Appalachian Community Histories – Vallscreek, McDowell County: From Mouth of Volls Creek to Hartwell and the Pocahontas Coalfield
Vallscreek is one of those McDowell County communities whose history becomes difficult to follow if a researcher searches for only one name. In different records, the place appears as Vallscreek, Valls Creek, Vollscreek, Volls Creek, Mouth of Volls Creek, and Hartwell. Those names are not simply spelling mistakes scattered through old documents. Together they preserve the story of a mountain settlement that existed before industrial coal mining, was reshaped by the Norfolk and Western Railway and the New River and Pocahontas coal interests, and then carried more than one identity through much of the twentieth century. The archival trail in the research material provided for this article makes that naming problem especially important. Pasted markdown
The oldest known record reaches all the way back to 1858, the same year McDowell County itself was created from Tazewell County, Virginia. A West Virginia State Archives place-name entry records “Mouth of Volls Creek” as a McDowell County post office in 1858 and connects that older name directly with Vollscreek and Vallscreek. A separate postal history database narrows the operation of the office to 1858 and 1859.
That makes Vallscreek unusual among the coal communities of southern McDowell County. Its documented history did not begin when a mining company arrived. The name was already attached to a recognized postal locality decades before the great industrial development of the Pocahontas coalfield.
Mouth of Volls Creek in 1858
McDowell County was organized in 1858 out of territory that had belonged to Tazewell County. At the time, the region was sparsely settled, heavily forested, and crossed by few improved roads. Families lived along creek bottoms and narrow mountain valleys, where waterways and trails provided the most practical connections between scattered farms.
It was in this landscape that the post office called Mouth of Volls Creek appeared.
The surviving place-name record is brief. It does not describe a town with streets, businesses, or a concentrated population, and it would be misleading to imagine the twentieth-century coal settlement already standing there in 1858. Instead, the post office probably served families scattered around the creek and nearby valleys. What can be established with confidence is that the location had become important enough for the federal postal system to recognize it under a distinct name.
That distinction matters. Many McDowell County settlements were created almost entirely around coal operations at the end of the nineteenth century or beginning of the twentieth. Vallscreek had an earlier identity rooted in the landscape itself.
The exact origin of the name remains less certain. Later references identify the nearby stream as Vall Creek, and Hamill Kenny’s study of West Virginia place names has been cited for the possibility that the stream was named for a Vall or Vaal family. Until an earlier deed, tax record, land grant, or contemporary family record can confirm that explanation, it is safer to regard the family connection as a likely tradition rather than a settled fact.
Volls Creek Before the Coal Boom
The disappearance of the Mouth of Volls Creek post office after 1859 did not mean the name vanished from local use.
More than half a century later, a transcription of the February 25, 1910, issue of the Clinch Valley News contains a short notice reporting that J. W. Christian attended a prayer meeting on “Volls Creek” and that Thomas Stevenson concluded the meeting. It is a tiny newspaper item, but it provides an unusually valuable glimpse of community life. People were still using the older Volls Creek form of the name shortly before the area became deeply connected to the coal economy.
The prayer meeting also reminds us that the history of a community cannot be reconstructed only from mines and railroads. Before corporate maps began dividing the valley into lots and industrial property, residents already had homes, neighbors, religious gatherings, kinship networks, and local names for the places around them.
By 1910, however, the larger world was rapidly moving into southern McDowell County.
The Norfolk and Western Railway had been extending branches through the coalfield, opening valleys that had previously been difficult to reach. The McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey records construction of the Dry Fork Branch in stages between 1904 and 1907 and again from 1910 through 1913. The communities associated with that railroad corridor included War, Berwind, and Canebrake, all close to Vallscreek.
Railroad development made large-scale coal mining possible. Once companies could move machinery into the mountains and ship coal out by rail, valleys that had supported scattered farms and small settlements could be transformed in only a few years.
The Arrival of Hartwell
The name Hartwell enters the surviving state record during this industrial transformation.
The West Virginia State Archives lists Hartwell in McDowell County with the date 1918. The entry does not explain who selected the name or precisely when it began being used locally, but it establishes Hartwell in the official place-name record by the closing months of World War I.
Yet the older name did not disappear.
The 1919 West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official Register listed Valls Creek among the post offices of McDowell County. Two years later, the 1921 state Blue Book again included Valls Creek on the county’s official post-office list.
This creates what at first looks like a contradiction. Hartwell existed in state records by 1918, yet Valls Creek remained the postal name in 1919 and 1921.
The answer appears to lie in the different institutions that used the two names.
Hartwell for the Company, Vallscreek for the Mail
One of the most revealing documents connected with the community survives through records associated with the New River and Pocahontas stores.
A reproduced company shipping register lists several West Virginia company-store locations in three columns identifying the store, post office, and freight destination. For this community the entries line up as Hartwell for the store, Vallscreek for the post office, and Hartwell on the Norfolk and Western Railway for freight.
That single record explains much of the confusion found throughout the historical trail.
A miner or family living there could shop at the Hartwell store, receive mail through Vallscreek, and have freight routed through the Hartwell railroad station. A coal-company employee might describe the place as Hartwell, while a letter, marriage record, death certificate, or court document could use Valls Creek.
Both names could be correct at the same time.
This pattern was not unusual in the coalfields. Communities developed around older creeks, postal stations, railroad sidings, and company operations whose names did not always match. The industrial landscape could produce overlapping identities, especially where a preexisting rural settlement was absorbed into a newer company system.
Vallscreek is an especially clear example because the documentary evidence preserves both names side by side.
New River and Pocahontas Comes to the Valley
The industrial history of Hartwell and Vallscreek became closely tied to the New River and Pocahontas interests centered around Berwind.
The 2018 McDowell County Coal Heritage Survey identifies the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company as one of the largest coal operators in the county during the 1920s and specifically places its major activity at Berwind and surrounding communities. Berwind itself had been established in 1905 by the company and developed with a company store, bank, post office, clubhouse, churches, and company housing.
Vallscreek and Hartwell stood within that larger corporate landscape.
Virginia Tech’s enormous Pocahontas Mines Collection preserves particularly valuable evidence. One item from 1937 is titled “Boreholes No. 61 and 61 on Keowee and Valls Creek, New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Co.” The document has not been digitized, so its full contents cannot yet be examined online, but the archival description establishes that company engineers were conducting or recording borehole work associated directly with Valls Creek.
That does not by itself prove the boundaries or production history of a mine formally named Valls Creek. It does show that Valls Creek formed part of the company’s industrial and geological landscape.
The larger collection also contains property material involving Berwind, Canebrake, Hartwell, and Newhall together. Those communities were not isolated dots on a map. They were pieces of a connected mining district in which the same corporation owned land, operated stores, developed coal, and interacted with the railroad across several neighboring settlements. The attachment used for this article identifies these Virginia Tech materials as some of the strongest surviving primary sources for reconstructing the area. Pasted markdown
The Hartwell Company Store
The company store was one of the most important institutions in a coal community.
Evidence survives for a New River and Pocahontas store at Hartwell, including company scrip associated with the location and the shipping register that identifies Hartwell as one of the firm’s store points. Numismatic records also list Hartwell among the New River and Pocahontas Stores locations whose tokens circulated in the coalfield.
Scrip has become a collectible object today, but in the company-town economy it represented something much more immediate. Company stores sold food, clothing, household goods, mining supplies, and other necessities in communities where independent businesses could be limited or distant. Company money and store accounting bound daily household purchases to the same industrial system that employed miners underground.
For Hartwell, the surviving store records also preserve the community’s dual identity better than almost any other source. The store belonged to Hartwell. The mail belonged to Vallscreek. Freight moved through Hartwell on the Norfolk and Western.
Rather than deciding which name was the “real” one, the records suggest that residents lived with both.
Valls Creek in the Court Record
In 1930, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals unintentionally preserved another piece of local history.
The case Caldwell v. Cline concerned a disputed real-estate transaction between W. H. Caldwell and W. D. Cline. The legal question had nothing to do with Vallscreek itself, but the court’s recitation of the facts stated that Cline was residing at Valls Creek, McDowell County, when he sent a land-exchange proposal in January 1929.
For the history of the community, that passing reference is significant.
A formal state court opinion used Valls Creek as an ordinary residential address at precisely the period when coal and railroad documents were increasingly using Hartwell. The older name had clearly not become obsolete.
It remained part of everyday life.
Hartwell in the Census
Federal census records provide the other side of the naming story.
The 1940 enumeration district descriptions for McDowell County place portions of Hartwell in two Big Creek Magisterial District enumeration districts. ED 24-21 included part of Hartwell along with part of Berwind-Newhall, while ED 24-22 included portions of Hartwell, Berwind-Newhall, and Squire.
By then Hartwell was sufficiently recognized for federal census officials to use the name when defining the boundaries their enumerators were expected to cover.
Individual census entries reveal the people behind that geography. Genealogical transcriptions pointing back to the federal schedules identify families living at Hartwell in 1930 and 1950. The Lockhart family, for example, appears in records associated with Hartwell, with men employed in coal mining occupations such as coal miner, trackman, and assistant mine foreman. Because these online family transcriptions are secondary finding aids, the original census images should be used before making detailed genealogical claims, but they provide useful directions for further research.
The changing entries also illustrate how closely neighboring communities were tied together. A household could appear in Canebrake in one census, Hartwell in another, and Big Creek District in another without necessarily having moved a great distance.
Administrative boundaries and local place names did not always match the way residents understood their neighborhood.
Coal Work at Hartwell
Newspaper evidence confirms that Hartwell was more than a railroad label.
On December 28, 1941, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported the marriage of Pauline Lockhart of Hartwell and Keith Blevins of Hartwell. Blevins was described as a graduate of Big Creek High School and an employee of New River and Pocahontas Coal at Hartwell.
A wedding announcement may seem minor beside mine maps and corporate records, but it gives the community a human scale. Hartwell was a place where families lived, young people attended school, couples married, and men went to work for the coal company.
Other newspaper references point toward the dangers of that work. A specialist bibliography identifies an April 19, 1931, Bluefield Daily Telegraph article titled “Injuries Prove Fatal to Valls Creek Miner,” while another 1931 newspaper item concerned the death of a former Hartwell mine boss. The original newspaper images should be consulted before reconstructing the accidents in detail, but the citations demonstrate that both Hartwell and Valls Creek continued to appear in coal-related reporting.
The community’s history was being written under both names, sometimes even within the same year.
Hartwell on the Norfolk and Western
Railroad records make the Hartwell identity unmistakable.
A Norfolk and Western document dated November 22, 1938, concerns installation of position-light automatic signals on the Dry Fork Branch from Iaeger to Hartwell. The associated file contains memoranda and engineering drawings and connects the project with additional railroad property records involving the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company.
The document demonstrates how firmly Hartwell had entered the railroad’s operational vocabulary by the late 1930s.
The company-store register tells us freight for the local store moved through Hartwell on the N&W. The signal records then place Hartwell directly within the railroad’s infrastructure.
For residents, the railroad was more than an industrial machine carrying coal away from the mountains. It brought merchandise, mail connections, workers, visitors, and access to neighboring towns. The tracks linked a narrow McDowell County valley to a commercial system extending far beyond West Virginia.
The Cemetery Above the Coal Community
The Hartwell Cemetery preserves another part of the community’s identity.
A cemetery survey conducted in 2000 reported that the burial ground had originally been established by the Berwind Coal Company Burial Fund. The compilers combined gravestone inscriptions with information maintained by cemetery caretaker Clarence Patterson of Vallscreek.
Because that description was recorded long after the coal-camp era, the exact institutional history of the cemetery would benefit from confirmation through company records, deeds, or contemporary newspapers. Still, the survey is valuable because it preserves family names and shows the continuing relationship between Hartwell and Vallscreek.
Even in a cemetery called Hartwell, the caretaker was identified as being from Vallscreek.
Names that seem contradictory on a modern map were ordinary parts of local life.
After the Company-Town Era
The decline of coal employment changed communities throughout McDowell County after World War II.
Mechanization allowed mines to produce coal with fewer workers. Operations consolidated, closed, or changed ownership. Younger residents increasingly left in search of employment elsewhere. The same county that had grown explosively during the coal boom began losing population.
Vallscreek did not simply vanish when the older company-town economy weakened. Residents remained, and local infrastructure continued to require attention.
A series of proceedings before the Public Service Commission of West Virginia during the 1980s provides a remarkable look at those later conditions. In a 1987 order involving complaints against the McDowell County Water Company, engineers discussed the Vallscreek water system, leaks, water pressure, storage, and a water source identified as the Hartwell well.
The naming pattern had survived yet again.
The system served Vallscreek. The well was Hartwell.
More than half a century after the company-store records paired those same identities, government utility records were still preserving both names in practical use.
Vallscreek Beyond Coal
The modern history of the community also shows that Vallscreek cannot be understood only as the remains of a coal camp.
In recent years, Vallscreek has appeared in national reporting connected with agricultural and community-development efforts. A 2023 YES! Magazine feature profiled farmer Jason Tartt and described his efforts to develop hundreds of acres in Vallscreek with orchards, berries, apiaries, and other agricultural work while reflecting on his family’s connection to the coalfields.
That story represents a different chapter from the company-store era, but it belongs to the same landscape.
The mountains that once attracted outside corporations because of the coal beneath them are also land where families continue to build lives after the mines that shaped much of the twentieth century have declined.
A Community With Two Histories in One Name
Vallscreek’s history is easy to underestimate because there was never one simple town name that remained unchanged on every map and document.
The archival trail begins with Mouth of Volls Creek in 1858, when McDowell County itself was new. Volls Creek remained part of local language into the twentieth century. Hartwell appeared in state records by 1918, while official state publications continued listing Valls Creek as a post office in 1919 and 1921. Company records eventually placed the Hartwell store beside the Vallscreek post office and Hartwell railroad freight station. Court records used Valls Creek. Census and railroad records used Hartwell. Mining records used Valls Creek. Later water records again placed Vallscreek and Hartwell side by side.
Seen separately, those documents can look inconsistent.
Seen together, they tell the story.
Vallscreek was an old mountain locality that predated the coal boom. Hartwell was an industrial identity layered onto that older place as corporate mining and the Norfolk and Western Railway reshaped the valley. For generations, residents lived within both worlds, one defined by a creek and postal community, the other by a company store, mine, and railroad station.
That is why the history of Vallscreek matters beyond one small corner of McDowell County. It illustrates how Appalachian communities changed when industrial development arrived without completely erasing what had come before. Old names survived beside new ones. Families remained after companies changed. Cemeteries outlasted mines. Postal identities endured beside railroad terminology.
Today the records scattered across state archives, Virginia Tech, the Norfolk and Western collections, newspapers, census schedules, court opinions, and family histories allow those pieces to be brought back together.
Vallscreek and Hartwell were not competing versions of the same past.
They were two names for different layers of the same community.
Sources & Further Reading
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/.
Artifacts of Appalachia. “McDowell County Coal Scrip, A–L.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.artifactsofappalachia.com/mcdowell-county-scrip-a-l.
Aurora Research Associates LLC. Coal Heritage Survey Update Final Report: McDowell County, West Virginia. Prepared for the West Virginia Division of Highways. 2018. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf.
Battlo, Jean. McDowell County: In West Virginia and American History. Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1998.
Blevins, Cameron, and Richard W. Helbock. “U.S. Post Offices Historical Dataset.” Stanford University Spatial History Project. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/.
Bluefield Daily Telegraph. “Hartwell Couple Wed in the Presbyterian Church.” December 28, 1941, 1. https://newspaperarchive.com/bluefield-daily-telegraph-dec-28-1941-p-1/.
Bluefield Daily Telegraph. “Injuries Prove Fatal to Valls Creek Miner.” April 19, 1931, 7.
Caldwell v. Cline. 109 W. Va. 553, 156 S.E. 55 (1930). https://law.justia.com/cases/west-virginia/supreme-court/1930/109-w-va-553.html.
Clinch Valley News. “Volls Creek” community notice. February 25, 1910. Transcription hosted by Compuhelp Technical Services. https://www.ctssites.com/vatazewell/CVN/1910.htm.
Gillenwater, Mack H. “Company Towns.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://wvencyclopedia.org/entries/1440.
Gillenwater, Mack H. “Cultural and Historical Geography of Mining Settlements in the Pocahontas Coal Field of Southern West Virginia, 1880–1930.” PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1972.
Kenny, Hamill. West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains. Piedmont, WV: Place Name Press, 1945. https://books.google.com/books/about/West_Virginia_Place_Names.html?id=61YlAAAAMAAJ.
McDowell County Centennial, 1858–1958. McDowell County, WV, 1958. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html.
McDowell County Historical Society. The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia. War, WV: McDowell County Historical Society, 1995. https://search.worldcat.org/title/34260840.
Myers, Mark. “Coal Mechanization and Migration from McDowell County, West Virginia, 1932–1970.” MA thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2001. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/116/.
National Park Service. A Coal Mining Heritage Study: Southern West Virginia. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1993. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/.
New River & Pocahontas Stores Company. Shipping and store register identifying the Hartwell store, Vallscreek post office, and Hartwell Norfolk & Western Railway freight station. Reproduced in Scrip Talk, April 2003. Newman Numismatic Portal. https://nnp.wustl.edu/Library/AdvancedSearch?contenttype=Periodical&fullsearchterm=excelsior.
Norfolk & Western Railway. “Dry Fork Branch: Installation of Position Light Automatic Signals, Iaeger to Hartwell.” November 22, 1938. Norfolk & Western Historical Society Archives. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=269657.
Norfolk & Western Historical Society. “Archives Database.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/.
Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. “National Mine Map Repository.” U.S. Department of the Interior. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.osmre.gov/programs/national-mine-map-repository.
PostalHistory.com. “McDowell County, West Virginia Post Offices.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp?county=McDowell&state=WV&task=display.
Solins, Mrs. Samuel, and Mrs. Paul Jones. McDowell County History: A Pictorial History of McDowell County, West Virginia. 1959. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html.
Sowers, Auburn Daniel. Facts About McDowell County, West Virginia. 1912. West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/counties/mcdowell.html.
Tams, W. P., Jr. The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia: A Brief History. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1963. https://wvupressonline.com/node/35.
United States Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Big Creek District, McDowell County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration.
United States Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: McDowell County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration.
United States Bureau of the Census. “1940 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, McDowell County, West Virginia, ED 24-21 and ED 24-22.” National Archives Identifier 5888415. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1940_Census_Enumeration_District_Descriptions_-_West_Virginia_-_McDowell_County_-_ED_24-21,_ED_24-22,_ED_24-23,_ED_24-24_-_NARA_-_5888415.jpg.
United States Bureau of the Census. Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950: McDowell County, West Virginia. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://1950census.archives.gov/.
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Map Collection: Amonate Quadrangle, West Virginia-Virginia.” TopoView. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/.
United States Post Office Department. Records of Post Office Locations and Postmaster Appointments. Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices.
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Berwind, Canebrake, Hartwell, Newhall Lots.” Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997, Ms.2004.002. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech. https://aspace-dev.cloud.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3265.
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. “Boreholes No. 61 and 61 on Keowee and Valls Creek, New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Co., 1937.” Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997, Box 236, Ms.2004.002. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech. https://aspace-dev.cloud.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/108525.
Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives. Pocahontas Mines Collection, 1883–1997. Ms.2004.002. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech. https://aspace-dev.cloud.lib.vt.edu/repositories/2/resources/3265.
West Virginia. Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official Register of the State of West Virginia. Charleston, WV, 1919. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1919.pdf.
West Virginia. Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official Register of the State of West Virginia. Charleston, WV, 1921. https://www.wvlegislature.gov/legisdocs/publications/bluebook/WVS_Bluebook_1921.pdf.
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West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. “West Virginia Mine Information Database System.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/mineinformation/.
West Virginia Public Service Commission. Proceedings Concerning the Vallscreek Water System and McDowell County Water Company. Case No. 85-403-W-C. Final order, June 18, 1987. https://www.psc.state.wv.us/scripts/orders/ViewDocument.cfm?CaseActivityID=26086&Source=Archives.
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.
West Virginia State Archives. “Place Names in West Virginia: Hartwell.” West Virginia Archives and History. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamh.html.
West Virginia State Archives. “Place Names in West Virginia: Mouth of Volls Creek.” West Virginia Archives and History. Accessed October 3, 2026. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamm.html.
West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office. West Virginia Coal Heritage Survey: Historic Property Inventory Records for McDowell County. Charleston, WV, 1990–1991. https://npshistory.com/publications/nha/national-coal/survey.pdf.
West Virginia University, West Virginia and Regional History Center. “Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu/collections/maps-atlases-and-gazetteers.
West Virginia GenWeb. “Hartwell Cemetery, McDowell County, West Virginia.” Accessed October 3, 2026. https://www.wvgw.net/mcdowell/cemeteries/hartwellcem.html.
Author Note: Vallscreek interested me because its history survives under several names, each preserving a different layer of life in this corner of the Pocahontas coalfield. Following Mouth of Volls Creek, Vallscreek, and Hartwell through postal, railroad, mining, and family records helps restore the story of a community that could easily disappear between those names.