Appalachian Community Histories – Imboden, Wise County: From John D. Imboden to a Southwest Virginia Coal Town
Today Imboden sits quietly in the mountains of Wise County, only a few miles from Appalachia and Big Stone Gap. It is easy to pass through the community without realizing how large the operation once was or how deeply its name became embedded in the history of Southwest Virginia coal.
In 1909, a contemporary financial report described an industrial community that looked very different from the Imboden of today. The Imboden Coal & Coke Company controlled 850 acres of coal land outright and operated another 600 acres under lease. Its property included 325 coke ovens, two miles of company railroad, approximately 200 miners’ houses, and three operating mines capable of producing 1,500 tons of coal each day. Between 1905 and the beginning of 1909, the company averaged more than 223,000 tons of coal and nearly 117,000 tons of coke annually.
Those numbers make Imboden more than another name on an old coalfield map. For a brief but important period, it was one of the industrial centers in a network of mines, railroads, coke ovens, company houses, and mountain communities stretching from Wise County into Lee County and across the Kentucky line.
The Name Before the Coal Camp
The story of Imboden begins before the coal town itself. Its name reaches back to John Daniel Imboden, a former Confederate general who turned much of his attention after the Civil War toward railroads, mineral lands, and economic development in Southwest Virginia.
The surviving John D. Imboden papers at the University of Virginia contain roughly 3,500 items. His postwar business correspondence documents efforts to attract northern and foreign investment into the mineral resources and railroads of Southwest Virginia. The collection also contains reports, pamphlets, financial papers, correspondence with mining interests, and writings on the development of Virginia’s coal and mineral resources. The archival collections identified in the research for this article make Imboden unusually well documented for a relatively small Wise County coal community.
Imboden was not merely discussing coal in general terms. A Virginia state handbook from the nineteenth century described specimens collected by General Imboden from Wise County, including coking coal taken from what it called the “Imboden” bed on Preacher Fork of Callaghan Creek. The coal was located on Virginia Coal and Iron Company property, linking Imboden personally with the exploration and promotion of the mineral field that would carry his name.
By November 1887, the Engineering and Mining Journal was already writing about the Imboden seam as an important coal bed. The journal reported that the coal had been traced over a broad part of the Appalachian coalfield and that in Wise County it had been named the Imboden seam. The same report emphasized its coking qualities, an important characteristic in an age when coke was essential to iron and steel production.
Two years later another mining report praised the coke produced from Imboden coal, describing the sample as unusually bright, hard, and silvery. By the 1890s the Imboden seam was being discussed alongside the Upper Banner, Lower Banner, Kennedy, and Jawbone seams as one of the major coal beds of the region.
The coal seam therefore carried the Imboden name before the later mining camp reached its industrial peak. The sequence is important. A man’s name became attached to a coal bed, and the coal bed eventually gave its name to one of the communities built to extract it.
Imboden Coal & Coke Company
The modern coal camp emerged during the great expansion of the Southwest Virginia coal industry around the turn of the twentieth century. By January 1903, according to the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, the Imboden Coal & Coke Company was in operation in Wise County.
Even the legal records show how quickly Imboden became entangled in the larger industrial landscape. A 1904 Wise County chancery case involving Virginia Coal & Coke Company and Cranes Nest Coal & Coke Company names Imboden Coal & Coke Company alongside Stonega Coke & Coal Company and numerous other coal interests operating in the region. The case file also contains a plat, making it part of the valuable courthouse record that survives from the first generation of large-scale coal development in Wise County.
By the middle of the decade, Imboden was no experimental mine. It was a substantial coal and coke operation.
The clearest contemporary description comes from the August 14, 1909, issue of the Commercial and Financial Chronicle. Its account of the Imboden property listed 325 coke ovens, about 200 miners’ houses, two miles of railroad owned by the company, three operating mines, and enough mine capacity to produce approximately 1,500 tons of coal per day. The company also possessed running rights over another railroad connection without charge.
The production figures reveal the scale of what those facilities meant. From January 1905 through January 1909, Imboden averaged 223,842 tons of coal and 116,893 tons of coke each year. Roughly 200 coke ovens were operating on average during that period. The company’s average annual net earnings for the four years ending in 1908 were reported at $123,836.
Those statistics help reconstruct the landscape. Coal came from openings driven into the mountains surrounding the camp. Rail cars carried it through the valley. Hundreds of ovens transformed part of that coal into coke. Company houses accommodated miners and their families close to the workings. The camp was therefore not simply a collection of homes beside a mine. It was an industrial system built into a narrow Appalachian landscape.
A photograph preserved in the Westmoreland Coal Company archive and reproduced by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources makes that landscape visible. Captioned “Town of Imboden, Looking West, ca. 1910,” it shows houses spread along the slopes and valley around the industrial corridor. It is one of the strongest surviving visual records of the community near the height of its early development.
Building the Railroad Between Imboden and Keokee
Coal beneath a mountain had little commercial value if it could not reach outside markets. For Imboden, the railroad became one of the most important parts of the story.
In February 1906, plans were announced for the Black Mountain Railroad to construct seventeen miles of track from the Pocket near Pennington Gap, through the old Crab Orchard community in Lee County, and on to Imboden in Wise County. Crab Orchard was soon renamed Keokee as Charles Page Perin developed another major coal and coke operation there. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources records the route specifically as running from the Pocket through Crab Orchard to Imboden, which it described as another of Perin’s mines.
The railroad was more than a proposal. A dispute arising from its construction eventually reached the Supreme Court of Virginia.
In Johnston & Grommett Bros. v. Bunn & Monteiro, decided in 1908, the court stated that the Keokee Coal & Coke Company had contracted with the Black Mountain Railroad Company to construct a railroad several miles long between Imboden in Wise County and Keokee in Lee County. Contractors and subcontractors performed the physical work, and their dispute over payment and a mechanic’s lien preserved details of the project in the judicial record.
A later appeal reported that a portion of the construction had been completed around June 1907. The larger Black Mountain Division of the Virginia and Southwestern Railway was completed by late October of that year.
Imboden now stood within a much larger transportation network. The 1909 financial description reported that its plant had access to both the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and the Virginia & Southwestern Railway. Keokee was only about five miles away by the corporate account, and together the two properties were becoming part of one interconnected coal system.
What appears on a modern map as a collection of separate mountain communities was becoming an industrial chain. Appalachia, Imboden, Exeter, Keokee, the Pocket, and other camps were linked not simply by roads and geography, but by railroads constructed specifically to move coal, coke, workers, equipment, and supplies through the mountains.
Keokee Consolidated and the End of an Independent Imboden Company
The independent period of the Imboden Coal & Coke Company did not last long.
In June 1909, the Keokee Consolidated Coke Company was incorporated and brought the Imboden and Keokee properties together. Contemporary financial reporting described the new corporation as a consolidation of the Imboden Coal & Coke Company and Keokee Coal & Coke Company properties.
The Engineering and Mining Journal reported the change in September 1909, stating that Keokee Consolidated had acquired the mines and lands of both the Keokee Coal and Imboden Coal companies. The new company intended to increase production and construct additional coke ovens at Imboden.
The consolidation created a sizable operation. The financial record described six operating mines across the combined properties, with a daily capacity of approximately 3,500 tons of coal. There were 532 coke ovens already operating and another 193 under construction, giving the combined enterprise a projected total of 725 ovens.
Yet the corporate structure changed again almost immediately.
In March 1910, the Stonega Coke and Coal Company was authorized to enter into an agreement with Keokee Consolidated Coke Company and purchase its stock. The arrangement also involved the Virginia Coal and Iron Company. By April, the Big Stone Gap Post was reporting the large acquisition, and in June Charles Page Perin transferred consolidated lands to the Virginia Coal and Iron Company.
For Imboden, the change meant absorption into one of the most important coal organizations in Southwest Virginia. The name Imboden remained on the community and the mine, but the independent Imboden Coal & Coke Company disappeared into a much larger corporate system centered around Stonega, Virginia Coal and Iron, and eventually Westmoreland.
Life Beyond the Mine
Corporate records naturally emphasize tonnage, acreage, bonds, railroads, and coke ovens, but Imboden was also a place where families lived.
The 200 miners’ houses reported in 1909 immediately suggest the size of the residential community surrounding the industrial plant. They housed miners whose work kept the three mines operating, but they also housed wives, children, boarders, relatives, and others whose lives rarely appeared in corporate financial statements.
The 1917 Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer provides a small glimpse of those residents. It listed Charlie Bush, Henry Clark, Sherman McComb, James Moore, James Morris, John Morris, and John H. Morris under Imboden. Elsewhere in its Wise County listings, the directory recorded physician B. C. Henson at Imboden.
The list is certainly not a complete census of the community, but that is precisely what makes records such as directories, census schedules, company papers, photographs, and newspapers important. Coal-company histories can tell us how many tons a mine produced. Community records begin to tell us who lived beside it.
Across Wise County, camps such as Imboden, Roda, Stonega, Derby, and others developed around the same basic industrial relationship. Housing, rail transportation, schools, churches, stores, and other parts of community life grew beside mines that were often owned or heavily influenced by the same company employing the residents. Architectural historian Anne Carter Lee identifies Imboden specifically among the small company towns created during this period of rapid Wise County coal development.
The surviving photograph from around 1910 makes the human side harder to overlook. Instead of acreage and production figures, it shows a community fitted into the mountain terrain, with houses climbing away from the industrial corridor and the surrounding ridges closing tightly around the settlement.
Mining the Imboden Seam
The coal beneath the community continued to draw scientific attention long after the first development boom.
Virginia geological investigators visited the Stonega Coke and Coal Company’s Imboden No. 2 mine in September 1920 and collected several samples from the Imboden coal bed. Their published descriptions identified sampling points thousands of feet inside the mine and recorded the structure and thickness of the bed.
The later Virginia Geological Survey described the Imboden as “one of the most famous coal beds of southwest Virginia.” In Lee County the bed varied considerably, ranging from roughly two to six and a half feet in thickness, while averaging about four and a half feet in the areas studied. The report noted both its long history of mining in Wise County and its extension beneath a substantial portion of neighboring Lee County.
Imboden therefore became two histories at once. There was the history of the town, with its miners’ houses, tracks, coke ovens, families, and company institutions, and there was the history of the Imboden seam itself, a geological feature extending far beyond the boundaries of the community.
Imboden During the Depression and War Years
The decline of a coal camp rarely happens on a single date. Mines close, reopen, change ownership, or employ fewer men. Houses disappear gradually. Stores consolidate. Workers commute from neighboring communities. Imboden followed that more complicated pattern.
By 1932, the Keokee operation nearby had declined severely. The National Register research for Keokee records that some of the employees still living there were actually working at Imboden and receiving store service by truck from Exeter. That small detail shows that Imboden continued to provide employment even as another part of the old Keokee-Imboden system was shutting down.
The mine was still operating during World War II. A Virginia Supreme Court case concerning miner Wilburn C. Bailey states that Bailey had worked for Stonega for many years and had most recently spent twenty two months at the company’s Imboden Mine. He was working the night shift there when he became ill in June 1944. His recorded average weekly wage was $42.37.
Bailey’s appearance in the court record is a reminder that the history of Imboden continued well beyond its first spectacular years of coke ovens and corporate consolidation. The coal camp of the 1900s had changed, but men were still going underground at Imboden four decades after the original company began operations.
The Seam Outlived the Camp
By the middle of the twentieth century, the Imboden name had become permanent in the geological language of the Southwest Virginia coalfield.
A 1952 United States Geological Survey study included an entire map labeled the “Generalized Map of Imboden or Campbell Creek Coal Bed, Southwest Virginia Field.” The map traced measured, indicated, and inferred coal reserves across the region, treating the Imboden not as a local curiosity but as one of the important coal beds of southwestern Virginia.
The name continued in mining records decades later. Federal research from the 1970s recorded Westmoreland Coal Company’s Prescott No. 2 mine near Big Stone Gap operating in the Imboden seam. In 1977, the test location had 136 miners and approximately 690 feet of overburden above the workings.
A Virginia mining investigation published much later noted that the Kelly and Imboden seams in this part of Wise County had already been extensively deep mined during the 1920s and 1930s before later surface operations returned to the same coal-bearing mountains.
The community therefore left a legacy far beyond the surviving houses and roads. The name traveled from John D. Imboden to a coal seam, from the seam to a coal company and community, and from the community back into generations of geological maps and mining records.
Why Imboden Matters
Imboden’s history captures much of the larger story of industrial Appalachia in one narrow Wise County valley.
Its beginnings reach into the nineteenth-century campaign to convince outsiders that the mountains of Southwest Virginia contained enormous mineral wealth. Its coal seam was studied before the town existed. Railroads then turned that geological potential into an industry, and the Imboden Coal & Coke Company built mines, ovens, tracks, and hundreds of houses around the work.
The Black Mountain Railroad tied Imboden to Keokee and the coal lands of Lee County. Corporate consolidation placed it inside the Stonega and Virginia Coal and Iron system. Generations of miners continued working there through changing companies, economic depressions, and two world wars.
What remains today can seem small beside the figures recorded in 1909: 325 coke ovens, 200 miners’ houses, three mines, and hundreds of thousands of tons of coal and coke moving out each year. Yet those numbers explain why Imboden deserves to be remembered. It was one piece of a sprawling coalfield network that reshaped Wise County, connected isolated mountain valleys to national industry, and created communities whose names still survive after much of the industrial landscape has disappeared.
In Imboden, even the name tells the story. It belongs to a man, a coal seam, a company, a mine, and a mountain community, each layered over the other like the coal-bearing rock beneath Wise County itself.
Sources & Further Reading
University of Virginia Library, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. “Papers of John D. Imboden, 1831–1895.” Accession Nos. 38-23, 580, 599, 2983, and 2983-a. Charlottesville, VA. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog/viu_viu03495
Virginia Military Institute Archives. “John D. Imboden Papers, 1862–1891.” MS 0396. Preston Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA. https://search.arvasarchive.org/catalog/vilxv_repositories_3_resources_476
Hagley Museum and Library. “Westmoreland Coal Company Records.” Accession 1765. Wilmington, DE. The collection includes Stonega Coke & Coal Company records and material relating to Imboden and other company towns. https://findingaids.hagley.org/
Hagley Museum and Library. “Westmoreland Coal Company Photograph and Video Collection.” Accession 1993.233. Wilmington, DE. Includes historical photography of Southwest Virginia coal operations, including the circa 1910 view of Imboden. https://findingaids.hagley.org/
Imboden, John D. The Coal and Iron Resources of Virginia: Their Extent, Commercial Value, and Early Development Considered. Richmond: Clemmitt & Jones, 1872.
Imboden, John D. Coal and Coke: Coal Interests of South Western Virginia. 1894.
Virginia. Hand-Book of Virginia. Richmond: Commonwealth of Virginia. Historical state publication containing early descriptions of the Imboden coal bed and Southwest Virginia mineral resources.
The Engineering and Mining Journal. November 19, 1887. Contemporary discussion of the Imboden seam, its thickness, distribution, and coking qualities.
The Engineering and Mining Journal. September 4, 1909. Contemporary report on Keokee Consolidated Coke Company’s acquisition of the Imboden Coal & Coke Company and Keokee Coal & Coke Company properties.
The Engineering and Mining Journal. April 2, 1910. Contemporary report concerning consolidation of coal interests in the Black Mountain district, including Imboden, Black Mountain, Derby, Monarch, St. Charles, and Virginia-Lee.
The Commercial and Financial Chronicle. August 14, 1909. Report on the Imboden Coal & Coke Company and Keokee Consolidated Coke Company, including acreage, mines, miners’ houses, coke ovens, railroad property, production, and earnings. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/cfc/cfc_19090814.pdf
Johnston & Grommett Bros. v. Bunn & Monteiro, 108 Va. 490, 62 S.E. 341 (1908). Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. Primary legal record concerning construction of the Black Mountain Railroad between Imboden in Wise County and Keokee in Lee County. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/bros-v-monteiro-887069909
Bros. v. Monteiro, 114 Va. 222, 76 S.E. 310 (1912). Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. Later litigation concerning contracts and construction of the Black Mountain Railroad.
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Coal & Coke Co. v. Cranes Nest Coal & Coke Co.” Wise County Chancery Cause 1904-097, original case no. 2347. Richmond, VA. Includes Imboden Coal & Coke Company among the companies named in the proceeding and contains a property plat. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/case_detail.asp?CFN=195-1904-097
The Big Stone Gap Post. Big Stone Gap, VA, 1892–1928. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Especially useful for the 1906–1910 development of the Black Mountain Railroad, Keokee, Imboden, and the Stonega consolidation. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn88061179/
The Big Stone Gap Post. October 23, 1907. Big Stone Gap, VA. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn88061179/1907-10-23/ed-1/
The Big Stone Gap Post. July 27, 1910. Big Stone Gap, VA. Library of Congress. Useful for the period when the Imboden and Keokee operations were entering the larger Stonega system. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn88061179/1910-07-27/ed-1/
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126. Washington, DC: National Archives. Useful for locating historical post offices and reconstructing community geography. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Hill Directory Company. Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer. Vol. 2. Richmond: Hill Directory Company, 1917. Contains an Imboden community entry and names residents and professionals associated with the settlement.
Tolson, Edward. Wise County, Virginia; City of Norton: Historic Architectural Survey. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1995. Includes the circa 1910 photograph “Town of Imboden, Looking West” and important information on Wise County coal camps, company housing, railroads, and industrial development. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/WS-057_Wise_County_Norton_Historic_AH_Survey_1995_Cost_share_report.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Keokee Store No. 1 National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. 2007. An especially important source for the Black Mountain Railroad, Keokee Coal & Coke Company, Imboden, Stonega, and the corporate development connecting Lee and Wise Counties. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/052-0066/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Appalachia Commercial Historic District National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. 2019. Provides detailed context for coal camps, railroads, Stonega, Virginia Coal & Iron Company, and the commercial center serving surrounding mining communities. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/164-5003_AppalachiaCommercialHD_2019_NRHP_FINAL.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Virginia Landmarks Register Spotlight: The Coal Industry in Wise County.” 2025. Provides historical context for the surviving coal camps, company towns, corporate buildings, and mining landscape of Wise County. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/blog-posts/coal-industry-history-wise-county-southwest-virginia/
Prescott, E. J. The Story of the Virginia Coal and Iron Company, 1882–1945. 1946. A company history with substantial information on the Imboden Seam, Keokee, Stonega Coke & Coal Company, railroad development, leases, and Wise County coal operations. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Story_of_the_Virginia_Coal_and_Iron.html?id=YeVGAAAAYAAJ
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. An important scholarly study of Appalachian company towns that draws heavily on Stonega and Westmoreland company records and identifies Imboden among Stonega’s mining communities. https://books.google.com/books/about/Coal_Towns.html?id=yYRXBPACntAC
McKnight, Brian Dallas, Jodi Deal, and Mary B. LaLone. Life in the Coal Camps of Wise County: In Honor of Wise County’s Sesquicentennial. Big Stone Gap, VA: Lonesome Pine Office on Youth, 2006. Particularly valuable because it includes material devoted specifically to Imboden and draws on photographs, oral histories, and local research.
Butts, Charles. The Coal Resources and General Geology of the Pound Quadrangle in Virginia. Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 9. Charlottesville: Virginia Geological Survey, 1914. An important early government study of the coal geology and mining development of Wise and Dickenson Counties.
Virginia Geological Survey. The Geology and Coal Resources of Lee County, Virginia. Bulletin 26. Charlottesville: Virginia Geological Survey. Contains extensive discussion of the Imboden coal bed, including its extent into Lee County, thickness, mining history, and coking qualities. https://energy.virginia.gov/commercedocs/BUL_26.pdf
Miller, Ralph L. Pennsylvanian Formations of Southwest Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1280. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1280/report.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. Coal Resources of Virginia. Circular 171. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1952. Includes a generalized map of the Imboden or Campbell Creek coal bed in the Southwest Virginia coalfield.
Library of Congress. “Titles in County: Wise, Virginia.” Chronicling America. Useful for locating additional runs of the Wise News, Norton Free Press, Wise County News, Appalachia Independent, Coalfield Progress, and other newspapers for later Imboden research. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/titles/places/virginia/wise/
Author Note: Imboden’s story interested me because the name survives not only as a Wise County community, but also as one of Southwest Virginia’s historically important coal seams. Following that name through mining records, railroads, company papers, and neighboring Keokee reveals how tightly connected the coal communities of these mountains once were.