Coal Camps: Man, West Virginia

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Sherman Cahal in Mid-Atlantic | 9 Comments

We have all been there. A ominous derelict is on the horizon and we are tempted to stop and explore, but because of external factors – children in the car, poor lighting, and so forth, we pass up the opportunity to check out the abandonment.

Suppose that derelict was the Man Community Hospital in Man, West Virginia. The hospital opened in 1956 by the Miners Memorial Hospital Association, a not-for-profit that constructed hospitals and clinics for the under-served coal mining regions of eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia. Thousands of United Mine Workers of America workers and citizens celebrated the Miners Memorial Hospital openings, which were scattered throughout the region, and which provided modern health care in regions that had scant medical support. But the Man Community Hospital, later owned by Appalachian Regional Healthcare, was closed in 2001 after falling deep into debt.

The community gathered and made attempts to purchase the hospital. The county floated plans to convert the facility into a Level 5 Trauma Center. And the local bank that owned the land halted foreclosure proceedings for a time to see if the local governments would be able to pull through to save the local medical center. But all of those efforts failed, and the hospital, once a point of pride for the region, became healthy vandalized.

On my intial visit years ago, the hospital seemed as if it had just closed just days earlier. Lights were on in a lot of the rooms, furniture still resided in the waiting rooms and papers were still piled on the desks. I never entered because I had a passenger who was more than weary of just walking around the hospital. I told myself that I would return, someday.

That day was January 2, 2011, part of my excursion through the coalfields of West Virginia. But by this trip, the hospital with its pristine interior had degraded to one that was being gutted and demolished. Gone were most of the windows, replaced with boards and empty sockets. Furniture, while still inside, was in disarray. Gone was the pristineness.

Emergency Entrance, 2008

2011

Rear, 2008

2011

Lobby, 2008

No trespassing, this means you!

After feeling completely awful for having not visiting the hospital years ago, despite it’s pristine condition – and the hope to find a location stocked with computers and other relics for photographic pureness, I moved on. Nearby was a strip mall, discovered en route to Logan. But darkness was quickly approaching, and I was only able to take a handful of photographs – perfectly acceptable for a rather generic shopping plaza. The Midway Plaza, constructed in the 1970s, has a decidedly abandoned feel, despite some open storefronts – which include a Thrift Store and a Bingo Hall.

A thirft store is the highlight of this shopping center. It was formerly Shoe World.

Bingo Hall

Charley's, a O'Charley's knock-off, is closed.

It's not a good sign if Wendy's closes.

Midway Plaza

What is fascinating is that Midway Plaza bears resemblance to many other shopping centers, not only in the coalfields of West Virginia, but in America. With Midway Plaza, the configuration included a power tenant – most likely, a K-Mart, Magic Mart or Kroger, and a secondary power tenant, which at one point was a Big Lots. Smaller tenants included a shoe store and a post office, and now a bingo hall. Outlots included a Wendy’s and a more upscale restaurant, with the last iteration being a Charley’s – a knockoff O’Charley’s, with the same font and color scheme.

There isn’t much holding up the center today, although it resides next to the new West Virginia State Route 10 freeway. But with traffic blazing by at 65 miles-per-hour, will there be any hope that this shopping center survives even into 2012? Or will consumers flock to the Wal-Mart plaza at Logan – 20 minutes away, or to the smaller storefronts in Man – 10 minutes away?

Stay tuned for the next update, this time coming from a coal camp in Virginia and a school in Gary, West Virginia! Be sure to read through the earlier Coal Camp series:

Coal Camps: Glen Rogers, West Virginia

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Sherman Cahal in Mid-Atlantic | 27 Comments

Glen Rogers Hotel

Mother Nature wasn’t kind in some respects on the drive down into Wyoming County to visit Glen Rogers, West Virginia. After having explored Surveyor, West Virginia’s Trap Hill High School, noted in this earlier entry, I made the best of the wintry precipitation and climbed over several snow covered mountain passes and dived into the heart of coal country. You can’t get any deeper than Glen Rogers.

I drove down into the Trough Fork valley, snaking down a narrow two-lane blacktopped road and came across my first sight of the coal camp. The remains of a relatively modern tipple and the sight of a small inactive strip mine at Big Branch along the abandoned ex-Virginian rail line made me perk up, but it was not until the junction with County Route 3/Glen Rogers Road that I saw my first taste of the coal camp town: an abandoned high school.

But what made Glen Rogers notable in the grand scheme of coal mining in the state?

The company store.

Glen Rogers was constructed by the Raleigh-Wyoming Mining Company in 1918, with the #1 mine opening three years later. Served by the Virginian Railway, the coal camp was named after Henry Huttleston Rogers who founded the railroad using $30 million of his own fortune. The Virginian was the combination of two railroads, and the newly formed company was able to reach the Atlantic Ocean in 1909. The railroad competed against two Class-I carriers: the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Norfolk & Western, and coal produced at Glen Rogers was sent along the Virginian, through the hills of West Virginia, to the power plants of the United States and the ocean vessels at Newport News, Virginia for export.

The railroad from Glen Rogers followed the Laurel, Milan and Marsh Fork valleys, and featured a tunnel at Polk Gap. At its height, the town was served by two schools, a hotel, a large two-level company store, an amusement hall and a fueling station. The mine, Wyoming County’s largest, employed over 1,000 by 1930, and produced over 867,000 tons of coal by 1933, which earned it the distinction of being West Virginia’s second largest mine.

The amusement hall and fueling station.

But it was not rosy. Mining accidents were quite common in the early history of the coal producing counties, but the most notable at Glen Rogers was an incident that occurred on November 6, 1923 that killed 27 men and trapped another 30 at the #1 mine. The cause of the explosion was likely the ignition of methane gas from the back fire of a shot, or a spark set from short-circuiting wires.

In 1960, the Glen Rogers mine closed and the company, then the Old Ben Coal Corporation of Chicago, went bankrupt. By the time of its closure, a total of 160 employees were killed at Glen Rogers, making it one of the most dangerous places to work in the state.

Glen Rogers is notable in that much of the town still exists. While the multitude of company houses have been mostly demolished, the hotel still exists many years after its abandonment. Inside, the remains of crude toilets, marked with the crescent shaped carved into aged wood, call back to an earlier time. The reinforced-concrete building is still structurally sound, and the brickwork has held up remarkably well, but it won’t be long before it will become just another ruin in the coalfields. The company store is a partially collapsed mess, with only the shell remaining, and the amusement hall and fueling station is in a state of disrepair.

Crude toilets, marked with the crescent shape, remain a well preserved feature of this coal camp town.

The elementary school, now an assisted living center, is still in use and in good condition. Adjoining it is the high school, constructed in 1951 to replace and earlier structure, although it is in poor condition for having been abandoned for nearly twenty years. Inside, some of its history remains: desks and schools are piled up in some of the rooms, while others are used for storage for the assisted living center. Water leaks throughout the building, and the second floor is all but sealed off due to a weak roof.

Glen Rogers High School

A typical classroom.

Stacked chairs at the high school provide no escape.

Glen Rogers is one of the more preserved coal camp communities in West Virginia, and was once one of the largest. It is notable also for its contribution to the Virginian Railway’s initial success and for the disasters that plagued the mines that gave the area such a poor reputation. But it’s not the last that will be covered.

There are more photographs and history of Glen Rogers, West Virginia and the Glen Rogers, West Virginia High School after the jump!

Coal Camps: Surveyor, West Virginia

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Sherman Cahal in Mid-Atlantic | 2 Comments

Patrick Street Bridge, Charleston, West Virginia

Acknowledging Mother Nature and the snowy scenes that abound the Mountain State, I opted to spend part of my winter holiday break exploring the coal camp communities of southern West Virginia. Except, instead of cold weather and snow, it was relatively warm and moist, with rain showers moving eastward at a rapid rate. I set off from Cincinnati and drove eastward through the Appalachian heartland of Ohio, picking up a few remnants of the Hocking Valley Railroad before going south to Charleston, West Virginia and taking in the calm night of New Year’s Eve. There were few vehicles on the interstates, and I assumed most were partying it up for the one time of the year when the calendar rolls over.

But not me. Sitting along the banks of the Kanawha River, I looked over to the Patrick Street Bridge. The water was unusually calm, which led me to break out my camera approximately five minutes before the beginning of 2011.

It would be my last photograph of the night and of the year. I counted down the minutes, then seconds, and heard cheers coming from the bar down the street. The church bells began ringing, and there it went. Twenty-ten was gone, and here was the start of a new year. I hopped back in the car, grabbed some coffee, and headed south towards Beckley.

I awoke to find my car that I camped in covered in rain. It was a downpour. I hurried out of my sleeping back and into some clothes, grabbed some coffee from the Starbucks at the service plaza, and drove down West Virginia State Route 3. It was not soon after that I discovered my first coal camp community: Surveyor, zip code 25932, in the Winding Gulf coal field.

Not much was left of Sueveyor. The rows of nearly identical houses that became the trademark of a coal camp community were gone, and I could not find a trace of a company store. With its relative proximity to the Beckley metropolitan region, and sprawling developments to the west and north, much of the integrated coal camp community has been dismantled and demolished. But I did come across a large school on a street corner.

Trap Hill‘s origins date to a special election that was held in 1928, when a bond was approved for a new school. The facility, named after the trapping of animals for their fur in the rich woodlands of the surrounding mountains and wetlands, replaced an earlier school built in 1915 at nearby Eccles.

Construction began in 1929 for a two-story beige brick building that contained ten classrooms, a laboratory, a home-economics room, gymnasium and library, and was finished in 1930. When completed, the school was in remote territory and had no electricity for about a year. Heat was provided from a coal-fired boiler.

Trap Hill High School

Extensions came in 1931 when a vocational-agricultural shop was built, followed by an addition on the western edge in the 1950s. An additional gymnasium was built in 1965 when enrollment peaked. Trap Hill served 1-12 students from 1930 to 1951, and as a 7-12 school until 1961. From then on until 1977, Trap Hill was purely a 9-12 facility, and it became a middle school following that. Trap Hill Middle was relocated in the 2000s when a new school was constructed down the highway.

The Harvey F. Pauley gymnasium that was constructed in 1965.

The gymnasium has seen better days.

Much of the school is in disarray and vandalized.

Trap Hill High School

The home economics classroom.

Trap Hill High School

It is scenes like Trap Hill High are reminders of how fragile social and economic relationships are. Surveyor, like many other coal camp communities, was a source of immense pride. Residents lived modestly – albeit in company owned houses, but they had access to hospitals, theaters, entertainment venues, all linked to vibrant town centers. People once spoke of the good times of the coalfields, when the population was bursting at the seams, and when the area was at the forefront of the nation in many aspects. Today, much of southern West Virginia is home to an abundant source of abject poverty, mirrored in the mechanization of coal mining and processing, in the declining overall production of the coal fields, and the increased usage of mountaintop removal.

Abandoned will take a look throughout the year at several coal camp communities, at their history and what hope remains for the remaining population centers in the coal fields of the Appalachian Mountains. Click through to view the history of Trap Hill and view more photographs!

Wheeling’s Brewing History

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Sherman Cahal in Mid-Atlantic | 3 Comments

Reymann Brewing Company by Wheeling Illustrated, H. R. Page & Co., 1889.

Arguably, Wheeling, West Virginia’s brewing history is less known than that of Cincinnati, Ohio or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but that can be blamed on the passage of Yost’s Law in 1914 that effectively killed the beer industry in the state. Wheeling, once home to more breweries than any other city in the Mountain State, was known as a major brewing center during the latter half of the 1800s, and also as an enclave for German immigrants.

There were at least 20 breweries operating in the city at one point, and over 130 taverns that were located along many street corners, serving up ales and lagers from the Nail City, Eagle, Balzer, Schmulbach, Reymann breweries, along with many others to the immigrants that called the area home. Wheeling’s nickname, Nail City, was rivaled with that of The Beer Belly, due to the copious amount of alcohol consumption. By 1900, through consolidation and closure, only six major breweries remained, producing over 300,000 barrels per year.

The largest of these breweries in the state was Reymann.

The foundations of the Reymann Brewery date to 1849, when George Reymann and Peter Beck founded the Franklin Brewing Company. Anton, George’s son, later took over operations after his father retired and Beck quit due to health complications, and constructed a larger, more modern facility along the north bank of Wheeling Creek. Caverns were dug out of the hillside, with storage capabilities of 7,000 to 8,000 barrels of beer. Adjacent natural springs provided fresh water, and coal from a nearby mine provided electricity. In 1881, the Reymann brewery offered stock for the first time, and by 1904, the brewery produced over 150,000 barrels per year.

With such an expansion, Reymann became well known around the Wheeling community, but not for excess. Reymann was known more for his philanthropy, founding Altenheim, a home for “Aged and Friendless Women,” mostly populated with immigrant women who came to work in the United States as domestic servants, working in the homes of the wealthy and had nowhere to live in their later years. He later purchased the 40-room Mt. Belleview Hotel, which was a summer residence for wealthy Wheeling citizens, and converted into a residence for aged women – bearing all of the expenses himself for a year. Reymann was also responsible for modernizing the Wheeling and Elm Grove Railroad, and for purchasing Wheeling Park and converting it into a popular amusement and recreation area for the region.

Another local brewery was the Schmulbach Brewery in South Wheeling, with its history dating to 1861 when Frank Zeigler founded Nail City Brewery at 33rd and Wetzel Street. Several cellars were dug into the hillside, one going as far as 400 feet in, and several structures were constructed. Later, a stock company was formed and the company grew to sell between 7,000 and 8,000 barrels per year. The master brewer for many years was well regarded Ernest Irion, formerly of the Gambrinus Brewing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Schmulbach, born in Germany but raised in Wheeling, was employed in the wholesale liquor trade by 1867. He acquired the majority of shares in Nail City in 1881, and took ownership a year later, where he became president. The brewery name was changed to the Schmulbach Brewing Company, and the facilities were modernized with capacity increasing to 50,000 barrels. It was not long, however, before Schmulbach was selling 200,000 barrels per year. An ice plant, West Virginia’s largest, was built next to the brewery, along with a bottling plant.

Schmulbach developed Wheeling’s Mozart Park originally as a beer garden. An incline that he financed extended from 44th Street to his park, along with a streetcar line. He was also instrumental in building the first skyscraper in the city in 1907.

The fortunes of these breweries and others soon changed, when West Virginia became a dry state in July 1914 under Yost’s Law. Schmulbach, Reymann and others were forced to close down or retool to produce other types of beverages. It was not until the 1990s that brewing returned to Wheeling, when the Nail City Brewing Company opened a micro-brewery in downtown, although it was later removed.

Although I covered only two breweries, I will soon make a return visit to Wheeling to document the remains of the Balzer and Eagle breweries, along with others! There is more information and photography after the jump to Reymann Brewery and Schmulbach Brewery.

Musings in West Virginia: Southern Fringes

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Sherman Cahal in Mid-Atlantic | 1 Comment

The exterior remains as manicured and groomed as previous years.

Having legal access into an abandonment is pretty exciting, especially when it regards the mammoth Sweet Springs Resort in southeastern West Virginia.

Sweet Springs, first discovered in 1764, saw its first development in 1790 when log cabins were constructed to promote the area’s healthy attributes. Later, in 1839, an 110,000-square-foot hotel opened on the property, designed reportedly by Thomas Jefferson – but most likely one of his assistants, William B. Phillips from the University of Virginia.

The resort soon became a popular resort, beckoning presidents and regular citizens alike. Expansions over the years included guest cottages, a ballroom and bathhouse. Its popularity began to wane after the Civil War, and closed briefly around 1928 before being sold to the state of West Virginia in 1941 for use as a tuberculosis sanatorium. It later became a home for the elderly before shuttering in 1993.

Sweet Springs was in danger of becoming another derelict in a state dotted with the remains of many other spring resorts, such as Blue Sulphur Springs, Red Sulphur Springs and Green Sulphur Springs. A cottage collapsed in the late 1990′s, and the spring house partially collapsed in the 2000′s. Another residence showed obvious signs of brick bowing. Alarmed by this, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History listed Sweet Springs as an endangered historic resource.

In 2004, Warren Smith purchased Sweet Springs, announcing plans to construct a golf course, an amphitheater, skiing facilities, stables, gardens and orchards, with the long-range plan to restore the deteriorating Sweet Springs structures to serve as a showcase for historic preservation. The first project, Smith announced, was to restore the bathhouse. The original bricks were salvaged and will be reused in a future project. In addition, one resident cottage was restored and another stabilized.

The determination of Smith to restore the resort was the main reason why it was imperative that legal access be obtained. On a drive back from a conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, I made a point to stop at Sweet Springs to update my photography log of Sweet Springs and shoot some exterior images, and to note any changes from my first visit in 2003. I was not on the site for more than five minutes before a black Chevrolet Suburban pulled up and questioned my presence in a friendly demeanor.

It did not take long to be given permission to access the property with a week notice. I donated my batch of photographs of Sweet Springs from 2003 to his office, and had a goal of producing an extensive before-and-after photographic record of Sweet Springs during its restoration process. Before the start of the eastern Ohio and West Virginia trip, I confirmed a visit to Sweet Springs to photograph the interiors of every building through written communication, but something became amiss during the trip. During a phone conversation in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Smith declined our interior access because “the grounds were not manicured,” and then began to question why any photographs would be needed of such a derelict structure.

But after some tugging, he sighed and said it was okay to come down. So we left Clarksburg at dusk and drove five hours to Lewisburg through the middle of the night to hole up in a motel. But upon arriving on the site of Sweet Springs the next morning, we were met with flat out denial for interior access. The photographs we did manage to get — of the exterior, show that not much has changed from 2009.

Pallets of plastic bottles containing BPA for the spring water sets out in the boiling sun. The BPA leaches out of the plastic when the bottle is warmed.

The spring house is still in poor condition.

With the troubles at Sweet Springs, we decided to depart and make the most of our day in southern West Virginia. The weather, while hot, was at least sunny. Traffic was light. And we were well rested after driving through the previous night from one end of the state to another. It did not take long to find our first find of the day, a four-room schoolhouse that resided on a farm!

The four-room Sweet Springs School.

Books from every genre were piled around the schoolhouse.

A random assortment of… junk was left about.

Just down the state route was an abandoned church, which has not seen activity in most likely ten or more years. It was pretty bare and uninteresting, sans a vintage vending machine.

The interior was all but uninteresting…

…sans this vintage soft drink dispensing machine!

After a good lunch at the Fairview Diner in Union, we high-tailed it to Hinton and did a visual inspection of the Lincoln School. The modest three-story school, located on the aptly-named Hill Street, closed in 1962 due to integration and was later used for vocational classes. It is in remarkably good condition for a facility that is just used for storage.

Lincoln School

Afterwards, we ventured to Bluefield to check out the former Beaver High School. The imposing four-story structure, set on a steep hillside near downtown, served as a high school until 1953. It continued to be used as a junior high school until a new facility opened.

Beaver High School

We finished by driving along U.S. Route 52 through southwestern West Virginia. With light diminishing fast, we opted for the former Bluestone High School in Bramwell. Constructed in 1948, it served as an elementary and high school for African-Americans. Although it closed in 1963, it was later reused for a local business. In 2000, a restoration project for the abandoned school began under the direction of a formal Restoration Committee, and the roof was repaired. Other than that, it is derelict.

Bluestone High School

One of the classrooms, complete with chalkboards.

The remains of a restroom.

Bluestone High School

The school was a member of the United Teaching Profession, at least until 1963.

Tired, we departed our ways after exploring the Bluestone High School. It was a long and lengthy excursion through eastern Ohio and West Virginia, but well worth it! I hope you enjoyed the variety of updates, and be sure to check out the past entries from the summer excursion below!

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Coal Camps: Man, West Virginia

Coal Camps: Glen Rogers, West Virginia

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