West Virginia’s 180-mile coal trail connects ghost towns to millionaire mansions

It’s America’s industrial story in asphalt

Southern West Virginia built the machines, the warships, and the railroads that made America run.

The coal that came out of these mountains burned cleaner than anything else in the country, and the people who dug it out lived in towns that rose fast and fell faster.

The Coal Heritage Trail strings those towns together across 180 miles, from the Virginia border to Beckley.

You drive through 13 counties, past abandoned mines and mansions built with coal money, and the blue-star wayside markers along the road fill in the rest.

Railroads cracked these mountains open after the Civil War

After the Civil War, railroads pushed into the mountains of southern West Virginia and hit rich seams of bituminous coal. It burned so clean they called it “smokeless,” and the U.S. Navy wanted all of it.

Boomtowns shot up overnight. Miners came from across the country and from Europe, flooding the coalfields for work.

At its peak, the Pocahontas coalfield alone put about 100,000 miners underground. Then diesel replaced steam, the mines played out, and most of those towns emptied by the mid-1900s.

Ride a mine car through 1,500 feet of dark tunnel

The Phillips-Sprague Mine in Beckley opened around 1889 and shipped its first coal in 1906. It ran until 1953, then reopened in 1962 as the first coal mining education site in the country.

You climb into a “man trip” car and roll through 1,500 feet of restored passageways on 3,000 feet of vintage track. Retired miners guide you through, telling stories from their years underground.

The temperature holds at 58 degrees year-round, so bring a jacket.

Above ground, a recreated coal camp sits with a company house, church, school, and superintendent’s home.

Bramwell once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere

In 1888, a town went up along the Bluestone River, named for civil engineer and first postmaster J.H. Bramwell. Coal money poured in.

At its height, 17 coal operators built grand homes here, giving Bramwell the highest concentration of millionaires per capita in the country.

The Norfolk and Western Railroad made 14 daily stops, hauling out coal and delivering luxury goods. The Bank of Bramwell was the richest of its size in the nation.

Its janitor wheeled bags of cash by wheelbarrow to the train depot.

Walk the original brick streets past copper-roofed mansions

Coal operators built their homes with imported materials, English orange brick and copper roofing among them. The 24-room Cooper House went up around 1910 in the Queen Anne style, topped with a copper roof.

The Goodwill House, built in 1895, has its own ballroom.

Twice a year, during spring and Christmas home tours, costumed interpreters open several mansions and tell the stories of the families who lived there.

Today, about 277 people call Bramwell home, and the town sits at a trailhead for the Hatfield-McCoy Trail system.

Henry Ford once ran the mines at Nuttallburg

Around 1870, English-born entrepreneur John Nuttall bought land along Keeneys Creek for about a dollar an acre.

When the C&O Railway arrived in 1873, Nuttallburg became the second town in the New River Gorge to ship smokeless coal. Henry Ford leased the mines in 1920 and modernized operations before selling out in 1928.

The Nuttall family handed the property to the National Park Service in 1998.

You can walk among the tipple, a massive conveyor, roughly 80 coke ovens, and the foundations of homes, churches, and schools.

Three trails wind through Nuttallburg’s ruins and creeks

The Tipple Trail runs an easy 0.6 miles past the coal tipple, conveyor, and coke ovens. The Town Loop Trail covers half a mile through the old townsite, where building foundations line the path.

If you want more distance, the Keeneys Creek Rail Trail stretches 3.3 miles on a gentle grade, crossing trestle bridges with views of cascading creeks below.

Steeper options like the Headhouse Trail and Conveyor Trail climb higher. Interpretive signs with historic photos sit throughout.

The park is free and open year-round.

Descend 800 steps to Kaymoor’s rusting coal plant

The Low Moor Iron Company opened the Kaymoor mine around 1899 to feed its iron furnaces in Virginia. Two company towns went up, one on the gorge rim and one along the New River below.

A gravity-powered incline hauled coal down a 1,000-foot slope at a 30-degree grade to the processing plant. A separate tram carried miners and supplies up and down the canyon wall.

The mine pulled out roughly 17 million tons of coal before closing in 1962. Today, you descend more than 800 steps on the Kaymoor Miners Trail to reach the ruins.

Thurmond ran 15 trains a day and now has five residents

Captain W.D. Thurmond bought 73 acres along the C&O Railway in 1873.

The town that took his name went up around 1900 and became the largest revenue-producing stop on the entire C&O line, with 15 passenger trains rolling through daily. By 1930, the population hit 462.

Today, fewer than five people live there. The National Park Service restored the old railroad depot and turned it into a visitor center.

Amtrak’s Cardinal line still stops in Thurmond three times a week, and the entire town sits on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sewell’s beehive ovens burned coal for 82 straight years

The Longdale Iron Company built the first coke ovens in the New River Gorge at Sewell in 1874.

Coke comes from baking coal at high temperatures to burn off impurities, and it makes a hotter fuel for iron and steel production.

Within 10 years, nearly 200 beehive-style ovens filled the site, making Sewell the top coke producer in the gorge. They kept burning until 1956.

By 1973, no one lived there.

You can reach the ghost town on the Old Sewell Road trail from Babcock State Park, a roughly 12-mile round trip past towering cliffs and stone remnants of the old narrow-gauge railroad.

Williamson built an entire building out of 65 tons of coal

In Mingo County, the town of Williamson put up a building in the 1930s made entirely of locally mined coal, all 65 tons of it. The Coal House stands as a monument to the industry that kept this region alive.

Today it serves as the Tug Valley Chamber of Commerce and a visitors’ center.

You can walk in and pick up information on the Hatfield-McCoy feud, local history, and trip planning. It remains one of the most photographed landmarks in southern West Virginia.

Watch a glassblower work at Tamarack Marketplace in Beckley

Tamarack Marketplace sits right off Interstate 77 at Exit 45 in Beckley, near the northern end of the Coal Heritage Trail.

The state-run cultural center opened in 1996 and carries work from more than 2,800 juried artists and artisans across all 55 West Virginia counties.

You can watch resident artisans at work, including a glassblower shaping pieces in real time.

The on-site restaurant serves Appalachian-inspired dishes, and a fine arts gallery hosts rotating exhibitions throughout the year. Doors open daily at 9 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

Explore New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia

If you want to see where coal towns like Nuttallburg, Kaymoor, and Thurmond stood along the New River, head to New River Gorge National Park.

It became America’s newest national park in 2021, covering more than 70,000 acres in southern West Virginia.

The Canyon Rim Visitor Center near Fayetteville gives you panoramic views of the gorge and the New River Gorge Bridge.

Beyond the coal history, you can raft whitewater, climb rock, fish, and hike more than 100 miles of trails. The park is free and open year-round.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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