The town of Mineral, located along Route 76 north of Richmond, received its name to demonstrate the importance of mining to the community. Previously known as Tolersville, in recognition of the founder of the town a century earlier, the new name exemplified a vision of industrial production characteristic of Virginia and the United States in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The extraction of natural resources combined with the growth of transportation networks and manufacturing plants to drive industrial production well into the twentieth century. The region surrounding Mineral City was a center of gold mining in Virginia for decades. Elsewhere in the state, mining operations extracted iron ore, etc and especially coal to drive industrial production in Virginia, nationally, and even globally. Yet an economy based on resource extraction is always vulnerable to multiple factors, including the depletion of precious materials, changes in market conditions, and especially long-term damage to workers and community members. By the 1930s, Mineral had experienced a trajectory of boom and bust characteristic of many communities dependent on resource extraction. An exploration of these trajectories in communities across Virginia identifies both the local effects and broader implications of this pattern of industrial and post-industrial economic development. While cyclists riding through Mineral may see only traces of this history now, awareness of these long term implications provide numerous examples of the legacies of industrialization across Virginia.
Welcome to episode 9 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Mineral, located about 140 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 300 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
In the nineteenth century, many mines opened in the region surrounding the town that is now known as Mineral, on route 76 between Richmond and Charlottesville. These mines were located in regions that had extensive deposits of gold, pyrite, and other minerals. Some of these mines were very extensive and lasted for decades; others were open for only a short period of time; and some opened and closed and reopened several times, as the market for minerals changed and the profits available given the costs of mining shifted accordingly.
One of the most extensive and long lasting mines was managed by the Arminius Chemical Company. The mine was located about one mile north on Mineral along Contrary Creek, which now flows into Lake Anna. The mine operated continuously from the 1840s until it was closed in 1921. The mine produced iron ore, copper and pyrite. Most of the ore and pyrite extracted from this mine was used in industrial processing, particularly in plants located along the east coast and in the upper midwest. The most intense period of mining operations lasted from the early 1880s until the early 1900s. As seams closer to the surface were depleted, shafts were dug even deeper into the ground and connecting passages were extended. By the early twentieth century, the Arminius mine extended many hundreds of feet below the surface. The underground sections of the mine extended for miles along horizontal passages. Above ground, many large buildings served the underground operations.
By the 1880s, the Arminius mine employed hundred laborers and miners. The mine produced an average of one hundred tons of ore each day, shipped along the spur track that connected to the main Chesapeake and Ohio line in Mineral. At the time, a flattering newspaper report described “inexhaustible quantities” of ore. Just ten years later, in 1896, the mine reportedly shipped twice as much ore, two hundred tons, each day.
Housing for miners and their families was provided by the mining company, a model known as “company towns” where housing, food, stores, and even schools were owned by the same company which paid workers. These services received positive coverage in local newspapers, which omitted any discussion of how these services placed workers and their families in increasingly dependent positions in relation to their owners.
Along with numerous mines in the surrounding district, Mineral grew as other industries, such as mills and railways, expanded to serve the growing population. Shops, banks, mills, a post office, and a train station, which still stands in downtown Mineral, illustrated the considerable growth of this town.
Mining could be dangerous work. In 1901, J. H. Warren, an underground foreman, was killed instantly when a huge rock, weighing an estimated twenty tons, fell upon him. Warren was thirty six years old and left a widow and five children after his death. In 1912, two miners were preparing to blast in an underground section of the mine. According to a newspaper report, lightning struck an air-pipe that connected the surface to the mining passages below. The jolt of electricity set up the blast, which killed Van Spicer and seriously injured J. W. Foster. Spicer’s widow was just seventeen years old and had a young child. Also in 1912, miner L. E. Butterfield was also injured in a dynamite blast. He was blown fifteen feet and suffered perforations from rock in his chest and neck. Remarkably, he survived this accident. These three accidents which were reported in local newspapers were likely just a small fraction of the overall deaths and injuries associated with mining in this era.
In the early twentieth century, Virginia produced almost one-half of the pyrite in the United States. Pyrite, sometimes called “fool’s gold” because of its superficial resemblance to gold, was used in industrial processes in manufacturing. Virginia’s share of production declined as other mines in the United States increased production. In 1921, the Arminius mine closed due to competition from cheaper sources of production. The population of Mineral, which rose from 260 in 1910 to 408 in 1920, remained constant for the next century, and only exceeded 500 in the most recent census. The Mineral Historical District preserves buildings constructed during the peak years of the town’s growth in the early 1900s.
In the early twentieth century, several companies operating mines near Mineral were involved in a lawsuit with interesting implications for the future of resource extraction in Virginia. Several families who owned homes and farms along Contrary brought a lawsuit against companies that owned the mines asking for damages caused by the waste associated with cleaning the ore. The companies defended their practices with the claim that the law allowed them to conduct any operations on land they owned without regard to downstream effects. After prolonged litigation, the courses found for the landowners and the companies were ordered to pay damages in the amount of $800.
These issues — dramatic increases in outputs, periods of sustained economic production, issues of worker safety and environmental damage, and a prolonged decline in production with broad social effects — anticipated similar processes related to coal mining in Virginia. The extraction of coal from seams lying relatively close to the surface began in the 1700s near Richmond. The coal was mined by hand and carried in carts pulled by mules to major cities, where it was mostly used for heating.
Three connected developments dramatically changed coal mining in Virginia after the civil war: much larger coal deposits were located in Virginia west of the Blue Ridge mountains, the expansion of railways accelerated transportation of heavy materials, and industrial growth drove demand for this fuel. Coal brought laborers to mining regions, particularly in the Virginia counties along the borders with West Virginia and Kentucky, while also contributing to the growth of urban centers that served as transportation hubs and financial centers. In the early twentieth century, Virginia was among the most productive coal mining states in the country, and coal was a dominant feature in regional economics in Appalachian Virginia.
By the 1970s, when the Bikecentennial riders were crossing the state and the nation, the coal industry in the US as a whole and specifically in Virginia was entering a transitional phase with long-term implications for the region and the entire country. Coal production of all kinds in the United States rose steadily from world war II to a peak about 1990, and remained at this level for about fifteen years. After 2014, however, coal production decreased steadily, and now is approximately one-half the peak of two decades ago. Virginia was affected by these national patterns as well as regional trends. The more reestablished mines in Virginia were unable to compete with mines in other parts of the country, particularly in the Rocky Mountains, which were exploiting new seams using more advanced technologies at cheaper cost.
New environmental regulations, particularly after the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1972, required mines to commit more resources to alleviating the damaging effects of their production. The long term health consequences of working in coal mines, particularly black lung diseases that affected miners for their entire lives, demonstrates the costs of working in this field and encouraged younger generations to look for other employment. New energy options, particularly natural gas and increasingly renewable energies, were most cost efficient and less environmentally destructive, which led many enterprises to convert to other energy sources. Finally, the obvious damage associated with alternative forms of coal extraction, such as strip mining and mountaintop removal, forced companies to constrain or shut down production in mines that were no longer viable. Virginia’s coal production peaked in 1990, and decreased by almost 30% in the subsequent fifteen years. The number of licensed mines decreased from more than 800 in 1980 to just over 200 viable mines in 2001. The number of Virginian miners fell by three-quarters, from 10,000 to just 2,000 in the thirty years since 1990.
Route 76 passes through several counties with active coal mines, including Tazewell, Russell, and Buchanan county, on the border with Kentucky. Evidence of the long-term impact of coal mining is evident along the route, including abandoned or reclaimed mines as well as abandoned businesses that suffered from declines in living standards and populations. Several museums and exhibition mines along or near route 76 provide visitors with information about the rise and fall of the coal industry and the effects on communities and individuals.
For cyclists, the most likely encounter with the coal industry will be the freight trains that transport coal, often in open carts, across Virginia, either to ports in Hampton Roads for export or to industrial plants across the country. Coal trains often include one hundred or more cars, which means that a single train may be a mile or more in length. As a result, it may take ten minutes or longer for a train to pass a single point, such as a road crossing. During this time, a cyclist in close proximity will sense the vibrations of the wheels and the noise of the engine. The cyclist may be able to see the pile of coal in each car as it passes by, particularly if the train is passing under a roadway.
Encountering a coal train along the road allows the cyclist to think about at either end of this journey: mining and burning. Mining is a laborious process, detrimental to the health of workers, and costly for the local environment, generating waste products and disrupting the land. Burning coal has immediate environmental effects and make a devastating long-term contribution to global warming. It would be easy for a cyclist, engaged in a zero waste and renewable form of recreation, to feel either smug when observing a train carrying coal from a mine to a furnace. However gratifying this feeling may be in the moment, observing coal cars should not promote a sense of complacency, even for a cyclist, but rather should serve as a reminder of how fully implicated ever aspect of American life has been in resource extraction and environmental devastation. Thinking about the life cycle of coal, from a buried mineral to an extracted fuel to the generation of waste, should be a reminder that a slogan from the 1970s, reduce, reuse, and recycle, still has resonance in the present.
You have been listening to episode 9 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Mineral, located about 140 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 300 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.
