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Architectural drawings of the engine house.

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The Chesapeake and Ohio Engine House in Thurmond, West Virginia was built in 1905, two years after Thurmond was officially incorporated by its founder W.D. Thurmond. The engine house was built to service train engines that arrived at the Thurmond Station carrying coal or passengers. The original building measured one hundred fifty feet by sixty-six feet, making the square footage of the building 9900 square feet.  This was enough space for two trains to be simultaneously serviced. A 1921 addition to the structure expanded the length to two hundred forty-five feet. This enlargement made it possible for four trains to be serviced at once. Sixty to one hundred engines were serviced daily by fifty to seventy workers. The building was mostly made of wood. The Chesapeake and Ohio Engine House was a major employer in Thurmond and had boilermakers, machinists and various other mechanical professionals on its payroll. The C&O Engine House remained in operation, serving and maintaining engines for the next fifty years after its construction. Then, from 1963 to 1985, the building served as a local repair shop until it was abandoned. In 1993 a fire devastated the building. The remains were not worth saving and even the tracks leading into the building were removed. There is no longer any evidence of the pivotal Thurmond structure.


Chesapeake  and Ohio Engine House (1905-1993)

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"You have heard of the California gold rush
Way back in forty-nine,
But Thurmond, on New River,
Will beat it every time.
There's people here from everywhere,
The colored and the white,
Some mother's son bites the dust
Almost every night."
-Captain H. W. Doolittle, C&O Conductor.

This three story, cut stone structure is the oldest and longest - with a 75 foot front - of the three remaining buildings that make up Thurmond's Commercial Row. The historic storefronts are framed with a cast iron column and beam system and a tulip motif decorates the column capitals. Constructed in 1901, the building housed at various times the Standard Dry Goods Company, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Exchange Company, the offices of Dr. C. F. Ridge, and a Greek restaurant. The building’s two upper levels have also been used as apartments. The southern portion of the structure has caved in and only the exterior walls remain. The northern portion, accessible by a side stairway in the adjacent National Bank of Thurmond, was rehabilitated prior to the building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The property is now under the stewardship of the National Park Service, and houses an interpretive display on the history of Thurmond.

Goodwin-Kincaid Building

The National Bank of Thurmond served a town that grew quickly in the early 1900s as the region became a leading exporter of coal. At Thurmond’s peak it had two banks, with one being the National Bank of Thurmond — the other was the New River Banking and Trust Company. The National Bank of Thurmond was initially housed in Hotel Thurmond before relocating to this 1917 constructed building in 1923. The bank oversaw $4.8 million a year in the late 1920s, primarily from the railroad. The financial institution also offered safety deposits boxes, saving accounts, and was the Fayette County and Ford Motor Co. depository. A relatively short-lived venture, the bank served local businesses and the residents until 1931, when a series of fires devastated the town. After many businesses closed due to the fires the bank was forced to close as well. The National Bank of Thurmond building was home to retail stores and apartments until 1959. With the exception of the period between 1975 and 1988, when it was home to a hotel and restaurant called the Bankers Club, the building has been empty.

National Bank of Thurmond 

The Mankin-Cox Building was completed in 1904, making it the first structure in Thurmond’s commercial district. The building is a simple three-story brick construction with storefront space on the ground floor and offices and living spaces on the second and third floors. For much of the building’s history, the first floor was separated into two commercial spaces. Dr. J.W. Makin funded construction of the building. He maintained his medical office on the second floor, while his wife, a pharmacist, operated a drug store on the right side of the first floor. The second floor was also shared with Dr. Young, Thurmond’s dentist in the early twentieth century. The first floor storefront on the left appears to have remained vacant until 1911, when the New River Banking and Trust Company moved from the Dun Glen hotel to the space. The Cox Building Company acquired the Mankin-Cox Building in the 1920s. Following calamitous fires, the New River Banking and Trust Company shut down in the 1930s, along with much of Thurmond’s commercial activity. The Mankin-Cox building was rarely used commercially in the latter half of the twentieth century, though the top floors remained in residential use. The structure was rapidly deteriorating at the turn of the twenty-first century, though National Park Service efforts have largely stabilized it. 

Mankin-Cox Building

As the town of Thurmond grew in the late nineteenth century, rail lines brought thousands of travellers and workers through the area. Thomas G. McKell, a wealthy land-owner saw a business opportunity in the booming area and funded construction of the Dun Glen Hotel. The four and a half story building was almost better described as a complex. The basement contained a grocery and bank vault, while the main floor held dining rooms, ballrooms, a perpetually operational bar, ice plant, barber shop, laundry, post office and an enormous gambling hall. $2.50 was enough to cover a room in one of the one hundred guest rooms that occupied the top three floors. The basement was brick while the rest of the building was constructed of wood, an ominous portend of the building’s fate. The building’s opening night was characterized by an enormous crowd who gathered to hear a symphony from Cincinnati, Ohio.The Dun Glen Hotel was an infamous site of sin due to the amount of gambling, drinking, dancing, and prostitution that occurred behind its doors. In fact, the building single handedly gave rise to two sayings about Thurmond: “no Sunday west of Clifton Forge and no God west of Hinton” and “the only difference between Hell and Thurmond is that a river runs through Thurmond.” Dun Glen’s never closing bar drew particularly fierce ire from Thurmond founder, W.D. Thurmond. Thurmond founded his town with the ideals of a puritanical religious society in mind. In 1901, alcohol was completely banned from Thurmond, perhaps as a response to Dun Glen Hotel, though perhaps the hotel was a response to the alcohol ban. However, if anything the ban only served to further encourage patronage of the Dun Glen Hotel, which was conveniently located across the river and just outside of the Thurmond city boundary. Thurmond’s growth and the growth of the Dun Glen Hotel were inextricably linked. The booming economy brought more workers, investors, and coal owners to the area, while the hotel made Thurmond the place to be. Thurmond quickly acquired the nickname, “Dodge City of the East,” thanks to Dun Glen Hotel.  A number of notable events occurred at the hotel in the early twentieth century. The largest coal mine transaction to ever occur in the New River region was brokered in Dun Glen Hotel. After some deliberation, a representative for the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company delivered a $1,250,000 check to the room of W.P. Rend, as payment for Rend’s coal mine at Minden. Another significant event was the world’s longest poker game. According to Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the Guinness Book of World Records, a fourteen year-long continuous poker game took place at the hotel.Though Thomas McKell was briefly able to appreciate the success of his venture, he died in 1904, three years after Dun Glen Hotel opened. Upon McKell’s death, his son William McKell took possession of the hotel. On August 11, 1904, McKell added a bank to the hotel, the New River Banking and Trust Company. However, the First World War was hard on Thurmond and the hotel never fully recovered. When disaster struck in the 1930s, the Dun Glen Hotel was already a rapidly declining shadow of its former self. On July 23rd, 1930 at around 10:30 PM, the hotel caught fire. None of the hotel occupants were injured, though two firefighters were while battling the fire. The fire proved uncontrollable and the hotel burned to the ground. Losses were estimated at $100,000. Initial news reports claim that the fire was caused by a charged electric wire which fell on the building. Several theories that the fire was the result of arson have also been promulgated. When he passed away in the mid-1930s, leaving no immediate heirs, William McKell’s land went to cousins. The fall of the hotel hurt Thurmond’s already faltering economy and no major structure was ever rebuilt on the land. Since that time, much of the property has been purchased by various companies. Several businesses such as a grocery store, gas station, and whitewater rafting company built structures in the area and often incorporated the foundation or materials from Dun Glen Hotel. Currently, the National Park Service has a maintenance facility, ranger station, and dormitory on the property. These buildings continue the tradition of incorporating physical components of the once pivotal Glen Dun Hotel into modern structures.

The Dun Glen Hotel (sometimes spelled Dunglen or Dunglenn) was one of the two hotels located near Thurmond, WV. Thomas G. McKell was given 12,500 acres in Fayette County, WV when he married Miss Jean Dun of Chillicothe, OH by her father as a wedding present. Here, he erected the Dunglen Hotel at the turn of the twentieth century. The hotel and Thurmond had their fates inextricably linked: the economy in Thurmond drew people in and the hotel provided them reason to stay, even if only for a brief time. With the hotel’s reputation for good times — often to the point of excess — it was not difficult to attract local and national visitors who dubbed the attraction, “Dodge City of the East.” The area’s largest coal mine transaction, and the world’s longest continuous poker game at fourteen years, both occurred in Dun Glen Hotel. Despite its reputation and impact on the community, the building was only extant for twenty-nine years. In 1930, it burned to the ground and was never rebuilt. Over the next few decades, Thurmond followed ruinous suit and quietly subsided into a ghost town.

Thurmond, WV Walking Tour

Chesapeake and Ohio Engine House (1905-1993)

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