Appalachian Community Histories – Stonecoal, Wayne County: Railroad Yards, Coal Mines, Schools, and Life Along the Tug Fork
Stonecoal sits in the narrow Tug Fork country of southern Wayne County, West Virginia, between Crum and Kermit, in a landscape where river, railroad, highway, creek valleys, and steep mountains have long competed for the same limited ground. Today the name can seem like another small place along U.S. 52, but the historical record tells a different story.
Stonecoal once had its own post office, businesses, school, coal mine, railroad facilities, and families whose names repeatedly appeared in Wayne County records. By the 1920s, Norfolk & Western had developed an assembly yard there with passing sidings, full-length assembly tracks, and major water facilities. A court case describing the community in 1931 counted seven railroad tracks spread between the mountains and the Tug Fork. Coal trains, passenger trains, highway traffic, miners, railroad workers, schoolchildren, merchants, and farming families all occupied the same narrow corridor.
The story of Stonecoal, however, begins before the railroad yard and before the coal mine.
How Old Is Stonecoal?
Determining exactly when Stonecoal became a recognized community is surprisingly complicated.
The West Virginia State Archives place-name index associates Stonecoal in Wayne County with the year 1891. That date is useful evidence that the name was recognized by that period, but it should not be treated automatically as the community’s founding date. The surviving evidence points farther back.
In December 1923, the Wayne County News published the recollections of Z. T. Vinson concerning the June 1874 term of the Wayne County court. Vinson remembered prominent men who could be seen around Wayne during that period, including William Ratcliff, Samuel Damron, Lamech Adkins, Charles W. Ferguson, and “Johnson Fry from Stonecoal.”
Because Vinson was writing almost fifty years after the event, his wording cannot prove beyond a doubt that the community was already formally called Stonecoal in 1874. It does demonstrate that an older Wayne County resident remembered Stonecoal as a recognizable locality connected with a man who belonged to that generation.
Postal history provides another important marker. The historical U.S. Post Offices dataset assembled by Cameron Blevins from the work of postal historian Richard Helbock places the establishment of the Stonecoal post office in 1885 and its discontinuance in 1955. Helbock’s underlying research relied heavily on the Post Office Department’s official postmaster appointment registers, although the original register entry should still be consulted before treating those dates as the final word.
Whatever the exact beginning of the name, Stonecoal was clearly an established southern Wayne County community before the twentieth century.
Stonecoal Becomes a Post Village
By 1904, Stonecoal had entered the federal geographical record.
Henry Gannett’s A Gazetteer of West Virginia, published by the United States Geological Survey, described Stonecoal simply as a “post village in Wayne County.” Those few words are important because they establish that Stonecoal was not merely an informal creek name. It possessed a recognized postal identity and was important enough to appear independently in a federal gazetteer.
R. L. Polk & Company’s West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1904 and 1905 provides a more human picture.
Different sections of the directory contain Stonecoal entries for John Marcum, whose surname appears in the OCR as “Marcrum,” U. G. Parsley, F. Prince, S. Spaulding, J. R. Bowen, J. R. Ward, and T. M. Copley. Because the searchable transcription was created through automated text recognition, the original scanned pages should be consulted before relying on every spelling or occupational category. Still, the number of Stonecoal entries demonstrates that a functioning community existed there.
Some occupations can be identified more securely.
M. D. Parsley appeared under lumber-related listings with Stonecoal as his location. A. J. Damron appeared among the state’s saloon operators. The Mingo Oil & Gas Company was also listed at Stonecoal, showing that the extractive economy surrounding the community extended beyond coal alone.
The picture that emerges is not yet that of a major coal camp. Early Stonecoal was a postal and commercial community serving families scattered through Stonecoal Creek and the surrounding Tug Fork country.
Bees, Timber, and Rural Life
Industrial records can make Appalachian communities appear as though they existed only because of coal and railroads. Stonecoal’s surviving record shows otherwise.
One of the most unusual primary sources comes from W. C. Mollett, a beekeeper who repeatedly wrote from Stonecoal for the national journal Gleanings in Bee Culture.
Mollett discussed black and Italian honeybees, swarming, winter feeding, honey production, basswood, sourwood, rainfall, and the practical problems of maintaining apiaries in the Appalachian landscape. In one account, he described separate bee yards roughly three miles apart. His articles are unusually valuable because they capture something that mine reports and railroad timetables cannot: the ordinary agricultural knowledge of someone actually living and working around Stonecoal.
The mountains surrounding the community also supported timbering. M. D. Parsley’s appearance in lumber listings fits the larger economy of Wayne County, where timber remained important before and during the expansion of coal development.
Stonecoal therefore entered the twentieth century with several overlapping economies. People could farm, keep bees, cut timber, operate small businesses, work around oil and gas interests, or eventually seek wages from the expanding railroad and coal industries.
That mixture was typical of Appalachian communities undergoing industrial change.
Coal Comes to Stonecoal
Coal eventually became one of the most important parts of Stonecoal’s identity.
The West Virginia Department of Mines annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1923, included the Perdue Coal Company and its Perdue Mine at Stonecoal in Wayne County. This is direct government evidence of an operating coal concern associated with the community by the early 1920s.
The mine connected Stonecoal more closely with the rapidly developing coal economy of the Tug Valley. Across the region, railroad access transformed coal seams that had long been known locally into resources that could be mined commercially and shipped to distant markets.
Stonecoal occupied an unusually favorable transportation position for that transformation. The Norfolk & Western line followed the Tug Fork corridor through southern Wayne County, connecting the community with Kermit and Williamson in one direction and with the Ohio River transportation network in the other.
Coal could come out of the mountains and onto the railroad.
That relationship between mine and railroad would soon reshape Stonecoal far more dramatically than the post office had.
The Norfolk & Western Builds a Yard at Stonecoal
The most dramatic period in Stonecoal’s transportation history came during the 1920s.
The Norfolk & Western was increasing the capacity of its Big Sandy line, part of the railroad infrastructure carrying enormous quantities of coal out of the Tug Valley. A February 26, 1925 report in the Wayne County News described the double-tracking project as one of the largest commercial undertakings then underway in Wayne County.
Stonecoal received far more than an extra set of rails.
According to the newspaper, Norfolk & Western constructed an assembly yard there containing two passing sidings and two assembly tracks long enough to accommodate complete trains. The railroad also planned substantial water facilities, including a water-softening plant, a 200,000-gallon storage tank, two 100,000-gallon steel supply tanks, and the necessary standpipes.
For a small Appalachian community, that was major infrastructure.
Stonecoal had become a place where railroad traffic could be organized rather than merely pass through. Freight trains could wait, assemble, move onto sidings, and allow other trains to pass. Water facilities supported steam locomotives working through a region where heavy coal trains and difficult grades demanded enormous amounts of power.
Railroad engineering records reinforce the importance of the location. Norfolk & Western records from the 1920s include land acquired at Stonecoal as part of the company’s Wayne County property holdings and right-of-way development.
By the middle of the decade, Stonecoal was no longer simply a post village beside a creek.
It was part of the operating machinery of one of America’s great coal railroads.
Seven Railroad Tracks Beside the Tug Fork
A tragic accident produced one of the clearest surviving descriptions of Stonecoal’s physical landscape.
On the night of September 19, 1931, a man was discovered badly injured near the Norfolk & Western tracks at Stonecoal. The resulting litigation eventually reached the Kentucky Court of Appeals as Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Hensley’s Administrator.
The court’s 1934 opinion described Stonecoal in remarkable detail.
There were seven railroad tracks in the yard, running roughly parallel with the Tug River. U.S. Highway 52 lay between the railroad and the river. The tracks included the eastbound main, an eastbound passing siding, two storage tracks, a westbound passing siding, the westbound main, and another track identified as the hot-box track. A county road crossed the railroad complex.
That description allows the Stonecoal of the early 1930s to be reconstructed almost track by track.
The river occupied one side of the narrow valley. U.S. 52 passed beside it. Seven railroad tracks filled much of the remaining level ground. Homes and railroad structures occupied what space remained before the mountains rose sharply from the valley.
It was an intensely compressed industrial landscape, one created by Appalachian geography as much as by railroad engineering.
The court case also illustrates how deeply the railroad had become woven into daily life. People walked near the tracks. Railroad employees lived around the yard. Passenger and coal trains moved through the community at night. Paths crossed railroad property because the tracks were not isolated from Stonecoal. They were part of Stonecoal.
Roads and Bridges Change the Community
The railroad was not the only transportation system reshaping southern Wayne County.
In March 1924, the Wayne County News reported construction along the highway from Crum toward Marrowbone. Among the major structures on the route was an 85-foot-span bridge at Stonecoal. Its abutments had already been completed, and a contract had been awarded for the steel superstructure.
The road project formed part of a larger push toward the Mingo County line and Williamson.
Within only a few years, Stonecoal had both substantial railroad infrastructure and an improving highway connection. The 1931 accident description already referred explicitly to U.S. Highway 52 running between the railroad tracks and the Tug Fork.
This transportation transition mattered.
For decades, the railroad had been the fastest and most reliable connection through much of the Tug Valley. Better highways gradually gave automobiles, trucks, school buses, and commercial traffic another way to move through the same narrow corridor.
Stonecoal would eventually become a highway community as much as a railroad one.
Stonecoal Graded School
Industry alone does not make a community. Schools reveal where families were building permanent lives.
On May 20, 1926, the Wayne County News published the teachers employed by the Lincoln District Board of Education for the coming school year.
Among the many scattered schools was “STONECOAL GRADED.”
Lindsey Baker was appointed principal, while Mae Stepp was listed as teacher.
That short newspaper notice is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for Stonecoal as a residential community rather than merely an industrial location.
A graded school required children, teachers, administration, and families committed to living in the surrounding area. It also gave Stonecoal an institution around which community identity could form.
Before dependable roads and widespread automobile ownership, children living along creeks and hollows could not easily travel long distances to centralized schools. Wayne County therefore maintained an extensive network of neighborhood schools throughout Lincoln District.
Stonecoal’s school belonged to that system.
Railroad records reveal where coal trains moved. School records reveal where families stayed.
A Prohibition Raid on Stone Coal Creek
Stonecoal’s documentary history also preserves a much rougher episode from the Prohibition era.
On June 25, 1925, the Wayne County News reported that Sheridan Marcum and Harlin Williams of Crum had been wounded during a raid on a moonshine still on Stone Coal Creek, roughly two and a half miles below Kermit and near the Mingo County line.
According to the newspaper, Mingo County deputy sheriff and prohibition officer George W. Damron had located the still and arranged for men to watch it while he sought assistance from the State Police. Marcum and Williams encountered the officers near the still. Several versions of the shooting circulated afterward, but both men suffered serious gunshot wounds.
The episode belongs to the history of the creek country surrounding Stonecoal rather than to the railroad yard alone.
It shows how difficult jurisdiction, transportation, and law enforcement could become in the Tug Valley, where county and state boundaries lay close together, and mountain branches offered secluded places for illicit distilling.
It also provides another reminder that Stonecoal’s history cannot be reduced to industrial records. The community occupied a larger social landscape of creek settlements, family networks, local law enforcement, and Prohibition-era conflict.
Stonecoal During the Great Depression
The Great Depression reached Stonecoal through another federal institution, the Civilian Conservation Corps.
In July 1936, the Wayne County News reported that forty-two Wayne County young men had been accepted for CCC service. They were to pass through Fort Knox before being sent to a camp in California.
Four were identified specifically as being from Stonecoal: Marion Marcum, Paul Miller, Lundy Perdue, and Thomas Spaulding.
Their surnames are significant because Marcum, Perdue, and Spaulding appear repeatedly in the historical record of southern Wayne County.
The CCC offered employment, food, training, and wages during a period when work could be extremely difficult to find. For families in communities built around unstable extractive industries, those opportunities mattered considerably.
Stonecoal’s young men were participating in one of the largest federal work programs in American history, even though their home community was little more than a narrow settlement beside a railroad, highway, river, and creek.
Stonecoal Goes to War
The Second World War brought another generation of Stonecoal residents into the documentary record.
In March 1945, the Wayne County News published a list of twenty-one men ordered to report for induction through Selective Service Board Two. Among them was Edward Herman Bowen of Stonecoal.
Two months later, the newspaper’s reporting on Wayne County wartime casualties included Pfc. Enos Marcum, identified as the son of Mrs. Margaret Marcum of Stonecoal.
These notices are brief, but together they connect Stonecoal with the enormous national mobilization occurring beyond the Tug Fork.
The same community that had sent men into railroad yards, coal mines, lumber work, and the CCC also sent residents into military service.
For small Appalachian communities, wartime newspaper columns often became the record of a generation. They recorded inductions, promotions, wounds, deaths, prisoners, homecomings, and letters from places that many local families had previously known only from maps.
Stonecoal was part of that story.
The Post Office Closes, but Stonecoal Remains
Postal-history data place the closing of the Stonecoal post office in 1955, approximately seventy years after its establishment.
The disappearance of a rural post office did not necessarily mean that the population had vanished. By the middle of the twentieth century, improved highways, automobiles, rural mail delivery, school consolidation, and larger commercial centers allowed fewer institutions to serve wider areas.
Stonecoal remained part of Norfolk & Western’s operating geography.
Railroad records continued to identify the location during the postwar period, and later Norfolk & Western mileage documentation placed Stonecoal at approximately milepost 22.71 between Kermit and Webb.
The name therefore survived beyond the period when the post office and graded school had helped define Stonecoal as a distinct village.
Coal activity also persisted around the area long after the original Perdue operation. Later federal mining records continued to use the Stonecoal name for an underground Wayne County mine, showing how closely the locality remained associated with the mineral industry even as individual companies and operations changed.
The economy evolved, but the name endured.
Cemeteries and the Families Who Stayed
Some of the strongest evidence for Stonecoal’s long community life lies not in industrial records but in its cemeteries.
Wayne County cemetery compilations identify several burial grounds associated with Stonecoal and Stonecoal Creek, including Damron, Dearnell, Marcum, Meade, Messer, Salmon, Cassiday, Copley, Dillon, and additional Marcum family cemeteries.
The repetition of family names matches the documentary record.
Marcum appears in the nineteenth-century recollection, directories, Prohibition reporting, CCC enlistment, wartime records, and local news. Parsley appears in commercial and lumber records. Damron appears in business listings and law enforcement. Perdue became associated with coal mining. Spaulding appears in the early directory and among Stonecoal’s Depression-era young men.
These were not merely names printed beside a railroad station.
They were families whose homes, work, marriages, schools, churches, cemeteries, and relationships created the community around the industrial infrastructure.
The cemeteries make that permanence visible.
Stonecoal on the Modern Map
Stonecoal never disappeared completely from geographical memory.
Official modern West Virginia highway mapping continues to label Stonecoal in southern Wayne County, along the U.S. 52 corridor between Crum and Kermit.
The physical landscape, however, no longer carries the same concentration of institutions that once made the name so prominent.
The post office is gone. The graded school belongs to another educational era. Steam locomotives no longer stop for water beside enormous storage tanks. The seven-track arrangement described in the 1934 court decision belongs to an industrial world built around a level of railroad traffic that once made the Tug Valley one of the great coal transportation corridors of Appalachia.
Yet the river remains.
Stonecoal Creek remains.
The railroad corridor remains.
U.S. 52 still threads between the mountains and the Tug Fork.
Family cemeteries continue to mark the hillsides.
And Stonecoal remains on the map.
Why Stonecoal Matters
Stonecoal’s history is valuable precisely because so many different versions of Appalachian history intersect there.
It began as a community whose name appears to reach back at least into the nineteenth century. A post office helped make it recognizable. Small businesses, lumbering, beekeeping, and possible oil and gas activity connected local families with a wider economy. Coal mining introduced another source of industrial employment. Then Norfolk & Western transformed the narrow river corridor into a railroad landscape containing an assembly yard, storage tracks, passing sidings, water facilities, and eventually seven parallel tracks.
Road construction brought another transformation.
A substantial bridge and the development of U.S. 52 increasingly connected Stonecoal to the automobile age. Its graded school educated local children. Prohibition officers searched its creek country for stills. Young men left for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression and for military service during the Second World War.
Then the institutions began to change.
The post office closed. Schools consolidated. Steam disappeared from the railroad. The enormous railroad facilities became less central to community life. Coal companies came and went.
Stonecoal survived those changes because an Appalachian community has never been defined solely by one mine, one depot, or one government office.
It was also defined by the Marcums, Parsleys, Damrons, Perdues, Spauldings, Bowens, Copleys, Molletts, and other families whose lives filled the spaces between the railroad and the mountains.
For a place that can now be passed in minutes on U.S. 52, Stonecoal left an unusually rich documentary trail.
Federal officials called it a post village. A beekeeper wrote nationally published articles from there. State mine inspectors recorded its coal operation. Railroad engineers acquired land there. Newspaper reporters watched bridges, highways, schools, Prohibition raids, CCC enlistments, and military service. A state court opinion preserved the arrangement of its seven-track railroad yard almost rail by rail.
Taken together, those records recover a community that might otherwise appear as little more than a name beside the Tug Fork.
Stonecoal was once much more than that.
It was a working Appalachian place where creek settlement, coal, railroads, highways, schools, family life, and the mountains themselves all met within one narrow Wayne County 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/bul/0233/report.pdf
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Stonecoal resident and business entries. 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-3-part-6.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Lumber listings, including M. D. Parsley of Stonecoal. 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-3-part-16.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Stonecoal entries including T. M. Copley. 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-3-part-19.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Mingo Oil & Gas Company entry associated with Stonecoal. 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-3-part-22.htm
R. L. Polk & Co. West Virginia State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1904–1905. Saloon listings, including A. J. Damron of Stonecoal. 1904. https://ldsgenealogy.com/WV/books/West-Virginia-state-gazetteer-and-business-directory-pt-3-part-29.htm
Krebs, C. E., and D. D. Teets Jr. Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln Counties. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1913. https://books.google.com/books?id=ePNLAAAAMAAJ
Mollett, W. C. “Blacks vs. Italians.” Gleanings in Bee Culture, May 15, 1915. Written from Stonecoal, West Virginia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Gleanings_in_bee_culture_%28IA_CAT93976214605%29.pdf
West Virginia Department of Mines. Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1923. Charleston: West Virginia Department of Mines, 1923. Includes the Perdue Coal Company’s Perdue Mine at Stonecoal. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Annual_report_of_the_Department_of_Mines_for_the_year_ending_…_%28IA_annualreportofde41west%29.pdf
Norfolk & Western Railway, Office of the Chief Engineer. “N&W Ry Big Sandy Line, Land to Be Acquired from F. D. Caldwell & G. L. Estabrook, Trustees, Wayne County, WV.” Drawing N-8268, May 10, 1923. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=256592
Vinson, Z. T. Recollections of the June 1874 Wayne County court term. Wayne County News, December 20, 1923. Includes Johnson Fry identified with Stonecoal. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn231220.html
Wayne County News. Report on Crum-to-Marrowbone highway and bridge construction, including the 85-foot bridge at Stonecoal. March 6, 1924. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers1924.htm
“Double-Tracking of Big Sandy Line Through Wayne County Is Stupendous Work.” Wayne County News, February 26, 1925. Includes the Stonecoal assembly yard, sidings, assembly tracks, and water facilities. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201925.htm
“Two Men Shot on Stonecoal Creek in Raid.” Wayne County News, June 25, 1925. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201925.htm
“Teachers Are Employed for Lincoln District.” Wayne County News, May 20, 1926. Includes Stonecoal Graded School, principal Lindsey Baker, and teacher Mae Stepp. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn260520.html
Wayne County News. Crum-area local news mentioning Mrs. J. H. Marcum of Stonecoal. October 27, 1927. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn271027.html
Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Hensley’s Administrator, 252 Ky. 223, 67 S.W.2d 11 (Ky. Ct. App. 1934). Detailed contemporary description of Stonecoal’s seven railroad tracks, highway, crossing, water facilities, and Tug River setting. https://openjurist.org/252/ky/223/norfolk-w-ry-co-v-hensley-s-adm-r
West Virginia State Road Commission. Wayne County Highway Map. Charleston: West Virginia State Road Commission, 1933. West Virginia GIS Technical Center historical map collection. https://wvgis.wvu.edu/data/dataset.php?ID=409
West Virginia State Road Commission. Wayne County Highway Map. Charleston: West Virginia State Road Commission, 1937. Arvas Archive, West Virginia University. https://arvasarchive.org/catalog?f%5Bcollection%5D%5B%5D=County+Highway+Maps+for+West+Virginia%2C+1937
“42 Wayne Youths Enlist in CCC.” Wayne County News, July 3, 1936. Includes Marion Marcum, Paul Miller, Lundy Perdue, and Thomas Spaulding of Stonecoal. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201936.htm
Wayne County News. Military induction and casualty notices concerning Stonecoal residents, including Edward Herman Bowen and Pfc. Enos Marcum. 1945. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201945.htm
Norfolk & Western Railway. Public Time Table. April 1958. Stonecoal appears within Norfolk & Western’s operating geography. https://streamlinermemories.info/?p=25548
Norfolk & Western Railway. Scioto Division Employee Time Table No. 23. October 31, 1965. Includes operating instructions associated with Stonecoal. https://www.cincyrails.com/files/N%2BWSciotoDivision23-10-31-1965.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–September 30, 1971. Microfilm Publication M841, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950. Microfilm Publication M1126, Records of the Post Office Department. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. Postmaster Appointment Records, A&M 3026. Includes records relating to Wayne County post offices. https://ip-150-68.dynamic.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1217
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. Post Office Site Location Reports, A&M 3058. https://archives.lib.wvu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1240
West Virginia State Archives. “Wayne County Records.” Includes deeds, deed indexes, wills, surveyors’ books, entry books, birth records, death records, marriage records, and other county materials. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html
West Virginia Archives and History. “Vital Research Records.” Digitized West Virginia birth, death, and marriage records, including Wayne County. https://archive.wvculture.org/vrr/
West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training. “West Virginia Mine Map Archives.” Historical mine-map collection useful for researching the Perdue Mine, Stonecoal, and Wayne County mining. https://minesafety.wv.gov/historical-statistical-data/west-virginia-mine-map-archives/
West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “West Virginia Coal Mine Maps.” Historical mine-map collection searchable by county, company, mine, seam, and date. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/wvminemaps.htm
Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. Wayne Cemetery Volume One. Includes Damron, Dearnell, Marcum, Meade, Messer, Salmon, and other cemeteries associated with Stonecoal. https://wcghswv.org/wayne_cemetery_book1.php?thisPage=wayne_cemetery_book1
Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. Wayne Cemetery Volume Two. Includes Cassiday, Copley, Dillon, Marcum, and other cemeteries connected with Stonecoal and Stonecoal Creek. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/wayne_cemetery_book2.php?thisPage=wayne_cemetery_book2
Jenkins, Mary M., comp. “Place Names in West Virginia.” West Virginia State Archives. Entry for Stonecoal, Wayne County, associated with 1891. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnams.html
West Virginia State Archives. “Districts and Place Names in West Virginia.” Based on the 1933 New Descriptive Atlas of West Virginia. Identifies Stonecoal in Lincoln District, Wayne County. https://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/communities/districtplacenames.html
Taylor, Mildred. History of Wayne County, West Virginia. 1963. Listed among the West Virginia State Archives’ principal Wayne County historical sources. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html
The Pictorial History of Wayne County, West Virginia. 1988. Listed in the West Virginia State Archives’ Wayne County historical bibliography. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html
Varney, Carl E. Birch Bark and Sassafras Tea. Crum, WV, 1976. Local history especially useful for the Crum and southern Wayne County area surrounding Stonecoal. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html
Hardesty, H. H., & Co. Hardesty’s Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia: Special History of the Virginias, with Maps and Histories of Wayne, Lincoln and Cabell Counties, West Virginia. 1884. https://books.google.com/books/about/Hardesty_s_Historical_and_Geographical_E.html?id=s7kM0gEACAAJ
Dickinson, Kay Stamper, and Jack L. Dickinson. Last Train to Dunlow: History from the Hollows of Wayne County, West Virginia and the Coming of the N&W Railroad, 1870–1940. 2005. https://books.google.com/books?id=RlyrvgEACAAJ
Massey, Tim R. “Wayne County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. West Virginia Humanities Council. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/897
Federal Highway Administration. US 52 (Tolsia Highway) Improvement, Kenova to Nolan (I-64–US 119), Wayne and Mingo County: Environmental Impact Statement. 1995. Useful for Stonecoal, U.S. 52, the Tug Fork corridor, and later transportation conditions. https://books.google.com/books?id=QLg2AQAAMAAJ
Author Note: Stonecoal is one of those southern Wayne County communities whose importance is easy to underestimate when looking at the modern landscape. I hope this history helps preserve the story of the families, railroad workers, miners, teachers, and residents who made a life along this narrow stretch of the Tug Fork.