The Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District is located near Winona,

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 B ...

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is a unit of the United States National Park Service (NPS) designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. Established in 1978 as a nat ...

. The townsite is almost directly across from the Kay Moor mine and townsite, now abandoned. Like Kay Moor, the town is built around the railroad line at the bottom of the gorge, with an array of coke ovens and mining structures, as well as a bridge across the New River to South Nuttall. Nuttallburg was closely associated with the Nuttallburg underground mine, a

room and pillar Room and pillar or pillar and stall is a variant of breast stoping. It is a mining system in which the mined material is extracted across a horizontal plane, creating horizontal arrays of rooms and pillars. To do this, "rooms" of ore are dug out ...

mine that was sealed in 1958. The mine was established to develop the

New River Coalfield The New River Coalfield is located in northeastern Raleigh County and southern Fayette County, West Virginia. Commercial mining of coal began in the 1870s and thrived into the 20th century. The coal in this field is a low volatile coal, known as " ...

in 1870 by John Nuttall, who correctly anticipated that the

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond t ...

would be built through the

New River Gorge The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is a unit of the United States National Park Service (NPS) designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. Established in 1978 as a nat ...

. When the railroad arrived in 1873 Nuttall had built almost 100 houses, with 80 coke ovens, a variety of mine structures and a coal tipple on a railroad siding. Flat land by the river was dedicated to railroad and industrial use, leaving houses to seek perches on the hillsides. The town was

racially segregated Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

with white workers on the west side of Short Creek and black workers on the east side and between the railroad and the river. Because development stretched along both banks of the river, a pedestrian suspension bridge was built across the river by the Roebling Bridge Company in 1899. The mines in the area were acquired by the Fordson Coal Company in the 1920s as "captive mines" to supply coal to the

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

's River Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford updated many of the mines' facilities at that time. However, Fordson sold the mine to the New River Coal Corporation in 1928, possibly because railroad regulations made coal transport to Michigan too difficult. Most of the frame structures in Nuttallburg have succumbed to weather or have been salvaged for building materials. The

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propert ...

acquired the town, mining complex and surrounding area from the Nuttall Estate in 1998 and incorporated it into New River Gorge National River.

References

External links

Nuttallburg, West Virginia
at Abandoned

at Coal Camp USA All of the following are filed under north side of New River, 2.7 miles upstream from Fayette Landing, Lookout, Fayette County, WV: * * * * * * * * Nuttall geologic map

{{National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia Coal towns in West Virginia Coal mines in the United States National Coal Heritage Area New River Coalfield National Register of Historic Places in New River Gorge National Park and Preserve Buildings and structures in Fayette County, West Virginia Ghost towns in West Virginia Historic districts in Fayette County, West Virginia Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia Energy infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Fayette County, West Virginia Populated places on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia Tourist attractions in Fayette County, West Virginia Historic American Engineering Record in West Virginia Coal mining in Appalachia 1873 establishments in West Virginia