Institution

The production of coke in Tucker County covered a period of 49 years, from 1887 to 1935. Figures are not available for the first ten and the last fourteen years of the industry; which began at Coketon in 1887 when the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company erected two experimental ovens there. By 1897 the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company had 370 ovens in operation at the Thomas and Coketon; and the Cumberland Coal &amp; Coke Company had 100 ovens in operation at Douglas. All ovens were the beehive-type. After 1910, the coke industry in Tucker County gradually declined until only the negligible amounts were produced after 1921. The decline came about by reason of a new process for producing coke whereby all the by-products were recovered, so coal was shipped to the large coke centers and made into coke in the newer by-product ovens.

historic sign about the trains in Thomas, WV

Historian David Vago describing how the coal would be transported via the railroad

Video

After coming out of the mine and being cleaned, sorted, and graded, coal was ready to ship to market. Thomas mine works included "coke ovens," where impurities like sulfur were slowly burned out of the coal. The railroad carried the coal and coke all over the east coast.

Moving Coal to Market

The Blackwater Canyon River Rail Trail dates back to 1888 when it was used to haul coal and timber through the canyon. It reflects changes in the economy over the past century, as it now serves as one of the leading attractions in a county that now focusses on heritage tourism and outdoor recreation; it still contains many of the former coke ovens and other remnants of the region's past and connects the community of Thomas with Coketon and Douglas. The trail begins along the North Fork of the Blackwater River in Thomas and winds past steep-walled strip mines and rows of beehive coke ovens that have been reclaimed by trees and wildflowers for nearly a century. The trail is accessible in Thomas, WV at the juncture of Rt. 32 and 27 or from Hendricks, Rt. 73.

There are two main systems of coal mining; open or strip mining, and tunneling or deep mining. Strip mining, which is a form quarrying, can only be used when the coal seam is near the surface of the ground. In deep mining, the coal seam is reached through vertical shafts, or through horizontal tunnels called drift and slope mines. The coal deposit is usually marked out in rooms, also called chambers or bords, which vary in size according to local conditions. The coal in the room is cut and blasted away, leaving pillars of coal to support the roof. In the "longwall" system of mining, the entire section of the seam is removed and the roof is allowed to settle, leaving only haulage tunnels clear of the subsiding debris. Power cutters have supplanted the traditional miner's pick. With them the miner makes an undercut about six inches wide and nine feet deep across the face of the coal seam, near the floor of the room. Then deep holes are drilled at the top of the face and blasting charges are tamped into them. The blast brings down and partially shatters a large chunk of the coal face, which is then loaded into low electrically-propelled trains and brought to the surface.The two chief problems of deep mining are ventilation and timbering. Ventilation is particularly important since several dangerous gases are found in coal mines. Large fans and blowers must be used to maintain a circulation of pure air. Timbering is necessary to support the roofs of tunnels and work rooms. Metal props and masonry are used for this purpose, as well as heavy wooden supports, which are set in place as the work advances.

The Thomas industrial complex drove employment, industry, &amp; economic activity. Many coal mine entrances in and around the town of Thomas led to miles of interconnected underground mine tunnels. On the surface the river front was covered with six rows of train tracks, a mine tipple, and a power plant.

Mining Underground in Thomas

So this is the site of the Western Maryland Railway passenger and freight station. Originally the West Virginia &amp; Pittsburg Railroad built a small wooden frame station building, roughly here, later on the Western Maryland Railway, as it was investing in heavier infrastructure, replaced that with a brick building. Now its function was in some ways typical with what you would find in any small town: a passenger train station in its day was a center of commercial and social activities, where the news came in, it was where all your most high-priority, perishable goods and things that have traveled on the fastest train came in, where your mail came in, and of course it was the place where people came and went from town. In this case, the sighting of the depot— it’s not quite right next to downtown Thomas, and there are a couple possible reasons for that, at least two; one is that the river bank, the river bottom in front of downtown Thomas was taken up by a railroad yard that was necessary to sort coal hopper cars into different trains for different destinations, and coming from different points of origin; the other is that this site here is located roughly in the middle between several important parts of the mining and industrial infrastructure here in Thomas, and the railroad may have chosen to prioritize that for company officials who had to [UNCLEAR]. But because it’s a tight location, the mine coming from Hendricks, goes off in one direction, the branch line over in Davis which comes off from a slightly different angle, they come together at this point right on the river. Everything’s all squeezed together, so the railroad station and its platform actually projected out over the river. In between that and all of the industrial facilities, like the Coke Ovens, that are still visible just across where the tracks were.

The Thomas passenger and freight station was a point of arrival and departure for people, news, and goods. Before radio, television, and the internet, a railroad station was a center for community engagement and a bellwether for changing times. The station sat at the junction where the Davis branch split off from the main line from Elkins to Cumberland, and was midway between several of the largest industrial buildings and facilities in Thomas, making it convenient for visiting executives. The Thomas business district was actually further away, the mine tipples of the H.G. Davis Coal and Coke Company sat between the downtown and the new station. The building projected out over the river, and the iron pins in the stonework that held it remain. There are also parts of the brackets that held the passenger boarding platforms to the side of the bridge.

The Railroad Station

The remains of the engine house at this site consists of a large rectangular pad that contained the remains of two tracks or two sets of rails. You’ll see a couple strips of grass or leaves depending on what the season is, where there were once picks between the rails where workers could step down underneath the locomotives and perform maintenance work as they sat in the building. This was typically for lighter repairs: lubrication and the kind of things that just kept operating locomotives going day in and day out. But because this was both the top of a railroad grade that required a lot of locomotives to move relatively few cars uphill, and because there were lots of branch lines feeding coal down from the mines into Thomas here that would have required each of their own locomotives. This would have actually been a very busy place for most of the time that the railroad operated. Across the river on the hill behind me stands the B&amp;L store, the engineering building, and some of the remaining company housing that overlooked the Western Maryland Railway— originally the West Virginia Central &amp; Pittsburg Railway— engine house. A collection of buildings stood here that housed support operations for the operation of steam locomotives. Originally, there was what was called a roundhouse with a turntable; the turntable turned the locomotives to face in whichever direction the roundhouse housed minor repair operations like lubrication. Because so many locomotives were used on the trains here, that evolved over time, eventually the Western Maryland wound up with a rectangular building that sort of worked like a Jiffy Lube; engines were pulled through and were lubricated and came out the other end, lubricated and repaired in other ways. That was basically a product of the fact that so many locomotives were used at once as helper engines to bring the trains up the mountain; and a product of the fact that over time the locomotives grew in size, as the coal trains became heavier over time.

The locomotive maintenance and turning facilities at Thomas facilitated local rail operations. This included the trains that gather coal and coke hopper cars from nearby mines, and those that moved coal and coke over the grades and curves of Blackwater Canyon and on to industries heating fuel sellers, and seaports. The railroad constantly pushed new ways to operate and maintain locomotives with the most efficiency and least cost. The visible remains help illustrate this evolution. Originally, this site included a roundhouse, which is a maintenance building for steam and other locomotives where the stalls of a semi-circular building surround a rotating platform called a turntable. When the locomotives outgrew the roundhouse and turntable, they were replaced by a new building, the engine house, whose foundation is still visible. The steepness of the Blackwater Canyon grade, the sharpness of its curves, and the weight of loaded trains combined to make moving coal difficult. Crews could either combine multiple engines or use more complicated, innovative, or larger designs to move heavy trains. The Western Maryland Railway did both at various times.

The Engine House + Coal-Hauling Locomotives

So the West Virginia Central &amp; Pittsburg Railroad eventually became the Western Maryland just after the turn of the 20th century. Both companies operated with fairly intensive railroads; the pole train operation involved a lot of locomotives to bring pole cars uphill from Elkins so that they could continue on toward Cumberland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh so the coal would be sent to market. But the grade of the Blackwater River was steep enough that the capacity of the coal-carrying proper cars grow in size over time, so did the locomotives but it typically worked out, the correlation was roughly equal, and for most of the early to mid-20th century, the capacity of a locomotive once it reaches the Blackwater grade, drops due to this. So a locomotive for every ten cars. That meant that a hundred car coal train might have up to ten locomotives pumping up the grade, there might be three locomotives on the front, four in the middle, three in the back; they did it that way to spread the power around so that the train didn’t bunch up— if it bunched up enough, it could bend like a snake and derail. So, a whole train would reach the top of the hill at Douglas, it would continue up here to the wye at Snyder Run; and a wye is a place where a train can basically make a three-point turn, the track actually forms what looks like the letter Y and actually looks like three Ys together where the train can pull in, back down, and then pull back out going back the way that it came. Now they didn’t typically back entire coal trains on this wye; when a single steam locomotive got to a terminal, the way a railroad would typically turn it around was on a turntable— what looked to be just a bridge in a circular pit that could aim the locomotive onto any track around the circumference. But when you’ve got nine locomotives at once, it would take a lot of time to uncouple each engine, put it on the turntable, and then go around. So, originally in Thomas, there was a turntable, but as the operation got into its own kind of groove here, it became pretty apparent that there might be a more efficient way to do things. So a coal train would come up here, they cut off all the [UNCLEAR] engines—engines that were extra to the main engine that was going to continue on with the train—and they would couple all the helper engines at once, back them up on the wye, and then turn them and send them back down to Hendricks where they repeated the same operation in Parsons. So every time a coal train came up with a whole group of helper engines, they came off, turned around on the wye, and went back down. It’s located here because the mouth of this creek, Snyder Run, forms a big triangular piece of land in what is otherwise a very narrow valley, it provides the space to form a wye. I think you can see it crosses the creek into places— the wye does— but that is a product of the local geography.

A "wye" is a place where three railroad tracks form a triangle, enabling trains to make a three-point turn. The tracks also form a “Y” shape where they come together as shown in the Sanborn Fire Insurance map. The main route followed the North Fork of the Blackwater between Cumberland and Elkins, while a branch line followed Snyder Run upstream to the town of Benbush. There is a call box mounted on a pole just before the wye. A small handful of branch lines radiated out of Thomas, Coketon, and Douglas in order to collect coal from the many mines nearby. The short Benbush branch was one such line. The two connecting tracks from Benbush to the main line turned sharply in opposite directions— one toward Hendricks and Elkins, and one toward Cumberland. These tracks form the wye’s three legs.

The Snyder Run Wye

The community of Coketon was home to a large industrial complex that supported mining operations, including machine shops and structures that housed equipment that sorted coal as it came out of the mines. The complex was surrounded by houses and a vibrant and active community. Little is left today because the mining operation closed decades ago, however, this site is noteworthy because there was this underground system of mine tunnels that connected to one another and went for miles and miles.After mining operations ceased, groundwater pooled in the mine tunnels and this continues to do so today in low-points within the system of tunnels. Because there is acid in the hole that remains in the ground and some of the surrounding rock, groundwater picks up that acid in ways that it wouldn’t have done prior to mining and it flows through these tunnels to the North Fork of the Blackwater River. This remains one of the highest sources of pollution in the watershed as demonstrated by the work of the Friends of Blackwater who have been monitoring pollution for years. In the 1990s there was a passive treatment system and a seal installed at the tunnel entrance. That system no longer provides the treatment that it once did, but the organizations continue to monitor and work with other agencies on solutions to the issue.

This hillside was the location of a coal mine entrance until the 1950s when underground mining operations ceased. This portal was located near Coketon, an industrial complex and power plant that was almost as large as those in Thomas. A few foundations remain, along with some coke ovens, but the mine buildings and community are mostly gone. Today, groundwater is exposed to and acidified by the coal deposits known as the Coketon Mine Pool. Water flows out through this old mine entrance polluting the North Fork of the Blackwater River. In 1995, the mine opening was closed with a wet seal, and a passive water treatment system was installed. This system was no longer effective, and a non-profit known as the Friends of Blackwater works to monitor and improve the water quality in the North Fork.

Mine Portal no. 29

Douglas is on the North Fork of Blackwater River, a mile above its mouth. It was founded in 1891, by the Gorman brothers, Douglas Sr. and William H., who were senior partners in the Cumberland Coal &amp; Coke Company, a subsidiary of the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company. The town was named for Douglas Gorman Jr., but since there was already a Douglas post office in Calhoun County, West Virginia, the post office was named for Albert Gorman, a brother of Douglas Jr., and both sons of Douglas Gorman Sr. The altitude of Douglas is 2806 feet; its population in 1910 was 900, in 1920 it was 600; and it has never been incorporated. Douglas has been both a lumber town and a coal town, primarily the latter. The lumber industry quit Douglas in 1912 and the coal industry petered out in 1954.At its peak, when the mill, mines and coke ovens were working full capacity, the population was made up of many nationalities. The sawmill employed only native Americans, but the coal company employed everybody: Russians, Austrians, Germans, Polish, Irish, English, Italians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Serbians, and Mexicans. In 1925, there were six Negro families in Douglas. Each family averaged five persons and very few of the children continued in school beyond the sixth grade, because of environment, lack of compulsory school laws, and the fact they wanted to go to work for themselves. Due to the long hours the coal miners saw daylight only on Sundays and holidays. There were no churches in the early days. The Protestants held services in the school building until 1926, when the coal company remodeled a warehouse for their use as a church. The Catholics went to Thomas until 1934, when they began using the school building.

Henry Gassaway Davis's companies built mines in all directions around Thomas, and built branch lines to connect them. At each mine, company-owned mining towns sprang up. They included a railroad station, a company general store, a school, a post office, one or more churches, and single- and multi-family homes for the miners and their families. Douglas is one such community.

Douglas, WV

So prior to the 1870s, in West Virginia, there were a few key trunk routes for transportation across the state; a place where roads and railroads could follow rivers, and the passages were relatively easy, but most of the interior of the state— the geography, was rough enough to limit how you can get in and out. And that changed as the technology for earthmoving started to come into its own in the late 19th century. That enabled people, like Henry Gassaway Davis, to build railroads into places like Thomas and Coketon and the community where we’re standing now, Douglas, mine coal and haul it out to market. All from this area to steel mills in Pittsburgh and Baltimore, it went to heating fuel distributors all along the railroad routes of the northeast and the Midwest, and it went to ports— like the port of Baltimore— for overseas shipment. This was one of the toughest railroads to operate anywhere in the eastern United States and, to an extent, anywhere in North America. We’re standing at a point in Douglasville, which is about a mile from the top of, what was known for a long time as, the Blackwater grade. It’s still called that by many people, but it was a very steep, curving railroad operation that pushed the trains of the West Virginia Central &amp; Pittsburgh Railroad— later the Western Maryland Railroad— right to their limits. So trains coming up from Hendricks at the bottom of the hill about ten miles away, would top the grade here, and the grade was so steep that for every ten cars of coal, you had to add another locomotive. So a 50 car coal train, or a 90 car coal train, would require a locomotive for every 10 cars. For the folks that we talked to today remember life in Douglas, one of the defining characteristics was being able to give those trains, coming up from miles away up the canyon, and the presence of the noise and the smoke that filled the valley as trains passed through. Just a few miles up in Coketon, between here and Coketon, the locomotives would cut off and then a single locomotive, or a pair of locomotives, to continue on the easier more-level track. But the Blackwater Canyon grade of the Western Maryland was very well-known among people, among professional railroad workers, around the eastern United States because it’s such an exceptionally difficult piece of railroad to operate, but that intensiveness of machinery and equipment, the amount of infrastructure that it took, and the amount of workforce that it took to keep that going illustrates to no small extent, just how valuable the coal was in this part of West Virginia. The volume of coal that was being shipped out, and its usefulness to industry and home heating, and its value as a consumer product between the 1880s and the 1950s, speaks to the amount of money that the companies invested in building the infrastructure required to extract coal and other resources.

This uniquely steep grade on the former West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railroad, later the Western Maryland Railway, is located just past the location of a rail bridge and demonstrates the obstacles faced in transporting coal and other goods in this part of West Virginia. Few rail routes required more machinery or personnel to keep coal moving up the Blackwater Canyon grade. To get a loaded, 90-car coal train up to Douglas and into Thomas, it took nine locomotives to pull the coal hopper cars up the 3% grade of the Blackwater Canyon. Downhill trips were also difficult: in the 19th century, brakemen walked the car tops to set each car’s brakes by hand. Later, air brakes could stop an entire train from a valve in the engine cab, but still required great skill for safe use.

Black Fork Grade

In order to attract workforce of sufficient size for the rapidly growing industrial mining and railroad complex here in Thomas, the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company had to ensure that there are sufficient amenities here to support a workforce which included the basic necessities of life. So in your typical company town— coal, lumber, whatever— the company in question would form a subsidiary. In this valley, the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company formed the Buxton &amp; Landstreet Company to operate a company store, and this was like a department store; it had clothing, furniture, food, everything. The basic necessities of life. It made it a little bit easier to attract workforce to a town like this. But employees of many coal companies, including this one, were paid on the onset in what was called script, which was currency good only at the company store. It provided a means of control for the workers, remember they had to purchase goods here. Perhaps you heard the old Tennessee earning song “I Sold My Soul to the Company Store,” that’s essentially what that meant. Being paid in script meant control of pricing of goods, which then lead to workforce accumulating debt. Labor laws of the 1930s outlawed the use of script in most places but company stores continue to operate in communities like this because provided in the essential service and this store was a company store until mining operations ceased in the 1950s.

A company store provided an industrial community with the necessities of life— as well as a means for a company to control its workforce. Lured by the lucrative prospect of mining coal for steelmaking, Henry Gassaway Davis and other investors poured millions of dollars into rapidly building a community here. This store ensured that the workforce would find the things they needed when they arrived, including food, clothing, tools, hardware, and other necessities. However, by paying in a company scrip— a type of currency good only at stores owned by the H.G. Davis Coal and Coke Company— owners also ensured that they could control pricing of goods, and that an employee’s earnings would return to the company. Workers often became indebted to the company through store credit. Labor reform laws outlawed scrip in the 1930s.

Buxton & Landstreet Building

This brick building in Thomas, WV lies south of the center of town. Built in 1900 to replace a previous administrative building that had exploded the year before, the is now abandoned and kept up by the city. The building was constructed specifically for the Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company to function as a headquarters. It served this purpose until the company stopped operating in 1950. The office served as the administrative center for the company's coal mines in Thomas, Coketon, Benbush, Pierce, and Kempton.    The Davis Coal &amp; Coke Company was founded by local politician and businessman, Henry Gassaway Davis. Davis got his start working as a brakeman for the B&amp;O Railroad in the 1840s, going on to hold positions as a station agent, train conductor, and superintendent for the company. After making earning money selling supplies during the Civil War, Davis began to plan his future railroad ventures in the area. Davis and his brother Thomas began to buy property in Mineral, Grant, Tucker, and Randolph Counties in the late 1860s. Construction on the first mine and railroad on this property began in 1882 near Piedmont. During this delay in his business ventures, Davis served as the first Democratic Senator from West Virginia for three terms.   The success of their first mine gave Davis the funds to continue his railway and mines up the Potomac, leaving budding coal towns in their wake, including Davis, WV. The railway line was known as the WVC&amp;P. As the mining interests of the group expanded, the company was unified under the name Davis Coal and Coke Company in 1886. The group had expanded to Thomas, WV in 1884 and would continue to expand their reach. The administrative building in Thomas was built at the height of Davis's influence in the company. Davis stepped down as the company's president in 1902, though his family remained active in the business for years afterward. Davis continued to serve political roles and even had an unsuccessful run for vice president in 1904.    The Davis Coal and Coke Company was purchased by the Gould Company in 1903. The company's railroad lines were merged with the Western Maryland Railroad and Western Maryland Railway in 1906 and 1910. However, the name of the company and lines were kept as they had become recognizable at a national level. Though the company stopped coke production in 1920 as technology changed, the coal mines continued to operate until 1950. Coal from the Davis Coal and Coke Company"s mines was used to power US Navy ships.   The damage caused by the company is still being felt today, despite the mine closures in the 1950s. Environmental traces of toxic chemicals and the scars of strip mining are still apparent so many years later. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

The Davis Coal & Coke Company administration building, built in 1900 after an explosion destroyed the original structure, was the center of field operations for the Company until it closed in 1950. The two-story brick structure also housed the engineering department, where regional mines were planned, designed, and managed. The City of Thomas is the current owner of this property which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

Blackwater Rail Trail

Moving Coal to Market

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information