POCAHONTAS DISCOVERY OPENS COAL EMPIRE

Bluefield Daily Telegraph.  Sunday, August 31, 1987

     
The discovery of the Great Pocahontas Coal Fields marked the 
beginning of . . . industrial development.
     
The coal field spreads across Mercer, McDowell, and part of 
Wyoming counties and across the Virginia border in Tazewell 
County.
     
Although the "Notes" of Thomas Jefferson refer to the coal and 
mineral wealth of the area, eminent English geologists, the 
Rogers brothers, noted the existence of valuable coal deposits 
in southwestern Virginia--before West Virginia was made a 
separate state--during explorations of the region in 1840.
     
Earlier records by settlers show they sent wagons to the "coal 
banks" for fuel to use in the forges of their blacksmith shops.
     
An exploring party in 1873 looking for timber discovered the 
location of the coal seam that was named Pocahontas.
     
After the Civil War, Maj. Jed Hotchkiss of Staunton, Va., 
financed the first exploration trip into the Pocahontas field.  
Capt. Welch reported Hotchkiss and later wrote. . ."With the 
aid of a narrow hoe made from a seasoned white oak board 
sharpened with a handle made from the body of the board, the 
Pocahontas coal seam was prospected throughout its area in the 
Flat Top Mountains."
     
John Cooper, a British immigrant from a coal-mining family, 
was mining coal in Fayette County when the Panic of 1873 
struck.  The panic greatly depressed the coal market and Cooper 
suffered financially until the early 1880's, when he learned of 
a land full of coal to the south.
     
He became one of the first operators of the Pocahontas 
Coalfield.  The coalfield's 13-foot seam was recognized as 
one of the richest in the world.
     
With no railroad nearby, Cooper and his first employees carried 
their tools and implements two miles over Flat Top Mountain from 
Pocahontas, where the South West Improvement Co. had first tapped 
into the seam in 1883, according to a paper written by Richard 
Fauss.
     
"Beginning with one mule and a borrowed harness, as a fellow 
operator remembered later, Cooper's Mill Creek Coal and Coke 
Co. shipped its first coal on the Norfolk and Western in 
November 1884, making his Mercer County operation the first 
mine in West Virginia in the Pocahontas Coalfield,"  it 
stated.  "In 1884, Mill Creek shipped 2, 368 tons of smokeless 
coal."
     
By 1890 Cooper sold nearly 200,000 tons from one tipple alone.  
"He added the Coaldale and McDowell Coal companies to his rapidly 
expanding empire, and by 1896 he ran three tipples and 260 coke 
ovens,"  the paper stated. . .
     
The Mill Creek and Caswell Creek mines opened in 1884, the Booth 
Bowen mine opened in 1885, Buckeye opened in 1886, and the 
Goodwill mine opened in 1887.  Of these mines, Mill Creek, 
Cooper's mine, was the most significant "because the main 
entryway for this mine was driven straight through Flat Top 
Mountain and eventually became the main line of the N & W 
Railroad when it was completed in 1887, opening McDowell 
County for development,"  the paper states.