1958 - Pocahontas Coal Field Observes 75th Birthday

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Roanoke Times - March 16, 1958

Pocahontas Coal Field Observes 75th Birthday

By Fred McCoy

BLUEFIELD, March 15 - The world-famous Pocahontas coal fields are 75 years old.

   IT WAS March 13, 1883 that the Norfolk and Western Railway hauled 
the first car of coal from Pocahontas. A car on the first train 
pulled by a gaily decorated locomotive was destined for Norfolk as a 
present to the mayor of that tidewater city.
   Since then, as high as 500,000 carloads of Pocahontas coal has 
passed through Norfolk in a single year to be shipped to Europe and 
in coastwise traffic.
   The original Pocahontas mine probably proved richer than any gold 
mine ever discovered. From that original mine, more than 44 million 
tons of high grade metallurgical coal were mined before it was 
exhausted in 1955.
   Coals deposits in Southwest Virginia were first mentioned in the 
writings of Thomas Jefferson. More accurate scientific descriptions 
were included in the reports of geological research surveys made by 
Prof. W. B. Rogers between 1836 and 1842.
   After the War Between the States, Jordan Nelson, a blacksmith and 
farmer in Abbs Valley, discovered that the rich coal there would burn 
in his forge without forced draft. Neighboring farmers began buying 
coal from him for a penny a bushel for heating and cooking in open grates.

   However, it remained for Frederick J. Kimball, a young engineer 
and then president of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, now the 
Shenandoah Division of the N&W, to see the commercial possibilities 
of the fabulous coal deposits.

   Kimball read the Rogers reports and then made a trip overland to 
what is now Pocahontas, but then Powell's Bottom, to inspect for 
himself the reputed coal reserves. He heard of veins of black diamond 
as thick as 13 feet and ascertained that it was true.
   When the N&W acquired his Shenandoah Valley line in 1882, Kimball 
became a vice president of the larger company and began pressing at 
once for the construction of a branch to Pocahontas, as it became 
known in March 1883. The main line of the N&W then ran to Bristol, 
and the construction of the branch, now the main line, sprouted off 
at Radford, 75 miles from the mine.
   The crest of the Allegheny Mountain was reached at Higginbotham's 
Summit, where a post office called Bluefield was established in 1884.
   AS OTHER veins of coal were discovered, Bluefield became the 
railroad's terminal and classification point. Today all eastbound 
coal trains are classified at Bluefield and a great many large coal 
companies maintain offices or headquarters there.
   In 1883, 102,618 tons of coal were shipped over the N&W from 
Pocahontas. Last year 800,705 cars of coal originated on the Norfolk 
and Western railroad, enough to make two trains reaching from New 
York to San Francisco.
   Bluefield, whose economy is geared directly to the coal industry, 
is quite optimistic as its meal ticket passes its diamond 
anniversary. The coal industry has just organized shipping companies 
to ship both high and low volatile coal abroad, and new domestic uses 
are being found daily.
   Pocahontas in Tazewell County, the source of the lode which had 
produced billions of dollars worth of coal, remains a quaint village 
on the Virginia-West Virginia line.
   It is the scene of America's worst mine disaster in history and 
the site of the Exhibition Mine. Pocahontas, once the location of 100 
coke ovens, is now one of the most charming and most unusual towns in 
the Old Dominion.

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[Fifty years later, the Pocahontas coal fields are now 125 years old!]

- Ron Davis, Roger Link