Not far from the town of Thomas, West Virginia, there is a lot of different things to see. I love the old utility poles that they used a good 100 years ago that are still standing.
A closer look at one of the utility poles. Below is something that I have no clue as to what they used it for back then but it was neat so I took a picture of it! Just keepin it real people!
Above you can see one of the old coke ovens they used over 100 years ago. Below is a closer look at the coke oven.
Since I really didn't know much about it myself I decided to find out some additional information about the pictures above. Here is what I found:
"Coketon" is the term for the central mining facility of the Davis Coal
& Coke Company between Thomas and Douglas, West Virginia. Located
along the North Fork of the Blackwater River in Tucker County, Coketon
was an integral part of the vast and productive industrial complex of
Henry G. Davis. In 1884, the railroad reached Thomas where Davis Coal
& Coke had already begun active mining operations. Around the turn
of the century, approximately 400 houses centered around the roundhouse
and machine shops, and the valley was home to about 1,500 people. The
community of Thomas boasted an opera house, hotels, banks, schools, and
fraternal orders uniting 18 nationalities into the little city.
In the center of the Davis operation was a large coking facility on a
mile-and-a-half stretch of the North Fork between Thomas and Douglas. An
1887 experiment with two ovens convinced the coal company that a coking
facility would be very profitable. The coal company converted raw coal
into coke, the purest form of carbon and the most important by-product
of coal. Coke was the premier "reducing agent" fuel in the world at the
time, capable of smelting iron ore rapidly into steel through the
Bessemer process. In the late 1800's, coke was produced by baking coal
in huge stone or brick ovens until its impurities were driven off. The
types of impurities driven out of the coal were a function of the amount
of oxygen allowed into the oven (which was controlled by doors on the
front of the oven) and the resultant temperature in the oven. It
required nearly two tons of raw coal to produce one ton of coke. Long
rows of "beehive" coke ovens, linked by tracks to the mine and tipple,
burned night and day, tended by hundreds of laborers.
Eventually, Coketon contained 600 ovens. The Davis Coal & Coke
Company's cokeyards employed about 150 men and burned for 250 days a
year. By 1900, Coketon made Tucker County the third largest
coke-producing county in the state. In 1904 alone, Coketon produced
200,000 tons of coke. 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.
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. Coal, however, was
still mined at the site in record quantities. From 1920 through the
1940's, the company continued production. As the seams were worked out
and the mines closed, the population slowly declined, and the facility
slowly began to shut down. By 1950, only two mines, #36 and #40, 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.
Although time and vandalism have eroded the Coketon complex, significant
ruins are nevertheless extant. The town of Thomas retains much of its
architectural integrity, featuring the company store and office
building, and numerous well-kept and relatively unaltered miners'
houses. Poured and cut stone and masonry foundations remain from the
power house, as do the ventilation fan housing and tipple support
pillars. Railroad trestles and graded railbeds line the North Fork of
the Blackwater. Several mine portals stand open, including the #29
portal. The Chief Inspector of the West Virginia Department of Mines
observed in his 1904 Annual Report that "an unusual amount of water is
generated at #29, and the drainage is not very good."
