Kaymoor: After the Coal Town

 

New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company began to move residents out of Kaymoor Bottom once they realized the coal reserves in the mine were becoming exhausted. Kaymoor mine had several factors that played into its demise. New equipment for loading coal was never adopted and the company preferred hand loading. This caused production at Kaymoor to be slower than at other area mines. It would cost the company millions of dollars to catch up with the new equipment, and there was not enough coal left in the mine to recoup that loss. The company also attempted to create new portals and mine shafts, but always ran into older mine works. The Berwind-White company began moving people out of Kaymoor in 1955. There was never a road to Kaymoor Bottom, so people could no longer live there after the mine closed. Homes were sold and dismantled to be rebuilt elsewhere. A large fire swept through the area in 1958 and destroyed most of the homes what were still left. NRPCCC continued to operate the mine until 1963, when it sold the lease to the Barbara Gale Coal Company. This small local coal company extracted the last bit of coal from the mine and closed it completely in 1965.

Areas that were once bustling with people slowly began to be left to nature. The bench level was overgrown by the 1980s, and grates were installed to block entrance into the old mine works. Berwind-White, the parent company of New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, gifted the area of the town of Kaymoor to the National Park Service in 1989.This land included the area around the haulage, headhouse, conveyor, tipple, and coke ovens. The park also purchased the surrounding 1,375 acres of the mine site from the Berwind Land Company on December 19, 1989. The town of Kaymoor was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1990. The tipple was laid onto its side on March 10, 1999 at the request of the CSX company.