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Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia
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Item Title
Aerial view of Montcoal, looking down on bridge, tipple, Coal River and Route 3. [Photo]
Author/Creator
Photographer: Eiler, Lyntha Scott
Created/Published
October 26, 1995
Notes
"When the mines opened in the 19th century were worked out on New River, they began to open on the Allegheny Plateau, where railroad companies built lines along the rivers. In the 1910s the railroad made its way east from Whitesville to Sundial. In the early 20th century thousands of coal towns and camps began sprang up along the railroad tracks throughout Central Appalachia, drawing immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean (Whitesville was known as "Greektown"), and sharecroppers from the American Deep South who came to find work in the mines.
One of the earliest coal camps on Coal River was established at Montcoal, shown on early maps as "Hecla." In the 1930s the Colcord Coal Company operated mines at Montcoal. In the 1930s, John L. Lewis came to Montcoal to organize the union, and had to stand, as Mae Bongalis remembers it, on the railroad tracks, because Colcord would not allow him on the property. Mae Bongalis, who grew up in a coal camp on Montcoal Mountain, told of working in the mines as a young girl, and of riding the incline down the mountain and back in order to do business in the valley. The form of the company town was ubiquitous throughout the coalfields, and expressed the social vision of the men who were reshaping the region's economy. The companies provided housing for miners and their families, docking the rent from their paychecks. Food and other necessities were sold at the company store, often in exchange for "scrip," a form of compensation to miners redeemable only at the company store, which many recall charged higher prices than other local retailers. Many companies also built churches, parks, ball fields, and movie theaters.
The towns were usually segregated by race and ethnicity, with the more luxurious homes of superintendents and doctors placed above the town. In Montcoal, the superintendent and doctor lived across the river on "Cigar Hill" (45-8). Armco Steel Corporation took over the lease to Montcoal in the 1950s and retained it into the mid-1980s. When Armco left, tenants had an option to buy the houses, but not the land, which the Peabody Coal Corporation leased for a few years, after which the A.T. Massey Coal Company acquired the lease. In the 1990s, John Flynn rented a house in Montcoal, where he coordinated the Appalachia Forest Action Project. During our field project, the Upper Big Branch Mine at Montcoal, a longwall mine, was operated by Performance Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Coal.
These aerial photographs show the tipple, the continuous belt feeder, the corporate headquarters (45-7), the company town (45-7, 46-4), and the railroad tracks following Coal River and Route 3. Coal from the mine at Upper Big Branch is fed into the large silo, and then funneled through the continuous belt feeder to the square tipple, where coal is loaded into coal truck. The trucks, each of which is capable of carrying a hundred tons or more, drive the coal to loading docks on the Kanawha River. Across Route 3 one can see the homes on what is still known as "Cigar Hill" (45-8)."
Subjects
Fall
Montcoal
Route 3
Coal River
Photo
Ethnography
Photographs
Performance Coal
Montcoal, WV
Object Type
Medium
35 mm Color Slide
Language
English
Call Number
CRF-LE-C045-12
Part of
The Coal River Folklife Collection (AFC 1999/008)
Repository
Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
Digital ID
afccmns lec04512
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.lec04512