Category:Ghost Towns of the New River Gorge
From West Virginia (WV) Cyclopedia
Ghost towns are found throughout West Virginia where extractive industries such as oil, coal, and natural gas have boomed and busted. A string of more than 50 towns followed the New River through the wilderness of the southern state.
Visiting the Ghost Towns
Our map (http://www.newriverwv.com/ghost_towns/) of the New River Gorge ghost towns plots the approximate locations of the ghost towns in the gorge. Although access to the gorge's ghost towns is challenging, many are visited each year by paddlers who access the sites via New River, and by hikers and bikers who reach the towns via the gorge's network of trails. Some commercial guides and outfitter companies offer guided ghost town tours and a visit to a ghost town is often the highlight of a whitewater rafting trip on the New River. Thurmond, perhaps the best known "ghost town" of the gorge, is actually an inhabited place (pop. 7) and is still classified as a "city" by the state. Industrial ruins exist in many localities, such as at Sewell, WV, where walls of stone and brick, over a mile in length, rise precariously amid the Appalachian forest. The National Park Service reminds visitors that such sites are federally protected as part of the New River Gorge National River: nothing should be moved or removed. Rangers visit the sites often.
Development of New River Gorge Towns
Almost communities in the gorge were "company towns" founded by mining companies between 1870 and 1910. Coal mines opened in the gorge after the completion of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O) in 1873. The line used the gorge as part of the route, providing transportation between Atlantic seaports and the Ohio River Valley. West Virginia's coal production averaged about 600,000 tons annually in 1870, but in 1874 production nearly doubled, largely due to the opening of mines in the New River Coal Field. In 1888, Fayette County, in which all of the mines of the New River Gorge then open were located, produced 1,522,430 tons of coal -- the first county in the state to produce a million tons in one year. By 1903, the fifty-six mines located on the C&O between Prince and Hawks Nest were producing nearly a third of the coal mined in West Virginia.
However, the gorge's steep slopes and its narrow width made for a low return on investment. As coal seams began to work-out in the 1930s, mines in the gorge began to close. By the 1950s, most, along with their companion communities, had been abandoned to the lush forest. Only stone walls and foundations remain at many, though Prince, Terry, Thayer, and Thurmond are still inhabited.
