West Virginia’s Coal Heritage Trail is built around unique towns, old rail lines and coal mines along with many other cultural and historical discoveries.
The West Virginia Coal Heritage Trail winds for nearly 200 miles, from Ansted south to Bluefield. I’ve driven it all—most of it twice—and if you want to see and touch and hear the unvarnished story of coal, there’s no better way to do it than traveling the roads that connect the Pocahontas Coalfield mining towns, following the rivers and rail tracks.
The names of the towns are music when you say them out loud: Sophia and Helen, Mullens and Ashland, Coalwood and Pineville, Kimball and Bramwell. Each town has its own story to tell, and each one is worth knowing.
What they share, most of these towns, is a Coal Heritage Trail sign, well-used train tracks along a river, a coal miners’ memorials, American flags, century-old downtown brick buildings, company housing in various states of repair, many churches, a Dollar Store, friendly people who’ll ask if you have kin in town.
But don’t think that these towns are all alike. Far from it. Here are just a few of the things not to miss as you travel south from Fayetteville on the Coal Heritage Trail:
In New Hope, “The Phoenix City,” there’s a walking tour through a century-old downtown district and past coal baron mansions.
Itmann: a massive company store/coal office built by Italian stonemasons with elegance that shines despite its long-ago abandonment.
Pineville: its beautiful neoclassical “temple-style” courthouse sits high on a hill, cut from native stone.
Coalwood, recognized as a model coal town and setting of native son Homer Hickam’s memoir “October Sky.”
Welch: Its equally impressive courthouse was the site of Sheriff Sid Hatfield’s murder by Baldwin-Felts agents; home to American Realist painter Tom Acosta murals.
Kimball, site of the only remaining war memorial to Black WW I soldiers.
Bramwell, site of the Coal Heritage Trail Interpretive Center and museum and once considered the richest town per capita: Fourteen millionaires lived there a century ago.
Bluefield, where the One Thin Dime museum and House of Art are housed in the historic Ramsey School and well worth a stop.
I could go on…but better to go see for yourself. The Coal Heritage Trail is a winding trip through towns whose fortunes followed coal and railroads—living history, honest as it gets.
The story above first appeared in our January/ February 2022 issue.
