There were coal mines operating along the Kanawha river in Western Virginia before the Civil War, supplying coal for the salt mines and for steamboats on the Ohio river. But it was after the war that the real exploration and development of the southern coalfields took off. There was a wide range of operators, and some of that was influenced by the railroads. The Norfolk and Western Railroad bought huge tracts of land , when it ran tracks ( that was the normal practice- railroads could make more money off re-selling land adjacent to their tracks than from their operations) . The C&O Railroad,setting up along the Kanawha and New rivers, didn't. The result was that lands around the C&O were often taken by speculators and investors, who would then hire mine managers. But the N&W would lease land to actual miners, some of them lacking anything other than a few tools. The northern WV fields were more often developed by people with real assets, like James O. Watson and Francis Pierpont.

In the early days, there was also a pretty big local workforce. The southern Appalachians had had an agricultural economy, and families tended to be large. That meant there was a sizeable number of young men without much of a prospect of having enough land to do well farming, and so a good number of them went into the mines. But that didn't last. Coal production climbed, from only about 500,000 tons in 1867 to almost 5 million tons in 1887. More workers were needed, and by the 1890's the mining industry was recruiting immigrant workers right off the docks in Philadelphia or New York. In 1867, there were only 3,701 miners in WV, by 1917 ( perhaps the peak of the boom) there were 90,000. There was recruitment of African-Americans from the south, and there was also segregation of housing them , in the camps, and worse treatment. For example, one mine owner paid for a church, for the white residents, while only allowing the black residents some space in a building for their own services.

Two men and a mule could simply hack away at a hillside for a while and possibly make enough money to hire a third and buy supplies, and props. But as mines went deeper, expenses rose. The early coal camps were pretty basic: a scattering of tarpaper shacks and basic boardinghouses dropped randomly by a railroad track, with water supplied by a nearby river.. There are not lot of records from this early period, and a lot is unknown. But it is safe to say mine safety was pretty lax and life was hard and violent, what you would expect with a young male workforce with little to do in their spare time but drink, gamble and fight. Coal was a commodity: the price could rise and fall according to the market, and so the late 19th c. saw periodic booms and busts, and the coal industry saw a lot of mines going broke, being sold, consolidated with others. But as the industry developed and needed more miners, it became necessary to actually plan coal towns to attract and keep them. The coalfield labor wars of the 1920's have given us the stereotype of fenced-in guarded compounds, like Cabin Creek. But, as Crandall Shifflett has shown, compared to typical Appalachian housing, houses in the later coal camps were often pretty good . There were fewer boardinghouses and single men, more families. Wages were often reasonably good, as well. But mining was dangerous and hard work, accidents common. Miners weren't paid for non-mining tasks like checking to see why the lamps were flickering ( indicating gas buildup, lower oxygen), replacing props, and so were penalized for thinking of safety...and operators sometimes would go ahead and mine the support columns in order to get the coal- increasing the danger of a cave-in. Worker turnover was quite high- miners could and would leave, if they thought they could do better elsewhere, either in another mine or finding a less dangerous job in another town. Although some of the immigrants arriving circa 1900 would stay, many more seem to have figured out how to do better than work in the coal mines, and left.

Working with a pick, lying on his side, a miner would undercut the seam, cut a deep groove into the bottom of the face. Holes were drilled above, filled with black powder and wadding. Touched off, the blast would ( hopefully) drop the coal in a large pile, and the miners would then hand-load it into carts, in the early mines usually drawn by mules. Eight tons a day was typical for a miner to load in a day, (the fabled "sixteen tons" was apparently an initiation rite for the newcomer). So they didn't waste it, miners paid for their own blasting powder. There does not seem to have been heavy supervision. In a mine owned by Henry Ford, in 1920, there would be a mule driver boss, two tipple foremen, a section foreman ( inside) a general foreman (outside) and a general superintendent. But in the later mines there were host of other jobs as well, paid not by the load but by the hour. Child labor was there: ventilation was controlled by doors being shut and opened, a job typically given to a young boy. Boys could also be given the tasks of sorting slate from coal outside the mine at the tipple, or oiling cars, or controlling the traffic in the mine with flags. There would be men who who ran the pumps, to get the water out, and a roving crew with a foreman who would do things like fix or lay tracks. Sometimes there would be a coke plant, making coke for steel making, with its own set of workers. There would also be a company store, which is where a miner would be paid, and his family would buy goods. Miners would typically be paid in both cash and scrip, not just scrip. The later camps could have the feel of a real town, with miners' families, as well as the families of the other mine staff. There was a school, a church, recreational activities like horseshoe throwing , perhaps a baseball team. Films might be rented and shown. Stories of danger, abuse and misery exist. There were also children who grew up in the later coal camps who had happy memories. But, unlike a regular town, there was no mayor, town council: there was an owner.

Ronald D Eller: Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982

Crandall A Shifflett: Coal Towns: Life , Work and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960 Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991