Appalachian Community Histories – Keokee, Lee County: Crab Orchard, Stonega, and a Coal Town Store
Keokee sits in the mountains of northwestern Lee County, Virginia, less than a mile from the Kentucky state line. Today it can look quiet compared with the larger coal towns of Southwest Virginia, but the community carries one of the clearest stories of how a farming settlement became a planned coal and coke town, then survived through school, memory, and reuse. Its central landmark, Keokee Store No. 1, was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register on March 7, 2007, and on the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 2007.
Before it was Keokee, the place was known as Crab Orchard. The National Register nomination for Keokee Store No. 1 describes Crab Orchard in 1880 as a farming community with 128 heads of household and very few signs of the industrial world that would soon arrive. That older rural settlement is important because Keokee was not simply a coal camp carved from empty mountain land. It was a community transformed by outside capital, rail construction, company stores, school buildings, and the demands of the coal market.
Crab Orchard Before Coal
The first trace of the older community appears in postal and census records. Crab Orchard had its own post office before the coal company town existed. The National Register nomination cites an 1872 Post Office Site Location Report for Crab Orchard, Lee County, Virginia. Those National Archives site reports were created for the Post Office Department and often recorded county location, transportation routes, nearby natural features, and sketch maps used to place post offices on postal route maps.
In the 1880 census, Crab Orchard was still overwhelmingly agricultural. Families made their living from farms, not company payrolls. That changed as the larger Big Stone Gap coal field drew investors, geologists, railroad men, and northern capital into the borderlands of Lee County, Wise County, and Harlan County. Marius R. Campbell’s 1893 United States Geological Survey report on the Big Stone Gap coal field placed this region within a larger coal-bearing landscape that stretched across southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
Charles Page Perin and the Making of Keokee
The coal town story began in earnest in the early 1900s. According to the National Register nomination, the Inter-State Investment Company of Louisville had purchased Lee County property as early as 1892. In 1905, it prepared a lease of lands in Lee County, Virginia, and Harlan County, Kentucky, to Charles Page Perin of New York City for coal mining and coke making. That lease required railroad construction to connect the mining operation with larger rail systems.
In January 1906, Perin incorporated the Keokee Coal and Coke Company in New York and served as its president. The Black Mountain Railroad soon contracted with Callahan Construction Company of Knoxville to build a line from the Pocket near Pennington Gap through Crab Orchard to Imboden in Wise County. This line was the key to making Crab Orchard into a working coal town. Without the railroad, coal and coke could not move efficiently from the mountains to industrial markets.
The town’s new name came from Perin’s family. Perin named the mining company after his wife, Keokee Henderson Page, and requested that the Post Office Department change the name from Crab Orchard to Keokee. The change was approved and took effect on October 1, 1906. What had been an older farming post office was now tied to a company, a railroad, and a new industrial identity.
Building a Company Town
Keokee grew quickly. Contractors arrived to discuss coke ovens and houses. The Keokee Hotel began construction, and architect W. T. Coulter helped lay out the town. Coke oven construction began in May 1906. By late 1907, the Black Mountain Division of the Virginia and Southwestern Railway had been completed, and by early 1908 the mines appear to have begun production. The Keokee Depot was completed around February 1908, and the Keokee Hotel opened that May.
The company town included stores, schools, houses, churches, a hotel, railroad service, and industrial facilities. Anne Carter Lee’s SAH Archipedia essay describes Keokee as a model company town designed in 1906 for Charles P. Perin, noting that it stood apart from many hollow-based coal camps because it occupied a plateau with more sunlight and open air.
That model-town language should not hide the power relationship at the center of the place. Keokee’s houses, stores, schools, and public spaces were shaped by the company’s needs. When school attendance increased in 1909 because of the mining workforce, the company supplied electric lights to the school buildings from its power house. The act was helpful, but it also showed how many parts of life in Keokee passed through company control.
Stonega, Virginia Coal and Iron, and Keokee Store No. 1
The next major turn came in 1910. The Keokee Coal and Coke Company moved toward dissolution, and Stonega Coke and Coal Company entered an agreement involving the Keokee Consolidated Coke Company and the Virginia Coal and Iron Company. The Big Stone Gap Post reported the acquisition of Keokee holdings by Stonega, including about 9,000 acres of coal land and a plant with 400 coke ovens.
That same year, the new commissary was completed. The Stonega annual report cited in the National Register nomination stated that the commissary was finished and in operation around October 1, 1910. This became Keokee Store No. 1. It was a large, gambrel-roofed stone building with thick walls, dormer windows, and a central place in the life of the town. The National Register nomination describes it as both the community’s focal point and a symbol of company dominance.
The store sold goods, housed offices, and connected everyday family life to the mining company. A post office booth was built inside the commissary in 1914, and an ice machine was installed in 1915. Keokee Store No. 2 served another part of the village, first in a converted dwelling and later in a new store built near Palmer Hill in 1918.
Work, Scrip, and Company Power
Company stores were not just places to buy flour, shoes, and tools. They were part of a wider labor system. Keokee’s name reached the United States Supreme Court in 1914 through Keokee Consolidated Coke Company v. Taylor. The case involved orders signed by employees and payable in merchandise from the company store. The dispute centered on Virginia law regulating wage orders in mining and manufacturing industries.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the opinion of the Court. The Court upheld the Virginia law and recognized that the statute aimed at a real abuse in industries where employers kept stores and paid workers through orders tied to those stores. The case does not tell the whole story of Keokee’s workers, but it opens a window into the same world of company stores, wage systems, and limited choices that shaped many coal communities across Appalachia.
Decline of the First Coal Town
Keokee’s boom did not last. Stonega maintained parts of the village even as the mine produced less coal. The annual reports cited in the National Register nomination show repairs to school property, stores, fences, dwellings, the hotel, theater, church, and other buildings through the 1910s and 1920s. Yet by the late 1920s, the first company town was fading.
E. J. Prescott’s company history, as quoted in the National Register nomination, stated that by 1927 the coke ovens, colliery buildings, and 178 dwellings on the Lee County side of Keokee Colliery had been abandoned, dismantled, sold, or removed, leaving only thirty four dwellings. The nomination explains that the last large tonnage of coal came in 1927, that limited domestic coal was mined for residents through 1932, and that no coal was mined at Keokee after 1933.
Keokee Store No. 1 closed in 1932. Company correspondence cited in the nomination shows Stonega arranging to close the store permanently in early July of that year. By 1936, railroad steel and outside mine tracks had been removed, effectively making the old mines inoperable.
From Commissary to School Gymnasium
The building did not disappear with the mine. In 1938, the Lee County School Board acquired two parcels in Keokee from the Virginia Coal and Iron Company for school purposes. One parcel contained the former Keokee Store No. 1, and another included the former Keokee Hotel site and a dwelling that could serve school use. The old company town was being repurposed for public education.
In 1939, the former commissary was adapted into Keokee Gymnasium. The school board accepted the completed Keokee High School building in August 1939, and the new school opened that fall for grades one through twelve. The old store became a place for athletics, assemblies, and community events rather than company trade.
This change gave Keokee Store No. 1 a second life. The building’s commercial past was still visible in its size, stone walls, and central location, but its meaning changed. Generations of students came to know it as a gymnasium, a gathering space, and part of Keokee school life. That survival is one reason the building mattered enough to be listed on the state and national registers.
Glenbrook and the Second Keokee
Keokee’s industrial story did not end completely in the 1930s. In the mid-1940s, work around Keokee No. 1 mine supported plans for the Glenbrook Colliery in Kentucky. Stonega’s 1947 annual report, quoted in the National Register nomination, described the completion of eighty dwellings for mine workers, many sold to men working at Glenbrook. These houses had bathrooms, septic tanks, electrical wiring, and access to a new water system with fire hydrants and a large storage tank.
This later development helped create what the nomination calls a second company town era. Yet by then the former commissary’s most lasting role was educational and social. The building housed sports, school programs, and community gatherings. Additions to Keokee High School came in the late 1940s, and in 1954 an industrial arts classroom and workshop were placed in the gymnasium basement.
Lake Keokee and the Landscape Today
The Keokee name also lives in the surrounding landscape. Lake Keokee, a 92-acre impoundment in Lee County, is surrounded by National Forest lands and is used for fishing, boating with restrictions, and outdoor recreation. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources notes that the lake contains largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish, and channel catfish, and that much of the lake’s habitat includes flooded timber left from its 1975 construction.
The geology beneath Keokee has also remained a subject of official mapping. USGS published the Geologic Map of the Keokee Quadrangle, Virginia-Kentucky, in 1971, prepared by Ralph L. Miller and John B. Roen as Geologic Quadrangle 851. Together with older federal geology reports, it places Keokee in the same coal-bearing borderland that drew Perin, Stonega, and Virginia Coal and Iron into Lee County in the first place.
Why Keokee’s Story Matters
Keokee’s history is not just the story of a store. It is the story of how a mountain farming settlement became a company town, how a company town rose and declined with coal, and how one of its strongest buildings survived by becoming something else.
Crab Orchard gave Keokee its older roots. Charles Page Perin and the Keokee Coal and Coke Company gave it a new name and an industrial purpose. Stonega and Virginia Coal and Iron folded it into a larger corporate coal system. Workers, families, schoolchildren, storekeepers, teachers, and students gave it memory.
The old commissary still carries that layered story. It once represented company control over trade, wages, offices, and daily life. Later it became a gymnasium where children played ball, gathered for programs, and built a different kind of community around the same stone walls. That is why Keokee matters in Appalachian history. It shows how coal towns were made, how they could be dismantled, and how local people could keep using what remained.
Sources & Further Reading
Cox, W. Eugene, Joyce Cox, and Michael J. Pulice. “Keokee Store No. 1.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2006. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/052-0066_KeokeeStore_2007_-NRfinal.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Keokee Store No. 1.” Historic Register File 052-0066. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/052-0066/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Lee County.” Historic Register Listings. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/location/lee-county/
United States Supreme Court. Keokee Consolidated Coke Company v. Taylor, 234 U.S. 224. 1914. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/234/224/
Library of Congress. “The Richmond Virginian, April 25, 1910.” Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
Library of Virginia. Virginia Chronicle. Search terms: “Keokee,” “Crab Orchard,” “Stonega Coke,” “Keokee Consolidated,” and “Keokee Store.” https://virginiachronicle.com/
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837-1950.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
United States Census Bureau. “1880 Census: Lee County, Virginia.” Decennial Census Records. https://www.census.gov/
United States Census Bureau. “1910 Census: Lee County, Virginia.” Decennial Census Records. https://www.census.gov/
Lee County Circuit Court Clerk. Lee County, Virginia Deed Books 28, 51, 97, 122, and 123. Jonesville, Virginia. https://www.leecova.org/
Hagley Museum and Library. “Westmoreland Coal Company Records, Accession 1765.” Stonega Coke and Coal Company Records. https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/resources/980
Stonega Coke and Coal Company. Annual Reports for Keokee, 1910-1947. Westmoreland Coal Company Records, Accession 1765, Hagley Museum and Library. https://findingaids.hagley.org/repositories/3/resources/980
Campbell, Marius R. 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/publication/b111
Campbell, Marius R., and Fred C. Pederson. The Valley Coal Fields of Virginia. Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 25. Charlottesville: Virginia Geological Survey, 1925. https://www.energy.virginia.gov/geology/GeologyMineralResources.shtml
Miller, Ralph L., and John B. Roen. Geologic Map of the Keokee Quadrangle, Virginia-Kentucky. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle 851. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1971. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/geologic-map-keokee-quadrangle-virginia-kentucky
U.S. Geological Survey. “TopoView.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System: Keokee.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “Lake Keokee.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://dwr.virginia.gov/waterbody/lake-keokee/
Virginia Tourism Corporation. “Lake Keokee.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.virginia.org/listing/lake-keokee/7249/
Lee, Anne Carter. “Keokee.” SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural Historians. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://sah-archipedia.org/essays/VA-02-0005-0018-0002
Library of Virginia. “Virginia’s Coal Towns.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://utpress.org/title/coal-towns/
Prescott, E. J. The Virginia Coal and Iron Company, 1882-1945. Big Stone Gap, VA, 1946. https://www.worldcat.org/
Keokee Extension Service. Village of Keokee. Privately printed, 1975. https://www.worldcat.org/
Lowry Mize, Martha Grace. “The Twentieth Century.” The Lee County Story: History and Heritage Made Accessible. https://leecountyvahistory.com/
Clio. “Keokee Store No. 1.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://theclio.com/entry/83281
Coalcampusa. “Keokee, VA.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://coalcampusa.com/
Historical Marker Database. “Lee County, Virginia.” Accessed May 19, 2026. https://www.hmdb.org/
Author Note: Keokee is one of those Appalachian places where a single surviving building can carry the story of an entire community. I wrote this piece to follow that story from Crab Orchard’s farming years through coal, company control, decline, and schoolhouse memory.