Appalachian Community Histories – Ennis, McDowell County: Coal, Company Life, and the School That Outlived the Mine
Along the Norfolk and Western Railway in eastern McDowell County, between Switchback and Elkhorn, there once stood a coal community called Ennis. It was never one of the largest towns in the Pocahontas coalfield, but during its busiest years it contained rows of company houses, a store, a hotel, a telegraph office, a theater, a dance hall, a post office, and one of the most remarkable school buildings in southern West Virginia.
Today, Ennis has largely disappeared as a distinct community. Its name survives in mine inspection reports, federal coal tests, newspaper columns, company scrip, archival collections, and the records of the school that outlived the mine. Those scattered sources reveal a community built around the Turkey Gap Coal and Coke Company and shaped by the McQuail family, the Norfolk and Western Railway, and the rich Pocahontas No. 3 coal seam.
A Coal Town Along the Elkhorn River
Ennis developed along the Elkhorn River and the main line of the Norfolk and Western Railway. A West Virginia mine inspector described the Turkey Gap mine in 1908 as being located at Ennis on the Elkhorn River, directly beside the railroad. The mine entered the Pocahontas No. 3 seam through a drift opening, allowing coal to be transported from the mountain to the rail line below.
The community is generally described as having stood between Switchback and Elkhorn. Modern maps often place the former settlement near Switchback along present-day U.S. Route 52. Over time, the boundaries between the neighboring communities became less distinct, particularly after the Ennis mine closed and the school became associated with Switchback.
Ennis must not be confused with every business that carried the Ennis name. The Ennis Coal Company operated in Mercer County, particularly around Hiawatha, and was legally separate from the community of Ennis in McDowell County. Turkey Gap Coal and Coke also developed mines in Mercer County, including operations at Dott and Wenonah.
The distinction appears clearly in West Virginia mining records. A 1919 report listed the Josephine and Turkey Gap mines with Ennis addresses in McDowell County. The same report separately listed the Ennis Coal Company and Turkey Gap operations in Mercer County. Historical references must therefore be checked by county, mine name, and post-office address before they are connected to the Ennis community.
The Beginning of Turkey Gap
The Turkey Gap Coal and Coke Company was organized during the first period of major industrial development in the Pocahontas coalfield. A December 1887 newspaper report announced the chartering of the company, and surviving local history places the opening of its Ennis operation in 1888.
William H. McQuail and James McCormick are credited with developing the mine. According to the local account, McQuail obtained control of approximately 877 acres containing part of the Pocahontas No. 3 seam. The seam was reported to average more than eight feet in thickness in the Turkey Gap property, making it an especially valuable source of smokeless coal.
The name Ennis is traditionally associated with Joanna Ennis McQuail, the wife of William McQuail. Like many place-name traditions preserved in family and community histories, the story should eventually be compared with deeds, postal records, corporate charters, and contemporary newspapers. Nevertheless, the connection between the Ennis and McQuail families became deeply rooted in the community’s remembered history.
The timing of the mine’s development was important. The Norfolk and Western Railway had opened the region to large-scale coal production, connecting the mines of southern West Virginia with distant industrial markets. Turkey Gap could place coal directly onto the railway and send it east toward the Atlantic or west toward manufacturing centers.
The Ennis post office reportedly opened in August 1888, giving the new mining settlement an official identity only months after the operation began. The post office, railway, and company mine became the three institutions around which the town developed.
Coal From the Pocahontas No. 3 Seam
Federal testing provides some of the strongest primary evidence concerning the coal produced at Ennis. In 1909, the United States Geological Survey published the results of tests comparing run-of-mine coal with coal briquets on a locomotive boiler.
The report stated that all the coal used during the investigation came from the Turkey Gap mine at Ennis in McDowell County. The mine was identified as working the Pocahontas No. 3 coal bed. Part of the shipment was transported to the federal fuel-testing plant at Norfolk, Virginia, where it was manufactured into two sizes of briquets.
The investigators compared the raw coal and briquets under different firing conditions. At lower rates, the untreated coal sometimes produced better evaporation results. At high rates, however, the briquets performed more efficiently. The report also noted that the briquets required less labor to fire and produced fewer losses from sparks.
The test demonstrates that Turkey Gap coal was considered important enough to be included in a federal study of locomotive fuel. It also connects Ennis directly to the larger technological history of American railroads, fuel efficiency, and industrial coal consumption.
The coal leaving Ennis was not merely heating local homes or operating nearby machinery. It was part of a national energy system that powered locomotives and carried freight across the country.
Inside the Turkey Gap Mine
A 1908 inspection report provides a detailed view of the Turkey Gap operation during one of its most productive periods. The mine was opened into the Pocahontas No. 3 seam and ventilated by a sixteen-foot fan. The inspector found the roof and drainage conditions generally satisfactory and reported that the mine had a daily capacity of approximately 2,000 tons when fully equipped and staffed.
Edward McQuail was identified as superintendent, while J. P. Johnson served as mine boss. The company used a steam locomotive underground to move coal, a practice that brought Turkey Gap into conflict with state mining officials.
The mine inspector ordered the operation closed because the underground locomotive was believed to violate a state mining law intended to protect workers from smoke and dangerous gases. Turkey Gap challenged the order in court. Judge I. C. Herndon ruled the disputed section of the law unconstitutional and ordered the mine reopened.
The incident illustrates the uncertain state of mine regulation during the early twentieth century. West Virginia had begun creating stronger inspection and safety systems, but companies frequently disputed how new laws should be interpreted and enforced.
The Department of Mines reported that Turkey Gap Coal and Coke produced 356,248 tons during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1908. That figure placed the company among the substantial operations working along the Norfolk and Western system.
The Human Cost of Coal
Production figures reveal the size of an operation, but they do not describe what mining demanded from the people who worked there.
On January 10, 1908, Robert Thomas was killed while working on the coke track at Turkey Gap. According to the state report, a brake chain broke and caused the accident. The report identified Thomas as a Black worker.
Only one week later, Steve Warmick, a Russian miner, was killed after a mine car derailed, struck a supporting prop, and caused slate to fall. The two deaths occurred within days of one another and exposed different dangers faced by men working above and below ground.
Earlier inspection reports recorded additional deaths at Turkey Gap, including Joshua Galimore and Robert Otey in 1904. Their names were entered into the state’s official accident tables alongside brief descriptions of the events that killed them.
The records also reveal the diverse workforce found in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Black Appalachians, European immigrants, and native-born white miners often lived in the same industrial communities, although housing, schools, churches, and social life could remain divided by race and ethnicity.
The men who produced Turkey Gap coal were more than entries in production tables. They were husbands, fathers, sons, boarders, immigrants, church members, and neighbors whose labor sustained both the company and the community surrounding it.
Life in the Company Town
As the mine expanded, Ennis grew into a developed company town. A surviving local history describes approximately one hundred houses, many of them duplexes designed to accommodate two mining families. The town also contained a company store, the Hotel Ennis, a telegraph office, and buildings devoted to entertainment and public gatherings.
The Hotel Ennis reportedly served as a regular stop for Norfolk and Western passenger trains. Its location would have made it an important meeting place for company officials, traveling salesmen, railroad employees, visitors, and residents arriving or departing by train.
The company store occupied a central place in everyday life. Miners and their families could purchase groceries, clothing, tools, household goods, and other necessities without leaving the community. Turkey Gap also issued company scrip. A surviving one-cent token bears the company name and the word Ennis, providing physical evidence of the town’s commercial system.
Company stores offered convenience in isolated communities, but they also strengthened the company’s influence over household finances. Rent, supplies, medical fees, and store purchases could all be connected to a miner’s employment.
Ennis also had a theater and an upstairs dance hall. The building was remembered as the Dixie Theatre. A newspaper announcement reported that the dance hall had been remodeled and would host an evening performance by the High Hat Novelty Orchestra. Dancing was scheduled from ten at night until two in the morning.
Such events complicate the popular image of coal camps as places consisting only of mines, houses, and company stores. Ennis residents attended dances, watched motion pictures, visited neighbors, purchased automobiles, joined churches, and participated in the social life of a developing industrial town.
The Ennis News Notes
One of the most revealing glimpses of daily life appeared in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph under the heading “Ennis News Notes.”
The column published on October 28, 1923, included reports about illnesses, family visits, social gatherings, travel, and new automobiles appearing around the community. The subjects were ordinary, but that was precisely what made them valuable. They recorded Ennis not simply as a mine location, but as a place where residents knew one another and followed the daily movements of their neighbors.
Columns of this kind were common in regional newspapers. Local correspondents sent short reports from coal camps, railroad towns, and rural communities to larger papers. They preserved the names of people who rarely appeared in corporate reports or official histories.
A systematic search of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Welch Daily News, McDowell Times, and other surviving newspapers could reveal dozens of additional Ennis references. Births, deaths, marriages, school programs, church events, accidents, business notices, and visiting relatives were all considered news in a close community.
A School for the Elkhorn District
The most enduring public institution in Ennis was its school.
Ennis High School was constructed during the early 1920s and soon became known as Elkhorn District High School. A professional historic resources survey recorded the former Switchback Elementary School in the community of Ennis and dated its construction to 1923 and 1925. The survey credited architect Hassel T. Hicks with its design.
The two construction dates probably reflect the original school and a later expansion. Local accounts report that a gymnasium and tennis court were added in 1924. A newspaper article from that year reportedly described the school as the first rural school in West Virginia to possess an indoor swimming pool.
The school complex also included a residence where unmarried teachers could board. This was an important service in a district where many instructors traveled from outside the immediate community and where housing could be controlled by coal companies or private landlords.
The school represented more than educational improvement. Its size and facilities reflected confidence that Ennis and the surrounding coal communities would continue to grow. It served families from across the Elkhorn district and connected children from several nearby settlements.
When senior high school students were transferred to Northfork in 1953, the building continued as a junior high school. It was later used as Switchback Elementary School. The school therefore survived long after the mining settlement that had produced it began to disappear.
Switchback Elementary closed in 2004. By then, the building had served generations of students under several names and through major changes in McDowell County’s population, educational system, and coal economy.
Edward McQuail and the Crisis of 1924
Edward J. McQuail became one of the central figures in Turkey Gap’s history. He reportedly began working for the company in 1893 at approximately eighteen years old, serving as a bookkeeper and accountant. After the death of his father, William McQuail, in 1913, Edward became president and general manager of the company.
By the early 1920s, the Ennis operation faced growing uncertainty. A Bluefield Daily Telegraph report from March 1916 stated that the coal seam being worked at Ennis was nearing exhaustion, although the company had discovered another seam approximately six feet thick. The discovery offered hope that mining could continue, but it also demonstrated that the original workings had a limited future.
Coal markets were also unstable after the First World War. Companies faced falling prices, competition, labor disputes, transportation problems, and the constant expense of reaching new sections of coal.
On March 24, 1924, Edward McQuail died by suicide inside the company store at Ennis. A local history drawing from contemporary newspaper coverage reports that Turkey Gap officers had recently discussed closing the Ennis mine because of poor market conditions and the approaching exhaustion of the lease.
The following day, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph published extensive coverage of McQuail’s death and the shock it caused in Bluefield and Ennis. His death became a defining moment in local memory because it appeared to coincide with the end of the community’s strongest period of prosperity.
The precise relationship between McQuail’s death and the mine’s closure requires careful treatment. Turkey Gap Coal and Coke remained connected to other mines and properties, including operations outside McDowell County. The decline of the Ennis mine did not necessarily mean that every part of the corporation ceased operating at the same moment.
For the residents of Ennis, however, the result was unmistakable. As mining declined, the town lost the economic foundation upon which most of its houses, businesses, and public life had been built.
The Disappearance of Ennis
Coal towns rarely disappeared in a single moment. They contracted building by building and family by family.
As employment declined, residents moved to other mines, nearby towns, or industrial cities outside Appalachia. Empty company houses deteriorated or were demolished. The company store and theater disappeared. Railroad passenger service diminished, automobiles changed travel patterns, and the post office eventually closed.
The school remained, but it became increasingly associated with Switchback rather than Ennis. What had once been a recognizable company town gradually became a former place identified through old maps, property records, abandoned mine workings, and family memories.
The transformation was not unique to Ennis. Throughout McDowell County, communities created for a particular mine struggled when their coal operations closed. Some towns survived because they developed new businesses or became residential centers. Others lost nearly all visible evidence of their former size.
Ennis belonged to the second group. Its name faded from common use even though people continued to live along the same roads, streams, and hillsides.
The Records Ennis Left Behind
Although much of the town has vanished, Ennis left an unusually rich documentary trail.
Federal coal tests identify the exact mine and seam. State inspection reports document production, ventilation, equipment, legal disputes, accidents, and mine officials. Census schedules can reconstruct the community household by household. Postal records can establish when the Ennis post office opened, moved, and closed.
McDowell County deeds and land books may define the Turkey Gap lease and company property. Probate records for members of the McQuail family could reveal corporate shares, real estate, debts, and personal possessions. Draft registration cards can identify Ennis residents and their occupations during the two world wars.
The Eastern Regional Coal Archives in Bluefield holds the James A. McQuail Collection, which reportedly includes deeds and a family scrapbook relating to Turkey Gap and other McQuail companies. The Pocahontas Land Corporation records and David E. Johnston papers may provide additional land, lease, correspondence, and map evidence from the community’s formative years.
The West Virginia and Regional History Center also preserves Smokeless Coal Operators Association materials containing information about Turkey Gap, coal production, wage agreements, railroad contracts, and related companies. Together, these records offer the possibility of reconstructing Ennis in greater detail than many other vanished coal camps.
Remembering a Lost Coalfield Community
Ennis was created because valuable coal lay beneath the mountains and a railroad stood ready to carry it away. For several decades, the mine provided employment, attracted families, supported businesses, and made possible a substantial school complex.
The community also experienced the dangers and uncertainties found throughout the coalfields. Men died underground and along the coke tracks. Families depended on a company whose future could change with coal prices, exhausted workings, court decisions, or the death of an owner.
What remains is not an empty place without a history. Ennis survives in the names of Robert Thomas, Steve Warmick, William McQuail, Edward McQuail, Joanna Ennis McQuail, and the many residents recorded in census schedules and newspaper columns. It survives in a one-cent piece of company scrip, a federal locomotive test, a mine inspector’s report, and a school building that served children long after the mine declined.
Ennis may no longer appear as a distinct town on most maps, but its story represents the larger history of McDowell County. It was built quickly around coal, connected to the nation by rail, sustained by working families, and slowly erased when the industry that created it moved elsewhere.
The town disappeared from the landscape, but it did not disappear from the historical record.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Geological Survey. Comparative Tests of Run-of-Mine and Briquetted Coal on a Locomotive Boiler. Bulletin 412. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0412/report.pdf
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1908. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1909. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde26west/annualreportofde26west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1918. Charleston, WV: Department of Mines, 1918. Accessed July 18, 2026. 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, WV: Department of Mines, 1919. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde37west/annualreportofde37west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Historical West Virginia Coal Production.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/historical-wv-coal-production/
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “Production of Coal and Coke, 1863–2021.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/production-of-coal-and-coke-1863-2013/
Smokeless Coal Operators Association. Smokeless Coal Operators Association Records, 1800–1961. A&M 1830. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/5450
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “Eastern Regional Coal Archives.” Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://craftmemorial.lib.wv.us/eastern-regional-coal-archives
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. Eastern Regional Coal Archives Accession List. Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
Norfolk and Western Railway, Office of Engineer of Maintenance of Way. “N&W Railway, Ennis to North Fork, Showing Proposed Siding for the Turkey Gap Coal Company.” Drawing Y238, June 8, 1898, revised June 15, 1899. Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=207443
Schust, Alex. “Norfolk & Western History 101: When Pocahontas Coke Started West.” The Arrow. Norfolk and Western Historical Society. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://nwhs.org/arrowdb/issueList.php?issue_id=202
United States Geological Survey. Branwell, West Virginia–Virginia. Historical topographic map, 1:48,000. 1909. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://store.usgs.gov/product/345451
United States Geological Survey. Branwell, West Virginia–Virginia. Historical topographic map, 1:62,500. 1924. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://store.usgs.gov/product/358267
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Map of Part of the Great Flat-Top Coal-Field of Va. & W. Va. Showing Location of Pocahontas & Bluestone Collieries, May 1886. 1886. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005625145/
National Coal Heritage Area. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M841. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
West Virginia Archives and History. “West Virginia Vital Research Records.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Archives and History. “McDowell County History Sources.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “W Microfilm.” West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/microfilm-and-microfiche/w-microfilm
Bluefield Daily Telegraph. Bluefield Daily Telegraph Historical Newspaper Archive. Bluefield, West Virginia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://bluefielddailytelegraph.newspaperarchive.com/
Library of Congress. “Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, West Virginia, 1893–Current.” Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092065/
Artifacts of Appalachia. “McDowell County Scrip A–L.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l
Bramwell Historic Society. “Ennis, WV Community.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.bramwellwv.com/ennis.html
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
Friedl, Joseph. A History of Education in McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1976. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1975. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/McDowell_County%2C_West_Virginia_Genealogy
McDowell County Historical Society. The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia. Welch, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1995. https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-heritage-of-McDowell-County-West-Virginia/oclc/34260840
McDowell County Historical Society. Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1999. Vols. 1–2. Welch, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1999.
Sowers, Auburn Daniel. Facts About McDowell County, West Virginia. 1912. Listed in the West Virginia State Archives’ McDowell County bibliography. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Norfolk and Western Historical Society. “Norfolk and Western Historical Society Archives Database.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Turkey Gap Mine Coordinates, Wenonah No. 1, Inactive Ledger, Turkey Gap Coal & Coke Company Engineering Department, 1918–1920s.” Accessed July 18, 2026. https://aspace.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/109969
West Virginia University Libraries. “Turkey Gap Coal and Coke Company Bus No. 1, Dott, West Virginia.” West Virginia History OnView. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/052216
William Archer, Journalist, Research Papers regarding McDowell and Mercer Counties. West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/6481
Author Note: Ennis is one of the many McDowell County communities whose buildings have largely disappeared while its history remains scattered across mine reports, maps, newspapers, and family records. I hope this article helps preserve the people and institutions that made Ennis more than a name beside the Norfolk and Western Railway.