Coal & Coke Mine No. 7.
A 1940 newspaper reference to employment at the No. 7 company store in Elbert strengthens that connection. Other local and coalfield histories have associated Elbert with both Nos. 7 and 8. These references may represent different mining plants, changes in community boundaries, later numbering practices, or operations serving the same general settlement at different times.
Until early state mine-inspection reports, company maps, and annual mining records are compared year by year, the safest conclusion is that Elbert developed during the first decade of U.S. Coal & Coke’s expansion and was directly associated with Mine No. 7 by 1918. The state survey’s connection to No. 6 should be preserved as an important claim, but not repeated as unquestioned fact.
This discrepancy is more than a minor issue of numbering. Coal communities were often identified by mine numbers, railroad stations, post offices, company divisions, and neighboring settlements at the same time. Later histories sometimes placed modern boundaries over landscapes that had changed repeatedly. Elbert demonstrates why contemporary maps, photographs, mine reports, and newspapers must be used alongside later community histories.
Company Houses and Community Life
U.S. Coal & Coke did more than open mines. It created settlements designed to house and manage a large permanent workforce. Gary Hollow’s company towns included residences, schools, churches, stores, streets, sidewalks, gardens, recreation grounds, cemeteries, and other community facilities. Elbert belonged to this planned landscape.
The houses were among the most visible expressions of company authority. Their similar dimensions and repeated designs created a recognizable pattern along the road. Housing type and location could reflect family size, occupation, race, and status within the company system. Although the company promoted Gary Hollow as a model operation, its communities were also shaped by paternalism and segregation.
Gary Hollow employed a workforce drawn from different regions and backgrounds, but housing, schools, churches, and recreational facilities were often separated by race. These divisions continued well into the mid-twentieth century. The company provided services that many isolated mountain communities had never possessed, but it also held extraordinary power over employment, housing, commerce, and the physical arrangement of community life.
For Elbert residents, the town was more than a collection of company property. Families raised children there, attended church, visited neighbors, walked to school, worked gardens, and built social networks that lasted beyond the mining company. The repetitive houses may have originated as corporate construction, but the lives inside them belonged to the people who turned an industrial camp into a community.
Elbert at Midcentury
By 1950, Elbert had become a substantial settlement. The United States Census listed it as an unincorporated place with 1,565 residents. Nearby Filbert had 1,214 residents, while Gary-Ream had 2,858. These figures show that Elbert was not merely a small cluster of houses near a mine opening. It was one of the principal population centers within the Gary Hollow complex.
The 1940s had been a relatively prosperous period in Gary Hollow. Wartime steel production increased the importance of coal, and the company continued investing in its operations. In 1947, U.S. Coal & Coke opened a major coal cleaning and preparation plant at Alpheus. Three years later, corporate restructuring changed the operation’s name to the United States Steel Gary District.
Elbert’s population in 1950 reflects this period of industrial strength. The mines provided work not only underground but also on railroads, in company stores, around tipples, in maintenance operations, and throughout the service network supporting the coal towns. Census schedules can identify individual Elbert households, occupations, birthplaces, and family relationships, making them among the best sources for reconstructing the community at its height.
Yet the 1950s also brought changes that would eventually undermine towns built around labor-intensive underground mining. Mechanical cutting, loading, and continuous-mining equipment allowed companies to produce more coal with fewer workers. The coal industry remained powerful, but it no longer required the same number of families living near each mine.
Mechanization and the Emptying of Gary Hollow
The decline of Elbert did not happen in a single year. It came through a long process involving mechanization, changing steel markets, corporate decisions, mine closures, and migration.
By the 1960s, employment in Gary Hollow had become less secure. Families began leaving in large numbers as mine employment declined and younger residents searched for work elsewhere. The Historic American Landscapes Survey estimates that the population of Gary Hollow fell from approximately 8,400 in 1960 to about 3,000 in 1970.
This loss affected every former company settlement in the hollow. Houses emptied. Stores lost customers. Schools and churches served smaller congregations. The tightly connected commercial and social system maintained by the company began to disappear.
U.S. Steel began the process of incorporating Gary as a municipality in 1969. The process was completed in 1971, bringing Elbert and the other former company communities within the new city of Gary. U.S. Steel sold many residential properties to people who had rented them for decades, donated certain buildings to the city, and demolished others. The incorporation ended the formal relationship between the corporation and the community government it had effectively maintained since the early twentieth century.
The mines continued operating through periods of recovery and decline, but the industrial system never returned to its midcentury scale. U.S. Steel ended its Gary operations in 1986. Other operators continued some mining activity under leases, while surface mining and reclamation further altered the valleys surrounding Elbert.
What Remains at Elbert
Much of Elbert’s industrial infrastructure has been demolished, abandoned, buried, or reclaimed. The disappearance of mine buildings can make the community’s historical importance difficult to recognize from the road. Yet the residential landscape remains unusually valuable.
Terrestrial lidar documentation completed in 2014 recorded surviving houses dating from Elbert’s initial development. Researchers described them as representative of the early housing types constructed in the community. Aerial lidar images also revealed surviving residential structures, underground mine-waste areas, and reclaimed surface mines in the adjoining valleys. These images capture both sides of Elbert’s history: the community where people lived and the industrial ground that made the community possible.
In 2018, the McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey recommended the creation of an Elbert Historic District. The proposed district included a period of historical significance extending from 1903 to 1955 and identified 23 contributing resources. The survey found Elbert important for its association with the coal industry, U.S. Coal & Coke Company, and the architecture of the company-town era.
The proposed district recognized that ordinary houses can possess extraordinary historical value. Elbert’s homes document how industrial corporations adapted settlement designs to the restricted geography of southern West Virginia. They also preserve evidence of the thousands of people whose lives rarely appeared in corporate reports or engineering drawings.
The mine portal, tipple, company store, and railroad structures may have represented the economic purpose of Elbert, but the houses represent its human history.
Why Elbert’s Story Matters
Elbert was one part of a much larger coal empire, but its history should not be reduced to a footnote in the story of Gary. It was a community of more than 1,500 people at midcentury, connected to a major mine, a company store, railroad spurs, and the industrial system that supplied coal to U.S. Steel.
Its surviving landscape also demonstrates how coal towns changed after the industry withdrew. Corporate ownership became private ownership. Numbered mines closed. Rail traffic diminished. Commercial buildings disappeared. Elbert became part of an incorporated city, but it continued to be recognized by the name generations of residents had used.
The uncertainty surrounding its mine numbers adds another important lesson. Appalachian community history cannot always be reconstructed from a single book, survey, or database. Railroad photographs, mine-inspection reports, census schedules, maps, deeds, and newspapers may preserve different parts of the same story. At Elbert, the disagreement between Mine No. 6 and Mine No. 7 is not a reason to abandon the subject. It is an invitation to investigate more carefully.
The rows of houses along Sand Lick Creek are therefore more than remnants of a vanished company town. They are evidence of a community built during one of the most consequential periods in McDowell County history, when mountain valleys became centers of American industrial power and thousands of families made their lives beside the mines.
Sources & Further Reading
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report, McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia Division of Highways. November 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Orr, Elisabeth, Stefania Staniscia, and Charles Yuill. “Gary Hollow, 38 Church Street, Gary, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Historic American Landscapes Survey No. WV-6. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2020. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/wv0557/
Historic American Landscapes Survey. Gary Hollow, 38 Church Street, Gary, McDowell County, West Virginia. HALS No. WV-6. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2020. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/habshaer/wv/wv0500/wv0557/data/wv0557data.pdf
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Map and Profile of the Right Fork Spur of the Sand Lick Branch of the Tug Fork Branch of the Ohio Extension of the N&W Railway Co.” February 23, 1907. Norfolk & Western Historical Society, HS-CC10672. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=122583
Norfolk & Western Railway. “USC&C (USS) No. 7 at Elbert, WV on Sand Lick Branch.” Photograph, January 1, 1918. Norfolk & Western Historical Society, DS00315. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=93917
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Proposed Road Crossing for United States Coal & Coke Co., Elbert, W.Va., MP 8+4972’.” September 20, 1920. Norfolk & Western Historical Society, HS-B30796. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=258855
West Virginia University Libraries. “Homes Lining Street in Elbert. W. Va.” Photograph, approximately 1908. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 017373. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/017373
West Virginia. Office of the Chief Inspector of Mines. Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines for the Year Ending December 31, 1904. Charleston, WV, 1905. https://archive.org/details/annualreportchi05minegoog
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1908. Charleston, WV, 1908. https://archive.org/details/annualreportofde26west
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines. Various years. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/search?query=%22Annual+report+of+the+Department+of+Mines%22+West+Virginia
United States Census Bureau. 1950 Census of Population. Volume I, Number of Inhabitants, West Virginia. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1952. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-1/vol-01-51.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. 1950 Census Records. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. https://1950census.archives.gov/
Solid Fuels Administration for War. “Houses, Coal Cars, and Church. Note That Roofs Are Asbestos and Are in Good Condition. U.S. Coal and Coke Company, Gary Mines, Gary, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Photograph, August 17, 1946. Record Group 245, National Archives Identifier 540872. https://docsteach.org/document/houses-coal-cars-and-church-note-that-roofs-are-asbestos-and-are-in-good-condition-us-coal-and-coke-company-gary-mines-gary-mcdowell-county-west-virginia/
O’Toole, Edward. “Pocahontas Coal Field, and Operating Methods of the United States Coal and Coke Co.” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers 72. https://aimehq.org/themes/custom/aime/doclibrary/transactions/vol072.html
United States Geological Survey. 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/of/1980/1188/report.pdf
West Virginia Archives and History. “Vital Records Interactive.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://wvculture.org/vital-records-interactive/
West Virginia Archives and History. “Archives and History Research Databases.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://wvculture.org/research/archives-and-history-research-databases/
Garay, Ronald G. U.S. Steel and Gary, West Virginia: Corporate Paternalism in Appalachia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011. https://utpress.org/9781572337978/u-s-steel-and-gary-west-virginia/
Schust, Alex P. Gary Hollow: A History of the Largest Coal Mining Operation in the World. Harwood, MD: Two Mule Publishing, 2005. https://search.worldcat.org/title/61443211
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
Torok, George D. A Guide to Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. https://utpress.org/9781572332829/guide-to-the-historic-coal-towns-of-the-big-sandy-river-valley/
Myers, Mark. “Coal Mechanization and Migration from McDowell County, West Virginia, 1932–1970.” Master’s thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2001. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/116/
Davis, Charles Peter. “The Impact of the Coal Industry on McDowell County, West Virginia.” Master’s thesis, San José State University, 1996. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/1432/
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
Sullivan, Charles Kenneth. Coal Men and Coal Towns: Development of the Smokeless Coalfields of Southern West Virginia, 1873–1923. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3A%22Coal+Men+and+Coal+Towns%22
National Coal Heritage Area. A Coal Mining Heritage Study. National Park Service. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/coal-mining-heritage.pdf
McGehee, C. Stuart. “Gary.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Updated April 24, 2024. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2025
McGehee, C. Stuart. “U.S. Coal & Coke Company.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/808
Chambers, S. Allen, Jr. “Gary.” SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural Historians. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-MD19
DellaMea, Chris. “Elbert, WV.” CoalCampUSA. https://coalcampusa.com/sowv/flattop/elbert/elbert.htm
United States Geological Survey. Reconnaissance of Potential Alternate Water Supply Sources for the City of Gary, West Virginia. Open-File Report 2025-1037. Reston, VA: United States Geological Survey, 2025. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20251037/full
“Strategies for Survival: Women’s Work in the Southern West Virginia Coal Camps.” West Virginia History 49. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh49-4.html
Author Note: Elbert is one of those places where surviving company houses preserve more of the story than the vanished mine works. I hope this article helps readers see the community not simply as a numbered coal camp, but as a home shaped by labor, family, and memory.