Pocahontas Mines Collection

Named for its proximity to Pocahontas, Virginia, and Great Flat Top Mountain in West Virginia, the Pocahontas Coalfield or Flat Top-Pocahontas Coalfield spans 900 square miles along the Virginia-West Virginia border. Discovered in the mid-1800s, local blacksmith Jordan Nelson started selling coal from his land in the 1860s. During the Civil War, Confederate cartographer Jedidiah Hotchkiss boasted about the coalfield in his publications and in 1876 exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

In 1881, the town of Pocahontas, Virginia, was founded to support the mining operations, and two years later the first mine in the coalfield was opened to Pocahontas Seam #3. A number of competing mining and land companies developed in the 1880s around the Pocahontas Coalfield. Several Philadelphia businessmen joined forces to establish the Norfolk & Western Railroad (later the Norfolk & Western Railway) to transport coal out of the coalfield, the Flat Top Land Association to manage land holdings, and the Southwest Virginia Improvement Company to develop mining operations.

The Flat Top Land Association (later Flat Top Land Company) leased land in the area to independent miners. John Cooper formed the Mill Creek Coal & Coke Company in 1884, J.P. Bowen founded the Booth-Bowen Coal & Coke Company, and William McQuail operated the Turkey Gap Coal & Coke Company. Jenkin Jones began leasing from Flat Top in 1885. By 1907, he established the Pocahontas Consolidated Collieries Company, Inc. of West Virginia, later Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., by merging numerous mining companies together.

In 1901, J. P. Morgan of U. S. Steel acquired the Flat Top Land Company, reorganizing it into the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Company of New Jersey, and the Southwest Virginia Improvement Company became the Pocahontas Fuel Company of New York. At this time, the Norfolk & Western Railway purchased land from Morgan in a deal granting him acreage to form his United States Coal & Coke Company at Gary, West Virginia. In 1939, Pocahontas Coal & Coke became Pocahontas Land Corporation, chartered in Virginia, and in 1977, the company chartered the Pocahontas Kentucky Corporation, later the Pocahontas Development Corporation. In 1982, Norfolk & Western merged with the Southern Railway as Norfolk Southern.

In 1860, several Maryland coal operators merged their companies into the Consolidation Coal Company. The company began mining operations in West Virginia when it acquired the Fairmont Coal Company in 1903. After further expansion, Consolidation Coal merged with the Pittsburgh Coal Company into the Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Company in 1945. In 1956, the company acquired the Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., and in 1991, DuPont Energy and RWE A.G. acquired and changed the company's name to CONSOL Energy, Inc.