Source: Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
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The coal in western Virginia was created about 300 million years ago, when swamps created organic material faster than it could decay. Most of that coal is located in Buchanan, Wise, and Dickenson counties, on the Appalachian Plateau.
The carbon was captured in plants during the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian ("Carboniferous") periods, prior to the orogenies that created the Appalachian Mountains. In the uplift of the Appalachians, the coal was squeezed - but not enough in Southwestern Virginia to create anthracite. After the uplight, the coal beds were compressed by overlying sediments that washed off the new Appalachian Mountains. Still, in some cases, the coal beds were pushed miles to the west as the Appalachian Mountains were formed. The Pine Mountain thrust sheet near Kentucky was uplifted and moved several miles as pressure from the southeast squeezed the surface, causing the crust to fold and then break. In Montgomery County, the Merrimac Mine on Price Mountain (between Christiansburg and Blacksburg) was able to ship coal to Norfolk via rail in the 1850's. Tradition holds that coal from the Merrimac Mine fueled the Confederate ironclad of the same name that dueled with the Union ironclad, the Monitor. The "coal counties" in southwestern Virginia were unable to ship their product to market until after the Civil War, when Northern financiers supported the extension of railroads into the mountains. The Pocahontas Mine in Tazewell County was a major supplier of coal for the Navy in World War I, after the Norfolk and Western railroad built an extension down the New River from Radford, then through West Virginia to the coal fields. The Pocahontas Mine has a seam of coal 13 feet thick, making it unusually easy to mine. In eastern Virginia, coal was mined in the 1700's from the Triassic Basin west of Richmond/Petersburg, near Midlothian in Chesterfield County. That basin was formed as the Atlantic Ocean opened up AFTER the Appalachian Mountains were uplifted, so the coal near Richmond will be younger geologically that the coal near the West Virginia/Kentucky border. Coal was carried on carts to Manchester and Richmond. The carts were placed on rails, and then the horses/mules were replaced by locomotives fueled by wood. The small size of that Midlothian coal field limited its importance to the local market. Richmond and Petersburg grew economically because of manufacturing supported by James River and Appomattox River waterpower, more than from coal brought out of Midlothian. |
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Similarly, the coal fields of the Valley and Ridge were too small to support large-scale industrialization. Managers of iron furnaces in the Valley and Ridge province relied upon locally-produced charcoal, created from partially-burned wood. Theoretically the iron producers could have imported coal from Eastern Virginia, but it would have been too expensive to purchase coal from the Richmond-area mines, ship the coal up the James River on the canal boats, and finally haul the coal by wagon to the furnaces in the Shenandoah Valley.
The Appalachian coal fields had national and international significance, once they were developed in the 1880's. The role of coal has been critical in shaping the growth of Southwest Virginia for over a century. The region has alternated between boom and bust economic cycles. The demand for coal surged in the 1880's, when the railroads made it possible to ship the bulky product to the commercial marketplaces. In the 1980's, the demand dropped due to Clean Air Act requirements for low-sulfur coal, and the supply of low-cost coal from Virginia has dropped with the exhaustion of the easy-to-mine coalbeds. Because the coal fields in Virginia are concentrated in the southwestern part of the state, the Virginia Department of Mines, Mineral and Energy - Division of Mines Enforcement Section has offices at Keen Mountain (in Buchanan County) and Big Stone Gap (in Wise County), as well as Abingdon, Charlottesville, and Richmond. Today, the Southwest Virginia economy is still vulnerable to "bust" as well as "boom." Some mines are still operating, however. Mine owners are concerned that there will be too few trained miners if demand increases, because the children of retired miners moved away or chose other lines of work and need formal training in coal mining. For the long term, the Department of Energy predicts that increased demand for coal will be met by other regions. Even if a "clean coal" process could be developed for using coal to meet increased demand for electricity, Virginia's coal fiekds are not likely to see a jump in production. Instead, look for increased mining in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, or in the Indiana/Illinois/Western Kentucky coal fields). |
 predicted growth in coal output to year 2030, showing how production from Appalachian fields is predicted to decline Source: Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook 2008 with Projections to 2030 |
