Synopsis
Pocahontas coalfield, which is also known as the Flat Top-Pocahontas Coalfield, is located in Mercer County, West Virginia, McDowell County, West Virginia and Tazewell County, Virginia. The coal seams—Pocahontas No. 3, No. 4, No. 6, and No. 11—are some of the best coal to be found in the world, and are rated at 15,000 Btu/lb (35 MJ/kg). The earliest mining of coal in the coalfield was in Pocahontas, Virginia, Virginia in 1883 at Pocahontas Mine No. 1, now on the National Register of Historic Places. This operation, replete with beehive coke ovens, eventually spawned the Pocahontas Fuel Company, which operated mines in Virginia at Boissevain and Amonate, and in West Virginia at Jenkinjones, Bishop, and Itmann. Later Pocahontas Fuel Company was absorbed into Consolidation Coal Company, which still mines coal at Amonate. The mines at Pocahontas were able to ship coal when the Norfolk & Western Railway extended a branch line there. As this railroad was extended westward through Mercer and McDowell Counties the coalfield expanded with it. By the mid-1880s the Bramwell area was booming with mines at Coopers and Freeman. Coal mines continued to open through the 1890s as the Norfolk & Western Railroad laid track along Elkhorn Creek and eventually reached Welch. Some of these coal mines/coal camps included Maybeury, Elkhorn, Upland, and Keystone. The coals of the Pocahontas coalfield developed a good reputation, and by 1903, U.S. Steel had set up a subsidiary named U.S. Coal and Coke…
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Details
- Running time
- 7 minutes
- Collection
- Prelinger Archives
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★ · Come forth, black lung! · Spuzz · 2019-07-19
Overview of mining operations in Pocahontas, Virginia, a hotbed of coal production (read above Wikipedia entry). This is not unlike any coal film you've seen before though, but it's nice to have some localization of the product. Contains a curious scene of a "street crew" doing something I can't quite make out and some neon lights of broadway, both which I wonder if they were edited into the film by mistake.