Appalachian Community Histories – McDowell, McDowell County: Three Coal Companies and One Appalachian Community
In McDowell County, West Virginia, the name McDowell can be easy to overlook. It is the name of the county itself, and historical searches for the community are often overwhelmed by records concerning Welch, Gary, Keystone, Northfork, and the larger county. Yet along the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek, a separate place called McDowell developed during the opening of the Pocahontas coalfield and became the postal and commercial center for several adjoining coal-company settlements.
McDowell was never simply the camp of one mining company. Historical maps, company records, photographs, court cases, and newspapers reveal a community divided among neighboring operations, especially the McDowell Coal & Coke Company, Greenbrier Coal & Coke Company, and Arlington Coal & Coke Company. Nearby Ashland Coal & Coke Company was also part of the same industrial landscape. The different companies had their own mines, stores, houses, and industrial facilities, but the settlements grew so closely together that the boundaries between them became difficult to see.
That arrangement makes McDowell one of the more revealing communities in the southern West Virginia coalfields. It was not a single corporation creating a town from the ground up. Instead, several coal companies developed beside one another along the same creek and railroad system, producing a larger community whose identity outlived the individual operations that created it.
The Railroad Opens the North Fork
Coal had existed beneath the mountains surrounding McDowell for millions of years, but large-scale mining required transportation. The transformation of the North Fork valley therefore followed the expansion of the Norfolk and Western Railway into the Pocahontas coalfield during the late nineteenth century.
One of the most important surviving records is a Norfolk and Western engineering map dated May 1, 1893. Prepared by the railroad’s Office of the Chief Engineer, the map and profile traces lines along the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek and identifies McDowell Coal & Coke Company, Greenbrier Coal & Coke Company, Arlington Coal & Coke Company, Ashland Coal & Coke Company, and other nearby operators. It also identifies the North Fork, Bearwallow, and Leftwich railroad branches. Pasted markdown The original Norfolk and Western catalog record confirms that these companies were already part of the railroad’s industrial geography by 1893.
The map captures the moment when a mountain drainage was being reorganized around industrial transportation. Railroad tracks followed the limited level ground beside the creek. Spurs reached toward mines and tipples. Coal could now be loaded into cars and moved outward toward Bluefield, the main Norfolk and Western line, and industrial markets far beyond southern West Virginia.
The railroad did more than carry coal away. It determined where mines could operate economically and where communities would develop. Houses, company stores, coke ovens, tipples, roads, and bridges crowded into the same narrow valley because the railroad connected the North Fork mines to the national economy.
McDowell became one of the places created by that connection.
Several Companies Build One Community
The companies surrounding McDowell emerged during the rapid development of the Pocahontas field in the early 1890s.
Corporate records show that the McDowell Coal and Coke Company dated to 1891, while Greenbrier Coal and Coke Company followed in 1892. The West Virginia Secretary of State records Arlington Coal and Coke Company as a domestic corporation effective July 30, 1892, with $300,000 in capital stock. Ashland Coal and Coke Company was incorporated on November 21, 1892, and its official state record listed its principal office simply as “McDowell, WV.”
Within little more than a year, several corporations were positioning themselves to extract coal from the same general mountain valley.
Although their properties and corporate structures remained separate, the McDowell, Greenbrier, and Arlington communities became physically interconnected. Later local research based in part on Alex Schust’s work on the McDowell County coalfield describes the three settlements as sharing the McDowell post office and effectively forming one large community.
That distinction is important when reconstructing McDowell’s history. A resident recorded as living at McDowell might have worked for Arlington rather than McDowell Coal & Coke. Another family might have lived near the Greenbrier operation while receiving mail through the same McDowell address. Searching historical records under only the community name therefore misses much of its documentary trail.
McDowell was a place, but it was also a collection of company landscapes.
Coal and Coke Beneath the Mountains
The economic reason for McDowell’s existence was the high-quality coal of the Pocahontas field.
Southern West Virginia coal became especially valuable because of its usefulness to railroads, manufacturing, and steel production. Coke, produced by heating coal in ovens with limited oxygen, became particularly important to the iron and steel industry. In the early twentieth century, McDowell County became one of the most important coke-producing areas in West Virginia. State coal heritage research notes that roughly half of West Virginia’s coke production during part of this period came from McDowell County.
The McDowell operations belonged to this larger industrial system.
West Virginia mine reports repeatedly documented the companies working in the area. One surviving Department of Mines report lists the McDowell Coal & Coke Company with both its mine and post office location recorded as McDowell. These reports are especially valuable because they preserve information about operators, employment, production, accidents, equipment, and mine inspections that does not always survive in local histories. Pasted markdown
The 1915 West Virginia Geological Survey volume Wyoming and McDowell Counties, prepared by Ray V. Hennen and Robert M. Gawthrop, provides another contemporary view of the landscape. The massive 783-page report examined the geology, coal seams, mineral resources, and mining economy of the two counties while the Pocahontas field remained heavily active.
For the people living at McDowell, however, coal was not an abstract geological resource. It was the reason houses appeared beside the creek, the reason railroad cars passed through the valley, and the reason company stores and mine buildings occupied the narrow strips of ground between the mountains.
Houses, Stores, and Everyday Life
Historical photographs help restore the human scale of McDowell.
Images preserved through the Eastern Regional Coal Archives show the McDowell Coal & Coke Company store, rows of company housing, mine locomotives, and the coal tipple. One photograph of the community around 1915 shows only part of the settlement yet reveals how closely the different company properties stood beside one another. Local historical documentation accompanying the photograph states that McDowell once contained more than one hundred homes. The McDowell company store appears near the center, the superintendent’s residence stands above it, and the Arlington Coal & Coke Company store can be seen elsewhere in the same view.
That photograph captures the unusual character of the place.
A miner could leave a house associated with one operation, walk through a community containing buildings associated with another, collect mail under the McDowell name, and hear locomotives serving several mines within the same valley.
Company stores were among the most important buildings in communities like McDowell. Throughout the southern West Virginia coalfields, stores often functioned as more than places to purchase food and household goods. They could contain company offices, payroll functions, postal services, and gathering spaces. State and federal historic-preservation studies of McDowell County describe these stores as central institutions in coal-camp life. Pasted markdown
The store therefore stood at the meeting point between family life and corporate power. Miners earned their wages from the company, rented company housing in many camps, and purchased necessities through businesses connected to the industrial system around them.
Yet photographs also remind us that these places became genuine communities.
Children grew up in the houses. Families tended yards and gardens where the terrain allowed it. Neighbors visited one another. Churches, schools, roads, stores, and postal routes connected lives that cannot be understood through coal production figures alone.
The companies created McDowell for mining, but the people who lived there made it a home.
Greenbrier Takes the Railroad to Court
The relationship between coal operators and the Norfolk and Western Railway was essential, but it was not always peaceful.
In 1905, Greenbrier Coal & Coke Company became involved in a significant federal case against the Norfolk and Western Railway. Greenbrier alleged that the railroad’s distribution of coal cars unlawfully discriminated among coal companies operating in the Pocahontas field. McDowell Coal & Coke Company was among the operators named in the litigation.
The case illustrates how dependent companies were upon railroad transportation.
A mine could employ hundreds of workers and produce valuable coal, but production had little commercial value if railroad cars were unavailable to carry it away. Car distribution could therefore determine how much coal an operation shipped and how much money it earned.
The dispute also shows that the companies around McDowell were part of something much larger than an isolated mountain economy. Their coal entered interstate commerce, and disagreements over its movement reached federal court.
The tracks through McDowell connected a narrow West Virginia hollow directly to national transportation law and industrial markets.
Court Records Preserve Another Side of McDowell
Corporate reports tend to describe production. Railroad drawings describe tracks and structures. Photographs record buildings.
Court records sometimes reveal the conflicts hidden behind those sources.
The surviving McDowell County Circuit Court files include several cases involving McDowell Coal & Coke Company. A. P. Wilse brought a case involving the company in 1894. Charley Baxter and Eldridge Patterson appeared in separate cases against the company in 1902. E. F. Holland was involved in litigation against it in 1907. Pasted markdown
The case indexes alone cannot tell the full stories behind these disputes. The original files would need to be examined before drawing conclusions about individual workers, injuries, debts, contracts, or property disagreements. Their existence is nevertheless significant.
They demonstrate that the history of McDowell survives not only in photographs of orderly company houses but also in legal records created when individuals and corporations came into conflict.
Greenbrier’s corporate history is preserved in another unusually rich collection. The Winding Gulf Coals records at the West Virginia and Regional History Center contain ledgers, journals, and cashbooks belonging to Greenbrier Coal and Coke Company. These are direct records of a company whose settlement helped form the larger McDowell community. Pasted markdown
Together, these materials offer the possibility of reconstructing McDowell in extraordinary detail, from corporate finances and railroad connections to the names of people who worked and lived there.
The Mines Begin to Work Out
Coal communities could grow rapidly when new seams opened, but their dependence upon those seams also created an unavoidable problem.
Eventually the coal that could be mined profitably began to disappear.
Photographs of the McDowell Coal & Coke operation from the 1930s already show a community approaching that transition. A surviving image of the company’s second, more modern tipple describes a mine expansion connected to the structure by a roughly 1,500-foot tram road. By the time the photograph was taken in 1934, the coke ovens were no longer operating and the mines were described as working toward closure after approximately forty-two years of production.
Arlington followed a similar course. Local coalfield research reports that the Arlington operation shut down in 1938 after producing more than 5.7 million tons of metallurgical coal.
The physical dismantling of the old industrial landscape soon became visible.
On December 20, 1940, The McDowell Times carried two small reports that together capture the transition. One stated that the Arlington Coal & Coke tipple was being dismantled after the mine had worked out. Another described repairs by Koppers to a bridge across Leftwich Branch at McDowell that continued to serve miners in the area. Pasted markdown
The two items tell different parts of the same story.
One piece of the old coal landscape was disappearing. Another piece of infrastructure still mattered because mining had not vanished from the valley altogether.
Coal communities rarely ended in a single moment. Mines closed at different times. Companies reorganized or disappeared. Some structures were torn down while neighboring operations continued working. Families remained even after the corporations that had built their houses were gone.
McDowell changed gradually from an industrial coal camp into a residential community carrying the physical remnants of its earlier life.
What Remains of McDowell
Much of the industrial McDowell visible in early photographs has disappeared.
The tipples, mine structures, coke ovens, and many company houses are gone. Arlington’s industrial plant disappeared after its mine closed, and the original McDowell Coal & Coke landscape likewise faded as mining ended. Yet surviving residences still mark portions of the old company settlements, preserving the pattern of a community created more than a century ago.
The historical record survives even where buildings do not.
Norfolk and Western engineering drawings preserve the route of tracks and mine connections. A 1916 railroad plan specifically documented an encroachment along the North Fork by McDowell Coal & Coke Company and even recorded railroad infrastructure such as Bridge No. 1274. Pasted markdown
Virginia Tech’s Norfolk and Western photographic collection contains an image of the McDowell Coal and Coke Company tipple from the 1930s, along with photographs of Arlington and other nearby coal operations. Pasted markdown
The West Virginia State Archives preserves the court cases. West Virginia University holds Greenbrier’s business records. The Eastern Regional Coal Archives preserves photographs and mining memorabilia. The Library of Congress provides access to The McDowell Times. State mining reports record the companies year by year.
McDowell may have lost much of its industrial landscape, but it has not lost its history.
Why McDowell Matters
McDowell is important because its history complicates the familiar image of the Appalachian company town.
Many coal communities are remembered through the company that created them. Gary belonged to U.S. Coal & Coke. Keystone grew around Keystone Coal & Coke. Other communities similarly became identified with a dominant operator.
McDowell developed differently.
McDowell Coal & Coke, Greenbrier Coal & Coke, and Arlington Coal & Coke occupied adjoining pieces of the same valley. Their settlements blended together. They shared a postal identity. Company stores and homes stood within sight of one another. Norfolk and Western tracks connected all of them to the same larger coalfield economy.
To someone passing through, it may have looked like one town.
On paper, it was several industrial enterprises.
That is what makes McDowell valuable to Appalachian history. It demonstrates how coal development could redraw mountain geography without erasing older ideas of community. Corporate property lines mattered to investors, mine managers, railroad officials, and lawyers, but everyday life crossed those lines.
Families lived beside one another. Miners walked the same roads. Children saw the same trains passing through the hollow. Mail arrived under the same place name.
Eventually the mines worked out, the tipples came down, and the companies disappeared.
The community remained.
Today the quiet roads around McDowell reveal only fragments of the industrial landscape shown on the Norfolk and Western map of 1893. Yet beneath those roads, hillsides, and surviving homes lies the history of a place created when several coal companies entered the North Fork valley almost simultaneously and transformed it into one interconnected Appalachian coal community.
Sources & Further Reading
Norfolk & Western Railway, Office of the Chief Engineer. “Map and Profile of the Lines on the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek Showing the Bearwallow Branch and the Second Extension of the North Fork Branch.” May 1, 1893. HS-D11297. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=178337
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Plan Showing Encroachment upon North Fork by McDowell Coal & Coke Co.” August 31, 1916. N-4133-I, HS-C09799. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=253131
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “McDowell Coal and Coke Company Coal Tipple, McDowell, West Virginia.” Circa 1930s. Item nw1326. Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection. https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/36222
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending June 30, 1907. Charleston, WV: Tribune Printing Company, 1907. https://archive.org/details/annualreportofde41west
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. 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. https://archive.org/stream/annualreportofde36west/annualreportofde36west_djvu.txt
West Virginia Archives and History. “McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files.” Collection AR2094. West Virginia State Archives. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
McDowell County Circuit Court. Charley Baxter v. McDowell Coal and Coke Company. 1902. Case 85:46. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
McDowell County Circuit Court. Eldridge Patterson v. McDowell Coal and Coke Company. 1902. Case 89:775. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
McDowell County Circuit Court. A. P. Wilse v. McDowell Coal and Coke Company. 1894. Case 115:1186. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
McDowell County Circuit Court. E. F. Holland v. McDowell Coal & Coke Company. 1907. Case 126:1723. McDowell County Circuit Court Case Files, West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/collections/ar/ar2094.html
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Winding Gulf Coals, Inc., Records. A&M 1525. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, WV. Collection dates 1888–1950. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/4831
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “George Cochran Collection.” Accession 90-126. Eastern Regional Coal Archives, Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “Janet Herring Collection.” Accession 90-125. Eastern Regional Coal Archives, Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
Eastern Regional Coal Archives. “Smokeless Operators Association Records.” Accession 90-123. Eastern Regional Coal Archives, Craft Memorial Library, Bluefield, West Virginia. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/articles/ERCALIST.pdf
West Virginia Secretary of State. “The Arlington Coal and Coke Company.” Business Organization Detail. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/organization.aspx?org=84701
West Virginia Secretary of State. “Ashland Coal and Coke Company.” Business Organization Detail. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://apps.sos.wv.gov/business/corporations/organization.aspx?org=38583
United States ex rel. Greenbrier Coal & Coke Co. v. Norfolk & Western Railway Co., 138 F. 849 (C.C.S.D.W. Va. 1905). https://openjurist.org/138/f1d/849/united-states-ex-rel-greenbrier-coal-coke-co-v-norfolk-w-ry-co
United States ex rel. Greenbrier Coal & Coke Co. v. Norfolk & Western Railway Co., 143 F. 266 (4th Cir. 1906). https://openjurist.org/143/f1d/266/united-states-ex-rel-greenbrier-coal-coke-co-v-norfolk-western-ry-co
The McDowell Times. Keystone, WV, 1904–1941. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86092050/
The McDowell Times. “Arlington Coal & Coke Tipple” and McDowell bridge reports. December 20, 1940. Keystone, WV. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092050/1940-12-20/ed-1/seq-1/
Campbell, Marius R. Pocahontas Folio, Virginia-West Virginia. Geologic Atlas of the United States, Folio 26. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1896. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/gf26
Hennen, Ray V., and Robert M. Gawthrop. Wyoming and McDowell Counties. Wheeling, WV: West Virginia Geological Survey, 1915. https://books.google.com/books/about/Wyoming_and_McDowell_Counties.html?id=MsgbAAAAMAAJ
Sowers, Auburn Daniel. Facts About McDowell County, West Virginia. 1912. West Virginia State Archives. Listed in the McDowell County historical bibliography. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Sone, Stacy. “Coal Company Stores in McDowell County.” National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1991–1992. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/64500726_text
Aurora Research Associates. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf
Schust, Alex P. Billion Dollar Coalfield: West Virginia’s McDowell County and the Industrialization of America. Harwood, MD: Two Mule Publishing, 2010. https://search.worldcat.org/title/666823075
Sullivan, Charles Kenneth. Coal Men and Coal Towns: Development of the Smokeless Coalfields of Southern West Virginia, 1873–1923. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Coal+Men+and+Coal+Towns+Charles+Kenneth+Sullivan
Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. https://utpress.org/9780870493416/miners-millhands-and-mountaineers/
Shifflett, Crandall A. Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Crandall+Shifflett+Coal+Towns
McDowell County Historical Society. The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1995. War, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1995.
Solins, Mrs. Samuel, and Mrs. Paul Jones. McDowell County History: A Pictorial History of McDowell County, West Virginia. Fort Worth, TX: University Supply and Equipment Company, 1959. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
Friedl, Joseph. A History of Education in McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1976. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1975. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
West Virginia State Archives. “McDowell County History Sources.” West Virginia Archives and History. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html
United States Geological Survey. “TopoView: Historical Topographic Maps.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
United States National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Author Note: This article reconstructs McDowell through railroad maps, mining reports, court cases, company records, newspapers, and archival photographs that reveal how several coal-company settlements became one interconnected community. The surviving evidence shows that understanding McDowell requires looking beyond McDowell Coal & Coke to Greenbrier, Arlington, and the wider North Fork coalfield.