Appalachian Community Histories – Radnor, Wayne County: Railroad, Coal, Schools, and Life Along West Fork Twelvepole Creek
Radnor is easy to pass today. Like many small communities tucked into the folds of Wayne County, West Virginia, it can look from the road like little more than a name attached to a narrow valley, a creek, scattered houses, and the roads that follow the easiest passage through the hills.
A century ago, however, Radnor occupied a much busier place in the transportation network of southern Wayne County. Trains stopped there. Coal moved toward a railroad siding by horse and wagon. A post office gave the community an official identity. Children attended Radnor Graded School. A licensed midwife served families living beyond easy reach of physicians. Then, during the 1920s and 1930s, the transportation system that had helped create Radnor changed beneath it. Highways pushed farther into the Twelvepole country while the railroad that had once connected the valley to the outside world prepared to disappear.
The history of Radnor is therefore larger than the history of a single small place. It is a story of how the railroad created a network of Appalachian communities, how coal and timber moved through that network, and how the automobile eventually inherited routes that had first been carved through the mountains for trains.
By the time the Norfolk and Western abandoned much of its old Twelvepole Line in 1933, Radnor had already spent more than three decades growing around that changing landscape.
The Norfolk and Western Comes to Twelvepole
The railroad arrived in Wayne County before Radnor appeared prominently in surviving records.
During the early 1890s, the Norfolk and Western pushed its Ohio Extension westward across southern West Virginia. The company was searching for a route that could connect the coalfields of the interior with the Ohio River and the markets beyond it. Through Wayne County, the line wound along the branches of Twelvepole Creek, following valleys that offered passage through otherwise difficult mountain country.
Construction began in 1890. Trains were operating between Kenova and Dunlow by December 1891, and the Ohio Extension was substantially opened to traffic the following year. Building it had required repeated crossings of waterways, tunnels, trestles, cuts, and curves because the railroad followed the twisting Appalachian drainage system rather than a straight path westward.
That railroad changed the geography of Wayne County. Places that had once been connected primarily by trails, wagon roads, and waterways were suddenly linked to a larger transportation system. New stations appeared, old settlements grew, and communities increasingly identified themselves in relation to the railroad.
Radnor emerged inside that world.
The exact beginnings of the community name are still difficult to pin down, but postal compilations based on federal Post Office Department records place the establishment of the Radnor post office in 1901. State historic preservation research likewise places an Norfolk and Western station at Radnor by about 1903. By 1904 there was no question that Radnor had become a recognized place. Henry Gannett’s federal Gazetteer of West Virginia, published by the United States Geological Survey, described Radnor simply but revealingly as a “post village in Wayne County on the Norfolk and Western Railway.”
Those few words tell much of Radnor’s early story. It possessed postal service, a recognized community name, and a direct connection to the railroad.
Coal Wagons at the Radnor Siding
The railroad did more than carry passengers through Radnor. It created a place where the surrounding hills could be connected to industrial markets.
Coal mining developed around several communities on the Twelvepole route during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. West Virginia transportation historians have identified Lincoln Coal, Handley Coal, and May Branch Coal among companies associated with the Radnor area. The scale of production was never comparable to the enormous operations farther south in the Pocahontas and Tug Fork coalfields, but mining became part of the local economy.
One of the strongest surviving pieces of evidence comes not from a mining directory but from the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
In Napier v. Mozena Coal Company, decided in 1920, the court examined a dispute arising from an agreement made two years earlier. Thomas B. Napier had contracted with the Mozena Coal Company to haul coal by wagon and team from the company’s mine to a railroad siding near Radnor. There, the coal was to be loaded into railroad cars. Napier was to receive one dollar for each ton hauled and loaded.
The legal dispute centered on money and the authority of the mining company’s superintendent, but the case unintentionally preserved an unusually vivid picture of industrial life around Radnor.
Coal did not necessarily leave the mountain at a large mechanized tipple. Men, horses, wagons, mines, and railroad sidings were connected in a chain. Coal came out of the hillside, traveled over local roads behind teams, reached the tracks near Radnor, and was transferred into cars that could carry it far beyond Wayne County.
Radnor’s siding was therefore more than a piece of railroad infrastructure. It was one of the points where the rural economy of the surrounding hollows met the Norfolk and Western.
Radnor Station in 1920
By 1920, Radnor’s depot was important enough for the Norfolk and Western to invest in improvements.
On January 1, the Wayne County News reported that increased freight traffic had prompted the railroad to place telegraph operators at Lavalette, Ardel, and Radnor. The newspaper specifically identified all three as stations on the Old Line Division. Their depots were to be remodeled and telegraph equipment installed as part of an effort to relieve congestion between Wayne and Kenova.
That brief report establishes Radnor as an active operating station rather than simply a flag stop or place name beside the tracks.
Telegraph operators were part of the communication system that kept trains moving safely through the railroad network. On a winding single track route where trains had to be coordinated carefully, communication between stations mattered. Radnor participated in that system.
The old Twelvepole route had already lost some of its original importance by then. The Norfolk and Western opened the more efficient Big Sandy Low Grade Line in 1904, allowing much of the heavy westbound coal traffic and passenger service to avoid the sharp curves and repeated creek crossings of the original route. The Twelvepole Line remained useful for local traffic, empty coal cars, and auxiliary service, but its future was increasingly uncertain.
Still, the 1920 improvements show that the old route was not dead.
People continued to gather at Radnor station, freight continued moving through the valley, and trains remained part of everyday life.
The Killing of Lawrence Curnutte
A tragedy later that year offers another glimpse of the station as a community gathering point.
On the evening of July 23, 1920, twenty-four-year-old Lawrence Curnutte came to Radnor station to catch a train. Curnutte was a World War I veteran who had served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France. According to contemporary newspaper reporting, he had been badly gassed during the war and was traveling to Wayne to consult Dr. G. R. Burgess about his health.
He never boarded the train.
The Wayne County News reported that Curnutte encountered Fred Cooksey near the railroad tracks just before the train was due. Their confrontation reportedly grew from an earlier dispute involving Curnutte’s father. Witnesses told the newspaper that Cooksey ordered Curnutte to raise his hands and then shot him in the chest.
Curnutte died at Radnor station. Cooksey fled into Kentucky before surrendering to Wayne County authorities.
The killing belongs primarily to the personal histories of the Curnutte and Cooksey families, but it also reveals something about Radnor itself. People went to the station because trains connected them with doctors, county government, stores, relatives, and towns elsewhere along the line. The depot was one of the places where the scattered population of the surrounding countryside entered a broader world.
For Lawrence Curnutte, a wounded veteran trying to reach his physician in Wayne, the railroad was part of the ordinary infrastructure of daily life.
A Highway Pushes Through Radnor
While trains still stopped at Radnor, another transportation revolution was already moving into the valley.
West Virginia and Wayne County officials spent much of the 1920s expanding roads capable of carrying automobiles and trucks through places that had previously depended heavily on railroads. One of the most ambitious projects was the Tug River Highway, envisioned as a major route across southern West Virginia.
Radnor became an important point in that project.
In February 1923, the Wayne County News reported that the next major Wayne County contract would extend from Radnor toward Dunlow. On March 9, the Wayne County Court awarded a contract for approximately six and one-half miles of highway beginning at Radnor and extending toward Dunlow. Beckwith, White & Rich Contracting Company received the job for $143,124, with money coming from Lincoln District road bonds approved the previous year.
The amount was substantial for a rural road project, and the work represented more than an improvement for local travelers. It formed part of a larger attempt to create a continuous modern transportation corridor across the southern portion of the state.
Radnor was caught directly in the transition.
The community had grown because of the railroad, yet new roads were making it possible for residents, goods, mail, and businesses to move without depending entirely upon train schedules. Automobiles and trucks could reach farms and hollows that railroads never could.
During the 1920s, the railroad and highway existed side by side. Within another decade, only one would remain.
Radnor Graded School
Transportation records reveal how people reached Radnor, but school records show that families were building lives there.
On May 20, 1926, the Wayne County News published the teachers selected for schools throughout Lincoln District. The list included communities scattered across southern Wayne County, among them Dunlow, Ferguson, Genoa, Stonecoal, Stepp, and Radnor.
For Radnor Graded School, the Board of Education appointed Ruth Vita Adkins.
The reference is short, but its significance is considerable.
A graded school meant that Radnor was not simply a railroad station surrounded by mines. It was a community containing enough children and families to support a formal educational institution identified by the Radnor name.
In communities such as this one, schools often served purposes that extended far beyond classroom instruction. They became familiar landmarks, gathering places, and points around which generations of local identity developed.
Railroad records show commerce. School records reveal permanence.
By the middle of the 1920s, people were not merely passing through Radnor. Families were raising children there.
Laura B. Smith and Rural Health Care
Another contemporary newspaper record opens a window into a part of Appalachian community life that transportation and business histories often overlook.
In 1927, the Wayne County News published the names of twenty-eight licensed midwives practicing in Wayne County. The newspaper explained that midwives were particularly important in rural communities where physicians and medical services could be difficult to reach.
Among those licensed practitioners was Laura B. Smith of Radnor.
Her presence helps reconstruct the social world behind the depot, siding, highway, and school.
Families living along West Fork Twelvepole Creek and in the surrounding hollows could not always travel quickly to a doctor, particularly during bad weather or medical emergencies. Roads remained difficult, automobiles were not universal, and the nearest physician might be miles away.
A local midwife therefore occupied an important position within rural life. She assisted families during childbirth in homes scattered across the countryside and provided a form of medical access in a landscape where distance could determine whether professional care was practical.
Laura B. Smith’s name surviving in a county newspaper turns Radnor briefly from a transportation point into a community of households, births, families, and neighbors.
Radnor on September 15, 1932
One of the most remarkable surviving records of Radnor does not require much interpretation.
It is a photograph.
West Virginia University’s West Virginia History OnView collection preserves an image titled simply “Town of Radnor, Wayne County, W. Va.” It was taken on September 15, 1932.
The photograph shows railroad tracks passing through the settlement with houses standing nearby. The road, dwellings, valley, and rail corridor occupy the same frame.
Few documents capture Radnor’s story so completely.
By the time the camera shutter opened in 1932, the railroad had been part of the community for decades. The post office had existed since the beginning of the century. Coal had been hauled toward its siding. Telegraph equipment had been planned for the depot. A highway had been constructed through the surrounding country. Children had attended Radnor Graded School.
Yet the tracks visible in the photograph were approaching the end of their usefulness to the Norfolk and Western.
Less than a year after that image was made, regular railroad operation over much of the old Twelvepole route would cease.
The Last Trains on Twelvepole
The problem confronting the Norfolk and Western was one of economics and geography.
The original Twelvepole route had been built when engineers were searching for a workable passage across southern West Virginia. Its winding alignment was adequate in the 1890s, but it became increasingly inefficient as locomotives, trains, and the coal business grew larger.
The Big Sandy Low Grade Line offered a better alternative. Heavy traffic gradually shifted away from Twelvepole. A second track along the Big Sandy route further reduced the old line’s importance during the 1920s.
During the early 1930s, the Norfolk and Western sought permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon approximately fifty-four miles of the old route between Wayne and Lenore.
West Virginia officials did not simply accept the proposal. The state, the Public Service Commission, affected counties, districts, and residents opposed the abandonment. Losing the railroad meant losing a transportation service that communities had depended upon for a generation.
The federal commission nevertheless approved the request. Historic preservation research quotes contemporary reporting that continued operation could no longer be justified by existing or prospective traffic and would produce a substantial deficit. The final day of operation on the abandoned portion of the Twelvepole Line came on September 1, 1933. Rails were removed during October and November.
Radnor’s railroad era had effectively ended.
The transformation was striking. In 1920, the Norfolk and Western had been preparing telegraph improvements at Radnor. In 1932, a photographer could still stand beside the tracks and document a recognizable railroad community. By the end of 1933, much of the line that had created that landscape was being dismantled.
When the Railroad Became a Road
The railroad vanished, but its route did not.
The same geography that had forced railroad engineers to follow narrow valleys also constrained highway engineers. There were only so many practical ways through the hills.
As the Twelvepole rails disappeared, West Virginia moved toward incorporating portions of the old transportation corridor into its road network. Historic preservation studies of surviving railroad structures in Wayne County document how sections of the abandoned alignment were eventually rehabilitated for automotive use.
There is a certain symmetry in that change.
The railroad had helped create Radnor as a recognizable community. The highway then followed the railroad era into the valley, keeping Radnor connected after trains disappeared.
The process had begun well before abandonment. The Radnor to Dunlow road contract of 1923 shows that highway construction was already transforming transportation while the Norfolk and Western continued operating beside it.
For a time, steam locomotives and automobiles shared the same Appalachian corridor.
The automobile won.
Radnor During the Great Depression
Losing the railroad did not mean that Radnor disappeared.
Newspaper records from the Great Depression continue to identify residents by the community name. In 1936, Wayne County men from Radnor appeared among recruits accepted into the Civilian Conservation Corps.
William Damron and Cullie Thompson of Radnor were included among twenty-four county youths accepted after physical examinations in Huntington. The newspaper noted that the recruits came from relief rolls and that their families would be removed from those rolls after the young men began receiving pay.
A later group included Millard Maynard and Glen Porter of Radnor among Wayne County recruits bound for a CCC camp in California after a conditioning period at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Another enlistment list named Harley Boyles of Radnor.
Those names place Radnor inside one of the defining federal relief programs of the Depression.
The community that had been tied so closely to railroad employment, coal hauling, farming, and local industries was now sending young men into a national work program designed to provide wages during an economic crisis.
Once again, a national story becomes visible through a small place.
The Community the Railroad Left Behind
Radnor never became a large town, and that is precisely why its surviving records are valuable.
Much Appalachian history happened in places that never incorporated, never built courthouses, and never grew large enough to receive their own history books. Their stories survive instead in scattered fragments.
One fragment comes from a federal gazetteer calling Radnor a post village on the Norfolk and Western.
Another survives in a court case describing coal hauled by wagon to a railroad siding.
A newspaper records the railroad installing telegraph service. Another describes the highway being built toward Dunlow. A school list preserves the name Ruth Vita Adkins. A health report records Laura B. Smith. A Depression-era newspaper identifies young men leaving Radnor for the CCC.
Then there is the 1932 photograph, with railroad tracks cutting through the community only months before the transportation system around which Radnor had developed began to disappear.
Taken together, those records reveal a place far more complex than a name on a map.
Radnor belonged to the generation of Appalachian communities shaped by the coming of the railroad. Its residents lived at the meeting point of farms, mines, coal wagons, passenger trains, telegraph wires, schools, and eventually highways. When the Norfolk and Western removed its tracks, the community survived while the landscape adapted around it.
Today the roads through the Twelvepole country continue to follow many of the same narrow passages that dictated where trains could travel more than a century ago.
That may be the most enduring part of Radnor’s story.
The locomotives are gone, but the route they helped establish still carries people through the valley.
Sources & Further Reading
Gannett, Henry. A Gazetteer of West Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 233. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b233
West Virginia University Libraries. “Town of Radnor, Wayne County, W. Va.” Photograph, September 15, 1932. West Virginia History OnView, identifier 014999. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/014999
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Microfilm Publication M841. Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
West Virginia and Regional History Center. West Virginia Postmasters Appointment Records, 1857–1971. A&M 3026. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1217
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126. Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
West Virginia and Regional History Center. Post Office Site Location Reports, 1837–1950. A&M 3058. West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1240
Wayne County News. “N. & W. Plans Improvement.” January 1, 1920. Transcribed by the Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201920.htm
Napier v. Mozena Coal Co., 86 W. Va. 220, 103 S.E. 125 (1920). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. https://openjurist.org/86/wva/220/napier-v-mozena-coal-co
Gridelli v. Norfolk & Western Railway Co., 97 W. Va. 400, 125 S.E. 99 (1924). Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gridelli-v-norfolk-western-railway-co-wva-1924
Wayne County News. “Early Completion of Tug River Highway Predicted.” February 15, 1923. Transcribed by the Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201923.htm
Wayne County News. “Radnor to Dunlow Contract Is Let for $143,124.00.” March 15, 1923. Transcribed by the Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201923.htm
West Virginia. West Virginia Blue Book, 1921. Charleston: State of West Virginia, 1921. The Wayne County section lists Radnor among the county’s post offices. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1921.pdf
Wayne County News. “Teachers Are Employed for Lincoln District.” May 20, 1926. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn260520.html
Wayne County News. “28 Practicing Wayne Midwives to Renew License This Month.” October 27, 1927. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn271208.html
West Virginia Division of Highways. West Virginia Historic Property Form: Fleming Thru Girder Bridge Repair. Prepared by Tracy D. Bakic, 2013. Charleston: West Virginia Division of Highways. https://www.highwaysthroughhistory.com/Content/bridges/FlemingThruGirder/docs/hpi.pdf
West Virginia Division of Highways. State Level Historic Documentation: Fleming Deck Girder Bridge. Prepared by Tracy D. Bakic, 2015. Charleston: West Virginia Division of Highways. https://www.highwaysthroughhistory.com/Content/bridges/FlemingDeck/docs/slhd.pdf
Straley, Steven Cody. Dunlow Norfolk & Western Railway Depot. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Charleston: West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office, 2022. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dunlow-Depot-with-Pictures-Reduced.pdf
“The Last of the ‘Twelve Pole’ Line.” Norfolk and Western Magazine 11, no. 11 (November 1933): 408–10. Reproduced and cited in the Dunlow Norfolk & Western Railway Depot National Register documentation. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dunlow-Depot-with-Pictures-Reduced.pdf
Interstate Commerce Commission. Interstate Commerce Commission Reports. Vol. 193. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934, 363–69. Norfolk & Western Railway Twelvepole Line abandonment proceeding. The proceeding is documented and cited in the Dunlow Depot National Register nomination. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Dunlow-Depot-with-Pictures-Reduced.pdf
Krebs, Charles E., and D. D. Teets Jr. County Reports and Maps: Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties. Wheeling, WV: Wheeling News Lithograph Company for the West Virginia Geological Survey, 1913. https://books.google.com/books?id=9MgbAAAAMAAJ
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. See the Radnor entry on page 517. https://books.google.com/books/about/West_Virginia_Place_Names.html?id=61YlAAAAMAAJ
West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers.” West Virginia University Libraries. Includes historic West Virginia gazetteers, county maps, atlases, and geographic-name resources useful for reconstructing Radnor. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/maps-atlases-and-gazetteers
West Virginia Archives and History. “Districts and Place Names in West Virginia.” Based on the New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia (1933). Radnor is listed within Wayne County’s Lincoln District. https://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/communities/districtplacenames.html
West Virginia State Archives. “County Court Records Microfilm Holdings.” Wayne County collections include deeds, wills, court orders, vital records, surveys, and other records valuable for research into Radnor families and property. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html
Author Note: I wrote this article to recover the history of a small Wayne County community whose railroad station, coal traffic, school, and families once made it an active part of the Twelvepole Valley. Radnor’s surviving records also show how the shift from railroads to highways transformed communities across southern West Virginia during the early twentieth century.