The old Coalwood School in McDowell County is long abandoned. Read on to find out more about this old school and its community, which was featured in a memoir by one of its native sons.
Coalwood is in McDowell County in Southern West Virginia. It was founded in 1902.
Carter was one of the few Appalachia natives to get rich when industrialization came to the mountains after the Civil War, according to an article in Goldenseal magazine.
At its peak, Coalwood was home to some 2,000 people and trailed only a few other coal-producing towns in terms of productivity and employment, according to Goldenseal.
Coalwood High School, later called Coalwood Elementary, was built in the 1920s. In 1985, Caretta Elementary was merged with Coalwood, and then Coalwood was closed in 1986, according to Detwitz Photography.
The town of Coalwood has been chronicled in Homer Hickam’s books “Rocket Boys” and "The Coalwood Way.” “Rocket Boys” is the book the movie “October Sky” is based on.
The coal company houses were reportedly sold to the people who lived in them during the 1980s, making Coalwood one of the last and longest-lived coal company towns in the United States.
