Once the arrival of railroads enabled exploitation of the amazingly rich Pocahontas Coalfield of McDowell and Mercer Counties and the Williamson-Logan Field, mountain farmers, Black sharecroppers, and immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe arrived to work in the mines. Logan and Welch developed as urban centers of the coal mining economy.

In coal camps initially set up in the forests, miners and their families found themselves in an industrial occupation which in some ways echoed the self-reliance of the life on farms many had just left. At least initially, the miners were able to pace their rate of work, and families put their agricultural talents to work tending gardens outside their jerry-built homes. For those from the South, the tie to the camp's company store was but a continuation of the sharecropper's tie to country stores. Coal camps were divided by race and ethnicity, so old customs could easily continue.

Towns like Logan and Welch provided access to a wider world, as did efforts to form unions in the early 20th century. But the 1922 Battle of Blair Mountain retarded unionization until the New Deal. By the 1940s, miners were members of the UMWA, producing vast amounts of coal, although at great danger and immense physical effort. Mechanization of the mines made the work less onerous, but also ensured that employment would decrease. That trend continued with development of surface and mountaintop removal techniques. Today only something more than a thousand miners work in either Logan or McDowell counties. That decline reverberates in Appalachia’s urban centers today as these communities devise new economic survival strategies.

Page 5: Work Hazards and Faith