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e-WV | Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam

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Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam

Covering some 900 square miles in

Mercer, Wyoming, and McDowell counties

in West Virginia, and neighboring Tazewell

County, Virginia, the rich Pocahontas No.

3 coal seam was first mined by Jordan

Nelson, whose backyard coalbank

eventually attracted serious interest from

the Philadelphia founders of the Norfolk &

Western Railway. The N&W completed its

line to the Pocahontas, Virginia, location

of Nelson’s coalbank in March 1883 and

began the rapid industrialization of the

region.

Largely owned by the N&W’s Pocahontas

Land Corporation, which leased mining rights to independent coal companies, the

Pocahontas Coalfield has been one of the most productive in the nation. The

low-volatile, low-sulfur, ‘‘smokeless’’ coal originated during the Lower and Middle

Pennsylvanian Period and is older and better than most coal found elsewhere in

the world. It stood 11 feet thick at Pocahontas, was perfect for making coke for

use in steelmaking, and was the chosen fuel of the U.S. Navy during the age of

steam. Of the original three billion tons in the field, some 900 million remain.

The exploitation of the Pocahontas No. 3 seam transformed southern West

Virginia, creating the cities of Bluefield, Bramwell, Keystone, Northfork, Kimball,

Welch, and Gary, and numerous coal company towns. The huge demand for

miners in the labor-intensive early years created great racial and ethnic diversity.

The U.S. Coal Commission’s 1923 survey showed that 20,000 of West Virginia’s

92,000 miners worked in the Pocahontas region. Twenty percent were foreignborn immigrants, 33 percent African-American, and the remainder native-born

whites. The Pocahontas coalfield saw little of the endemic violence of the West

Virginia Mine Wars, although union hero Sid Hatfield was assassinated on the

steps of the McDowell County courthouse in Welch.

This Article was written by C. Stuart McGehee

Last Revised on October 22, 2010

RELATED ARTICLES

Coal Industry

Pocahontas Land Corporation

Sources

Lambie, Joseph T. From Mine to Market: The History of Coal Transportation

on the Norfolk & Western Railway. New York: New York University Press,

1954.

McCulloch, Gayle. 'Poky 3' World's Finest, Coal Geologist Argues. Welch

Daily News, 2/24/1984.

Stow, Audley H. Mining in the Pocahontas Field. Coal Age, 4/19/1913.

View All Citations (5 total) »

Cite This Article

McGehee, C. Stuart "Pocahontas No. 3 Coal Seam." e-WV: The West Virginia

Encyclopedia. 22 October 2010. Web. 12 August 2015.

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No. 14-1395, viewed 08/12/2015

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