Coketon is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

and

coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides residen ...

Tucker County Tucker County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,762, making it West Virginia's fourth-least populous county. Its county seat is Parsons. The county was created in 1856 from a part of ...

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

, United States. Coketon lies at the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

of Snyder Run and the

North Fork Blackwater River The Blackwater River is a riverU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed August 15, 2011 in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. Via the Black Fork, it is a pr ...

, south of the town of

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Ap ...

Coal and coke production

The town was formed by the Davis Coal & Coke Company, led by Henry G. Davis, in the 1880s after large coal reserves were discovered in the area. In the company's prime, the town housed around 1,500 people, most of whom were immigrants. During each year from 1915 to 1921, the 15 mines near Coketon shipped over 1 million tons of coal, making it the sixth most productive operation in West Virginia at the time. The Davis Coal & Coke Company pioneered the "beehive" ovens, which were large sealed ovens which heated the coal to burn off impurities to make coke. The Davis Coal & Coke Company experimented with two of these ovens in 1887, and by 1900, there were over 600 beehive ovens. However, in 1915, a change in mining technology revolutionized the steel-making process, thereby eliminating the need for coke ovens at the mine site. By 1919, there was no coke production whatsoever in Tucker County, leaving the long banks of obsolete coke ovens unused. Davis Coal and Coke Co

Soon after, coal production in Coketon also began fading. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the underground coal supplies were gradually depleted. As the coal production slowed and the mines closed, the population slowly declined, and the facility slowly began to shut down. By 1950, only two mines were still working and tonnage had fallen to 100,000 by 1954. By 1956, underground mining had ceased altogether with a few surface mining operations producing coal through 1965.

Racial history

The Coketon Colored School was the center of a Civil Rights case in 1892. When the all-white Tucker County Board of Education instructed the Coketon Colored School’s teacher Carrie Williams to shorten the school year and teach three months less than the county’s white schools, Williams continued teaching for the full eight-month schedule and demanded full pay. Her lawyer, J.R. Clifford, was a prominent civil rights activist and the first African American lawyer in West Virginia. The case started in the Tucker County Courthouse in

Parsons Parsons may refer to: Places In the United States: * Parsons, Kansas, a city * Parsons, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Parsons, Tennessee, a city * Parsons, West Virginia, a town * Camp Parsons, a Boy Scout camp in the state of Washingt ...

, and eventually reached the

West Virginia Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia is the state supreme court of the state of West Virginia, the highest of West Virginia's state courts. The court sits primarily at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston, although from 1873 t ...

. Their eventual victory in court was the first civil rights case in the history of the United States to determine discrimination on the basis of color to be illegal.

References

Coal towns in West Virginia Davis and Elkins family Unincorporated communities in Tucker County, West Virginia Unincorporated communities in West Virginia {{TuckerCountyWV-geo-stub