Booth's or Booths Creek Coal Mines
By Larry Brian Radka
Booth's Creek empties into the West Fork River at Monongah, West Virginia. “The first white explorer to locate the site of Monongah appears to have been Captain James Booth,” wrote Thomas J. Koon, in a recent article in The Times West Virginian. “He came from Virginia and traveled across the forbidding mountains. Paddling his canoe, he investigated a number of promising sites that appeared to be excellent spots for settlement. He traveled the Tygart Valley River to its junction with the now West Fork River and proceeded up the West Fork until he encountered the first creek [under the arrow] to his left. This creek was later named Booth Creek.” (Also called “Booth’s Creek” and “Booths Creek”)
[This is a high-water photograph of Booth's Creek & Monongah's West Fork River]
“Booth became the first white man to explore in this area,” added this local historian. “Legend tells us that Booth was seriously wounded in General Braddock’s defeat and staggered away southward to safety since the hostile Indians were too interested in plundering the dead and dying to be interested in a single wounded soldier. Booth finally reached the camp of an elderly Indian and his squaws at what is now Booth Creek. They nursed him back to health. He was impressed with the potential of the area and, later on, came back and explored the area more thoroughly in 1772. This version is quite believable since it indicated that Booth did not randomly select one creek to investigate but knew, at least in general, where he was going.”
(Captain Booth's grave located about a mile out of Monongah)
(His grave marker is in great need of repair, any volunteers?)
(D. A. R. probably stands for "Daughters of the American Revolution")
In Chapter VII of the 1880 edition of the History and Progress of the County of Marion, West Virginia, Geo. A. Dunnington tells us that
“On the 16th of June, 1778, Captain James Booth and Nathaniel Cochran were at work in a field on Booth's creek, near where the little village of Briertown [later renamed Monongah] is now situated. They were surprised by a party of Indians, who fired upon them killing Booth, and slightly wounding Cochran, who betook himself to flight, hoping to get beyond the range of the Indians' guns and escape; in this he did not succeed, for he was overtaken by them, made prisoner and carried into their towns. The death of Captain Booth was mournfully regretted by the settlers, for he was a man of great energy, good education, and possessed extraordinary talents. He was probably the most prominent man in the settlements, and his death was felt to be a very great loss.”
(Booth's grave overlooks Booth's Creek in the background)
We have underlined "Booth's creek" to bring attention to the fact that this was the name in use in 1880. The full title page of Dunnington’s work, which uses this name, reads: "HISTORY AND PROGRESS OF THE COUNTY OF MARION, WEST VIRGINIA, FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS BY THE WHITES, DOWN TO THE PRESENT, TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ITS MOST PROMINENT CITIZENS By GEO. A. DUNNINGTON, Aided by Notes and Memoranda left by the late RICHARD P. LOTT. FAIRMONT, W. VA: GEORGE A. DUNNINGTON, PUBLISHER. 1880." Self-publishing is an ancient and quite honorable profession, and we are happy to pursue it here also.
(The West Fork River at Monongah's old No. 6 mine-trestle pier, looking north)
Nevertheless, moving on now, we should point out that within a ten-mile radius of the entrance of Booth’s Creek to the West Fork River at Monongah fifteen commercial and several private coal mines were in operation in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Those of particular interest to the author of this Web page, Larry Brian Radka, and his consultant, Jim Davis, are those located along Booth’s Creek. We recently explored some of Booth’s Creek to discover their remnants, and in the process, we took most the following photographs in 2008 and added some other, older ones, with a few notes that might interest some of the residents of Marion County:
Above we see the remnants of a bridge and gas line that crossed Booth's Creek to
Fairmont Coal Company’s Number 5 mine, located up the hill on the Davis farm, where Jim Davis once lived.
Most of the huge farm (whose thousand acres probably originally covered half of Monongah) with all its mineral rights, were acquired for a pittance of its latter-day worth by “The Coal Barons” attached to the Camden estate.
The Fairmont W. Va. estate (1910) of J. E. Watson, one of the coal barons associated with Camden
According to an old West Virginia Geological Survey, its daily capacity of mined coal was “700 tons” with “26 laborers and 85 miners employed," it employed "electric haulage, used for steam," and its coal “shipped east and west.”
Above we see a caved-in coal mine opening near the No. 5 mine location, on the other side of Booth’s Creek. Farmers often dug their own private coal mines, and charged their children, like Jim Davis’s grandmother, Carrie Mae Davis, with carrying the coal to the house in little buckets, or in bags on horseback, to keep their families warm in the winter.
My father, George Radka, was no exception. When he was a kid, he used to haul coal along Booth's Creek, on his favorite horse, "Prince," to the family farmhouse on Manley Hill.
George, courting my mother Elwanda on an old Booth's Creek bridge in 1940
He told me that his boyhood love, however, had one nasty habit, of stopping abruptly in the middle of the creek crossing and promptly throwing him off. I guess horses had to get a laugh once in awhile, between all their hard labor.
The powder house above, used to supply explosives for blasting out coal, is located near the old No. 5 mine site, on what the old-timers called “The Woods Road.” Its concrete roof has caved in, and the iron door is missing, but otherwise it retains its hundred-year integrity, along one of West Virginia's beautiful country roads, one that led from Monongah to the Number 5 Mine on the Davis Farm. The Davis farmhouse, like my Grandfather Radka's residence nearby, probably looked much like the old West Virginia farmhouse below.
This little powder house, also along the Woods Road, is in better shape than the one above. The old Monongah masons cemented brick walls, poured concrete roofs, and installed iron doors on their mine supply houses for safety; and the potential bombs were always located a substantial distance from the coal mines for the same purpose.
We’ll wind up this Web page on a humorous note, with these three annotated photographs of the amateur explorer and archaeologist Jim Davis,* in search of great mementos from the Monongah No. 5 mine site, along Captain Booth’s Creek:
And he finally found his grandmother's coal bucket!
NOTE: *Since Colonial times, the Davis name has been popular and welcomed throughout the state of West Virginia since George Washington’s days. In fact, DAVIS, the highest town (3,100 ft.) in the state is even named after U. S. Senator Henry Gassaway Davis, one of its founders. Davis began as a lumber town, but has been more recently noted for its coal operations, the love of which runs in the Davis blood.
According to the railroad records, Henry G. Davis, almost entirely self-educated, managed to become a brakeman on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1842, when he was only 20 years old. He later became a passenger conductor between Baltimore and Cumberland, Maryland; and, according to the railroad records, he was responsible for running the first night train in the United States, in 1848. His superiors had misgivings about the hazardous experiment but gave him authority to try. A curious crowd, mostly skeptics and scoffers, gathered at Cumberland to see the night train start on what they believed would be a disastrous journey. The train moved off in charge of Davis, and although it was necessary to make frequent stops while the brakeman walked ahead to arouse sleeping cows or to remove stones from the track, the train and its passengers arrived at their destination safely.
After this trip, the B & O maintained a regular night schedule.
Later, Henry G. Davis represented West Virginia in the United States Senate, from 1871 until 1883. Furthermore, in 1904 the Democrat Party nominated him for Vice President of the United States.
Davis’s appreciation of the industrial and commercial possibilities of the section of West Virginia between Piedmont and Elkins led him to enter the lumber and coal business. He later associated himself with his son-in-law, U. S. Senator Stephen B. Elkins, in building railroads and conducting other business enterprises. As one of the wealthiest men in the state, he died at the age of 93, and his kindness and many charities have preserved his name as “West Virginia’s Grand Old Man.”
This page was last modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010