Appalachian Community Histories – Inman, Wise County: Looney Creek, Coke Ovens, and Life in a Virginia Coal Camp
Along Looney Creek in Wise County, Virginia, the community of Inman sits in a landscape where the mountains themselves explain much of what came before. Coal seams beneath the ridges drew mining companies into the narrow valley, railroads followed the mines, and houses, stores, schools, churches, and hundreds of workers followed the railroads. What became Inman was never simply a collection of homes beside a creek. For much of its history, it was part of an interconnected industrial landscape that included mines, coke ovens, railroad tracks, company property, and neighboring camps such as Linden and Laurel.
The surviving records of Inman are unusually rich for a community of its size. Geological surveys document the coal before the camp reached maturity. Corporate records reveal who leased and operated the mines. A federal court case preserves evidence of one of the community’s earliest labor conflicts. Mine-inspection records, directories, advertisements, census reports, oral histories, and family collections allow glimpses into the people who lived there after the machinery of the coal industry had transformed Looney Creek.
Together, those records tell the story of a Wise County community created by coal but never completely defined by it.
Coal Before the Camp
The foundations of Inman’s industrial history were beneath the ground long before a substantial community appeared along Looney Creek. During the early development of the Big Stone Gap coalfield, federal geologist Marius R. Campbell examined the region for the United States Geological Survey. His 1893 report described the coal measures around the Big Stone Gap field and recorded important seams in the Looney Creek area, including the Imboden coal. Campbell’s work came at a crucial moment, when investors and railroad companies were beginning to understand just how valuable the coal beneath Wise County might become.
By the early 1890s, mining had already reached Looney Creek. Historical research prepared for the National Register of Historic Places notes that a mine along the creek, later associated with Inman, was operating by 1892. This placed the community’s beginnings within the first major wave of commercial coal development around Appalachia and Big Stone Gap. The mines were not isolated enterprises. Their future depended upon transportation, and railroad construction soon connected the narrow hollows of Wise County with much larger industrial markets.
Coal could be found in abundance beneath the mountains, but it had little commercial value if it could not be moved cheaply. The railroad therefore became almost as important to Inman’s creation as the coal itself.
The Railroad Comes Up Looney Creek
The South Atlantic and Ohio Railroad was one of the transportation systems that helped open the Wise County coalfield. As railroad interests pushed into the region, a line was extended up Looney Creek toward the mine that would become associated with Inman. The railroad transformed what had been a relatively isolated mountain landscape into an industrial corridor tied to Appalachia, Bristol, and ultimately national markets.
The transformation was visible in the community’s postal history. In 1886, a post office called Gilly operated near the railroad’s Double Tunnel area. In 1899, according to the National Register documentation for the Appalachia Commercial Historic District, that post office was relocated to the coal community of Inman. The movement of the post office was more than an administrative change. It reflected the growing importance of the mining settlement along Looney Creek and the shift of population and commercial activity toward the coal operations.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Inman had become part of a much larger web of railroads, mining companies, financiers, and landholding corporations. The community may have occupied a narrow hollow, but the business conducted there connected it to industrial interests far beyond Wise County.
The Looney Creek Lease
One of the clearest surviving records of Inman’s corporate history dates from the opening years of the twentieth century. Papers preserved in the Virginia Coal and Iron Company records at the University of Tennessee document an agreement involving the Looney Creek Coal Mines. An archival item dated March 8, 1901, contains a copy of an earlier agreement leasing the Looney Creek mines from the Interstate Coal and Iron Company to the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company. The lease itself was dated January 22, 1900.
That agreement placed Inman within the expanding empire of Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke, one of the major industrial concerns operating in the Southwest Virginia coalfields. Company influence extended beyond the mine opening. Coal companies commonly controlled housing, stores, transportation connections, and other pieces of daily life in the camps they operated.
A 1904 industrial supplement of the Bristol Courier gives a striking indication of the scale that the Looney Creek operation had achieved. The publication described the property at Inman as having 174 coke ovens and characterized it as one of the busiest operations in that part of the coalfield. Coke was produced by heating coal under controlled conditions to remove impurities and create a fuel useful for iron and steel production. Rows of ovens therefore represented more than another piece of mining equipment. They connected Inman’s coal directly to the industrial economy that had drawn so much investment into Southwest Virginia.
By then, Inman was not merely a place where coal happened to be mined. It was a substantial industrial operation with the workforce, transportation network, processing infrastructure, and company organization necessary to keep coal moving out of Looney Creek.
A Union Struggle Reaches Inman
The rapid growth of the mines also brought Inman into the developing struggle between coal operators and organized labor. In 1902, the community appeared prominently in the federal case United States v. Weber, which grew from attempts by United Mine Workers organizers to organize miners employed at properties controlled by Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke.
The court described the Looney Creek Lease as the company’s operation at Inman. William H. Weber and John Haddow, officers of the United Mine Workers, acknowledged traveling into Southwest Virginia to organize miners at Inman and other coal operations. According to the federal court’s account, the Inman plant had recently employed somewhere between 600 and 700 workers. As organizing intensified and men stopped working, the number remaining at work fell dramatically.
The source must be read carefully because it is a judicial opinion written during the conflict itself, not a neutral history of the organizing campaign. The court interpreted union activities through an injunction that prohibited interference with employees and with property being operated by court-appointed receivers. Notices connected with the union were posted around the works, miners were encouraged to leave their jobs, and the court regarded parts of the campaign as violations of its authority.
Even with those limitations, the case is extraordinarily important to Inman’s history. It proves that the mines employed hundreds of workers at the beginning of the twentieth century and places the community within the early labor struggles of the Appalachian coalfields. Decades before Southwest Virginia became better known for later union battles, miners and organizers were already confronting questions of wages, company authority, collective organization, and the power of federal injunctions along Looney Creek.
Life in a Company Coal Camp
As mining expanded, Inman became one of a series of company communities built into the valleys and hollows surrounding Appalachia. Historical documentation identifies Inman, Linden, and Laurel among the camps associated with Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke along Looney Creek and the surrounding ridges. Like other company towns, these communities were built around proximity to the mines. Housing was arranged for the workforce, while stores, schools, churches, medical services, and other institutions became part of the larger coal-camp system.
The system could create a strong sense of community, but it also reflected the social divisions of the period. Coal camps across the region included native Appalachian families, Black miners and their families, and immigrants who had come to the coalfields from Europe and elsewhere. Housing and schools could be divided according to race, occupation, and status within the company. Inman was part of that larger pattern of industrial organization and segregation.
Small surviving references help place ordinary community life beside the larger story of mines and corporations. The 1917 Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer, for example, listed Dr. J. H. Hagy at Inman, evidence that the settlement supported professional services as well as miners and industrial employees.
A different glimpse survives in the 1931 School Bell, the yearbook of Big Stone Gap High School. An advertisement announced the “Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company, Linden Store, Inman, Virginia,” with A. B. Nickels identified as store manager. Such an advertisement may appear ordinary, but it represents one of the institutions at the center of company-town life. The company store supplied food, clothing, household goods, and other necessities, and stores throughout the coalfields became gathering places as well as businesses.
State records show that the industrial operation continued to receive official attention through the interwar years. The Library of Virginia preserves mine-inspector material specifically cataloged under Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke’s Imperial and Inman mines for the period from 1922 through 1939. These files are especially valuable because they offer the possibility of reconstructing working conditions, inspections, accidents, safety concerns, and mine operations from government records rather than relying entirely upon later memories.
The People Behind the Coal
Company records can tell how much coal was mined or who controlled a lease, but they are less capable of describing what it felt like to grow up in a coal camp. For that, Inman’s oral histories and personal recollections are particularly valuable.
When the Roanoke Times visited the area in 1993, former residents described a community of rows of company houses, miners walking to work, gardens, children, neighborhood gathering places, and a company store that stood near the center of local life. Their memories also recalled the divisions within the camp. Housing reflected occupational and social distinctions, while racial segregation shaped where people lived and where children went to school.
Mining families nevertheless built lives that extended beyond the company’s property lines. Families raised vegetables, preserved food, attended churches, visited neighbors, played games, and developed the relationships that turned an industrial camp into a home. The company might own the house or the store, but it did not own the memories that residents carried from one generation to another.
Those memories became especially important as the original camp disappeared. In April 1992, the Coal Camp History Project at Radford University recorded interviews in Inman with James Stidham and Rosa Lee Hooper. Their interviews became part of a larger effort to preserve the experiences of people who had lived in the Wise County coal camps. Later archival work also preserved Jessica Paige Collier’s 1998 study, Growing Up in Coal Dust: An Account of Life in a Coal Mining Camp in Inman, Virginia.
For a small community, Inman therefore possesses something many vanished coal camps do not: a documentary record in which company paperwork can be placed beside the voices of people who actually called the camp home.
Jessie Reasor Zander and Black Appalachian History
One of the most important lives connected to Inman also opens a window into African American history in the Southwest Virginia coalfields.
Jessie Mae Reasor Zander was born in Inman in 1932. Her father worked in the coal mines, placing her childhood firmly within the world created by Wise County’s mining economy. The racial segregation of the period meant that Black Appalachian children experienced the coal camps differently from their white neighbors, particularly in education and housing. Zander’s later life would carry her far beyond those limitations.
In 1954, Zander graduated from Berea College and became the institution’s first African American graduate after Kentucky’s legal barrier to interracial education had been removed. Her story connects a small Wise County coal camp with the larger history of education, segregation, and civil rights in Appalachia.
Her historical importance is strengthened by the materials she preserved. The Jessie Reasor Zander Collection at the Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park contains more than one hundred photographs documenting African American life in Wise County, including school photographs and images of local families. Such collections matter because the surviving corporate record of the coalfields often says far more about production than about the Black men, women, and children whose lives were intertwined with that production.
Through Zander and the photographs she preserved, Inman’s history becomes something broader than the story of an old mine. It becomes part of the history of Black Appalachia and of families whose experiences were too often left at the margins of traditional coalfield histories.
Inman, Linden, and Laurel
The boundaries between individual coal camps were not always as clear as modern maps might suggest. Houses, mines, stores, railroad lines, and family connections stretched along the same creeks and ridges, linking communities that carried separate names but shared an industrial landscape.
The federal census illustrates this relationship particularly well. In 1950, the Census Bureau counted Inman together with Linden and Laurel as the unincorporated community of “Inman-Linden-Laurel.” The combined population was 1,165.
That figure offers a useful snapshot of the coal-camp landscape at mid-century. More than half a century had passed since mining began along Looney Creek, yet the three communities still contained more than a thousand residents. Coal remained central to the local economy, and families who had spent years in the camps had transformed places originally constructed for industrial convenience into multigenerational communities.
The population figure also reminds us that Inman cannot be understood entirely in isolation. Linden, Laurel, Appalachia, and neighboring mining areas were connected by roads, rails, schools, stores, employment, marriages, churches, and family networks. The history of one camp constantly crosses into the history of another.
When the Coal Camp Began to Disappear
The physical landscape of the coal camps changed as underground operations closed, companies consolidated, and families moved away. Houses disappeared. Mine structures deteriorated or were removed. Vegetation reclaimed former industrial spaces. Places that once held hundreds of workers could become difficult to recognize within a generation.
By 1993, former residents were already concerned that the history of Inman might vanish with the people who remembered it. Plans discussed at the time envisioned recreating part of the old coal camp as a living-history site. The proposal reflected an awareness that the generation with firsthand memories of the classic company-town era was aging and that much of the physical community had already been lost.
The preservation effort was part of a larger movement throughout Southwest Virginia to reconsider coal camps as historical places rather than merely abandoned industrial settlements. Oral-history projects, museum collections, photographs, family papers, and archaeological remains became ways to preserve communities whose buildings were disappearing.
Inman’s historical record has benefited from that work. Without it, much of the community’s history would be reduced to corporate leases, mine maps, and production records. Those documents are important, but they cannot explain why former residents continued to call Inman home long after the economic system that created the camp had changed.
The Mountain Still Mattered
Coal did not disappear from Inman’s story when the old company camp declined. The methods changed, but the relationship between the community and the mountains surrounding it remained.
In August 2004, that relationship turned tragic when a large boulder came down from a surface-mining area above Inman and crashed into the Davidson family’s home. Three-year-old Jeremy Davidson was killed while sleeping inside. State and federal authorities investigated the mining operation, and the death became part of a broader debate over surface-mining practices and the danger posed to homes located below active mine sites. Contemporary reporting described the boulder as weighing roughly half a ton and connected its movement to work taking place on the mine site above the community.
The tragedy became deeply connected with later opposition to a proposed surface mine on Ison Rock Ridge. Beginning in 2007, residents and environmental organizations challenged plans for a large mining operation in the watersheds around Inman and nearby communities. The dispute continued through permitting decisions, environmental reviews, and appeals for years. By 2015, the long-running permit battle had effectively ended after opponents prevailed through the regulatory and appeals process.
There is a difficult continuity in that history. More than a century after companies first entered Looney Creek because of the coal beneath its mountains, residents were still debating how those same mountains should be mined, who should bear the risks, and how extraction should be balanced against the safety and future of the communities below.
Why Inman Matters
Inman can be easy to overlook when compared with larger coal towns such as Appalachia, Norton, or Big Stone Gap. Yet few communities better demonstrate how the industrial history of Southwest Virginia unfolded within a single mountain hollow.
The story begins with geology and railroad construction, then moves through outside investment, corporate leases, hundreds of mine workers, coke ovens, company stores, and labor organizing. It includes the racial and social divisions of the company-town system, but also the families who created lives within that system. It reaches into the history of Black Appalachia through Jessie Reasor Zander, into the preservation movement through the memories of former residents, and into the modern era through the conflicts surrounding surface mining on the ridges above the community.
Inman was built because companies wanted the coal beneath Looney Creek. What endured was something more complicated. Families transformed an industrial settlement into a community, and even after much of the original camp disappeared, its history remained scattered through courtrooms, government files, family photographs, oral histories, maps, and memories.
The mines explain why Inman appeared on the map. The people who lived there explain why its history is still worth remembering.
Sources & Further Reading
Marius R. Campbell. Geology of the Big Stone Gap Coal Field of Virginia and Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 111. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0111/report.pdf
North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers. “The Coalfield of Big Stone Gap, Virginia,” including observations from a visit to the Looney Creek mine in 1890. Transactions of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers 46. https://mininginstitute.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/NEIMME%20Vol%2046.pdf
University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, 1883–1915, MS-2369. Knoxville: University of Tennessee. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/resources/1121
Interstate Coal & Iron Company. Letter to J. F. Bullitt, March 8, 1901, including correspondence and agreement leasing the Looney Creek Coal Mines to Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, MS-2369, University of Tennessee Libraries. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/59787
University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, 1888–1978, MS-1700. Knoxville: University of Tennessee. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/resources/652
University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. “Coal and Railroad Records, 1883–1915.” Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, MS-2369. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/59783
Looney Creek Railroad Company. Corporate records, 1914–1915. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/top_containers/4364?page=2
Looney Creek Railroad Company. Auditor of Public Accounts Form, June 30, 1915. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/59795
Sampson & Sampson. Letter concerning the Looney Creek Railroad Company, July 15, 1915. Virginia Coal and Iron Company Records, University of Tennessee Libraries, Special Collections. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/59796
Radford University Archives and Special Collections. Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company Records, 1899–1965, AC 001. Radford, VA: Radford University. https://mozart.radford.edu/archives/findingaids/VirginiaIronCoalCokeCompanyRecords.html
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. Mine Inspector’s Reports and Correspondence, 1921–1944. Box 14, Folder 8, “Virginia Iron Coal and Coke Co. – Mines – Imperial – Inman, 1922–1939.” Library of Virginia. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=Mine+inspector’s+reports+and+correspondence+of+the+Virginia+Dept.+of+Labor+and+Industry,+1921-1944&f%5Brepository%5D%5B%5D=Library+of+Virginia&per_page=100&sort=title_sort+desc&view=list
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. Records, 1921–1944. Box 4, Folder 25, “Virginia Iron Coal & Coke-Imperial-Inman Mines, 1922–1939.” Library of Virginia. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=Virginia+Department+of+Labor+and+Industry,+Records,+1921-1944&f%5Brepository%5D%5B%5D=Library+of+Virginia&per_page=100&sort=date_sort+desc&view=list
United States v. Weber, 114 F. 950 (W.D. Va. 1902). https://app.midpage.ai/document/united-states-v-weber-8747028
U.S. Bureau of Labor. Bulletin of the Department of Labor, no. 43. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, November 1902. Includes discussion of United States v. Weber, the Looney Creek Lease, Inman, and United Mine Workers organizing. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_v07_0043_1902.pdf
“United Mine Workers and the Inman Coal Mines.” Engineering and Mining Journal 73, no. 13, March 29, 1902. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/The_Engineering_and_Mining_Journal_1902-03-29-_Vol_73_Iss_13_%28IA_sim_engineering-and-mining-journal_1902-03-29_73_13%29.pdf
Bristol Courier. Industrial Supplement. Bristol, VA-TN, 1904. Includes a contemporary description of the Looney Creek property at Inman and its 174 coke ovens. https://bristol-library.org/wp-content/uploads/Industry-General-Bristol-Courier-1904-Industrial-Supplement.pdf
Commercial and Financial Chronicle. Railway and Industrial Section. July 30, 1904. Contemporary information concerning Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company, the Virginia & Southwestern Railway, and the Inman coal mines. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/cfc/cfc_19040730_supplement.pdf
Commercial and Financial Chronicle. Railway and Industrial Section. April 28, 1906. Contemporary corporate and railroad information concerning Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company and its coal properties. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/cfc/cfc_19060428_supplement.pdf
Henry Gannett. A Gazetteer of Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 232. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0232/report.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971, Microfilm Publication M841, Virginia Roll 135. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
Cameron Blevins and Richard W. Helbock. US Post Offices Historical Dataset. Stanford University Spatial History Project. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/
Rand McNally and Company. “Wise County, Virginia.” Map, 1911. https://mygenealogyhound.com/maps/Virginia-County-Maps/VA-Wise-County-Virginia-Map-1911-Rand-McNally-Big-Stone-Gap-Appalachia-Stonega.html
U.S. Geological Survey. Big Stone Gap, Virginia-Kentucky. Historical topographic map, 1921. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey. https://store.usgs.gov/filter-products?country=US&keyword&page=355®ion=VA
U.S. Geological Survey. Appalachia, Virginia-Kentucky. Historical topographic map, 1935. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey. https://store.usgs.gov/product/920382
U.S. Geological Survey. Estillville Sheet. Surveyed 1882–1883, 1888, and 1891; published 1894. William & Mary Map Collection. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog/viw_repositories_2_resources_2449_c01_c47_c19
Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer. 1917. Wise County listings, including Dr. J. H. Hagy of Inman. https://ldsgenealogy.com/VA/books/Virginia-business-directory-and-gazetteer-1917-v-2-part-75.htm
Big Stone Gap High School. The School Bell. Big Stone Gap, VA, 1931. Includes an advertisement for the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company Linden Store at Inman. https://yearbookyearbook.com/products/1931-big-stone-gap-high-school-yearbook-in-wise-county-virginia-the-school-bell-1931
U.S. Census Bureau. 1950 Census of Population. Volume I: Number of Inhabitants. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1952. Includes Inman-Linden-Laurel, Wise County, with a combined population of 1,165. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-1/vol-01-49.pdf
J. L. Snider. Reconnaissance for Uranium in Coal and Shale in Southern West Virginia and Southwestern Virginia. Trace Elements Investigations Report 409. U.S. Geological Survey, 1954. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1050349/
James Stidham. Oral history interview, April 17, 1992, Inman, Virginia. Coal Camp History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Department, Radford University. Archival identifier Stidham\41792JS1. Documentation cited in https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446313
Rosa Lee Hooper. Oral history interview, April 17, 1992, Inman, Virginia. Coal Camp History Project, Sociology and Anthropology Department, Radford University. Archival identifier Stidham\41792JS1-2. Documentation cited in https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446313
Jessica Paige Collier. “Growing Up in Coal Dust: An Account of Life in a Coal Mining Camp in Inman, Virginia.” 1998. Appalachian Folklife Archive, Box 55, Folder 1, FA198.446.4, Radford University. https://mozart.radford.edu/archives/findingaids/Appalachian-Folklife-Archive.html
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. “Museum Collection Preserves Area’s African American History.” Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park. Discusses the Jessie Reasor Zander Collection and Zander’s childhood in Inman. https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/blog/museum-collection-preserves-areas-african-american-history
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. Jessie Mae Reasor Zander Papers, RG 08-8.37. Berea, KY: Berea College. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/717
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. Investigation of the 2004 Inman fatality. Richmond: Commonwealth of Virginia, 2004. https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/matt_mining_2004.pdf
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. Director’s Correspondence and Subject Files, 1978–2018. Box 5, including “Inman fatality, 2004” and “Ison Rock Ridge Surface Mining permit, 2009–2010.” Library of Virginia. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=Director’s+correspondence+and+subject+files+of+the+Virginia+Dept.+of+Mines,+Minerals+and+Energy,+1978-2018&f%5Brepository%5D%5B%5D=Library+of+Virginia&per_page=100&sort=title_sort+desc&view=list
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3. Ison Rock Ridge Surface Mine comment letters, April 3 and October 21, 2009. https://archive.epa.gov/water/test/web/html/mining-letters.html
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ison Rock Ridge Permit FOIA Documents. 2009. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-01/documents/part-aa.pdf
Virginia Department of Energy. Looney Creek Taggart Mine permit records. Richmond: Commonwealth of Virginia. https://www.energy.virginia.gov/coal/mined-land-repurposing/documents/ApprovedNPDESPermits/A_1011461_P_1202384_SucLetter.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Appalachia Commercial Historic District. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Richmond, 2019. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/164-5003_AppalachiaCommercialHD_2019_NRHP_FINAL.pdf
Brian Dallas McKnight, Jodi Deal, and Mary B. LaLone. Life in the Coal Camps of Wise County: In Honor of Wise County’s Sesquicentennial. 2006. Bibliographic record at https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/appalachian-collection/appalachian-studies-bibliography/appalachian-studies-bibliography-1994-2012/social-conditions-social-life-and-customs
Mary B. LaLone. “Economic Survival Strategies in Appalachia’s Coal Camps.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 2, no. 1 (1996): 53–68. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446313
Luther F. Addington. The Story of Wise County, Virginia. Wise, VA: Wise County Centennial Committee and Wise County School Board, 1956. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL52472909M/The_story_of_Wise_County_Virginia
“They Call It Home.” Roanoke Times, March 28, 1993. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1993/rt0393/930328/03260497.htm
VirginiaPlaces. “South Atlantic and Ohio Railway/Virginia and Southwestern Railroad.” https://virginiaplaces.org/rail/vasouthwestern.html
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Wise County and Norton Historic Architectural Survey. 1995. https://dhr.ar.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/WS-057_Wise_County_Norton_Historic_AH_Survey_1995_Cost_share_report.pdf
Wise County, Virginia. 2020 Comprehensive Plan. https://wisecounty.org/DocumentCenter/View/166/2020-Wise-County-Comprehensive-Plan-PDF
Wise County Historical Society. Coalfield Progress Obituary Collection, 1982. Includes records concerning longtime Inman residents. https://wisevahistoricalsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CFP-Obituaries-1982-VOL-1-A-H.pdf
Newman Numismatic Portal. Scrip Talk holdings and catalog references for Virginia Iron, Coal & Coke Company scrip issued at Inman. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/searchwithterms?page=1451&searchterm=virginia
Author Note: Growing up in the Appalachian coalfields taught me that communities like Inman were never simply collections of company houses surrounding a mine. I hope this history helps preserve the people, labor struggles, families, and memories that made Looney Creek a community long after coal first brought industry into the hollow.