Algoma, West Virginia: The Coal Camp Where 17 Men Died on One Morning

Algoma, West Virginia is an abandoned coal camp in the Pocahontas coalfield of southern McDowell County. It was born from one of the twentieth century's most aggressive industrial extractions — the stripping of the Pocahontas No. 3 seam — and it died the same way most West Virginia coal towns died: when the coal gave out and the jobs went with it.

01Why Was Algoma Founded?

Algoma was developed in 1891 by the Algoma Coal & Coke Company. The founders chose the site along Buzzard Branch of the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek for access to the Pocahontas No. 3 seam, a premium coal deposit prized for steelmaking. The company marketed its output as "The Great Algoma" and sold it to steel mills and domestic heating markets across the eastern United States.

The name "Algoma" is an Anglicized corruption of Algonquin — combined with "goma" meaning Algonquin waters. The company built the standard infrastructure of the West Virginia coal camp: a company store, worker housing, mine structures. In 1894, the original store was replaced with a larger 2½-story building. In 1896, a second mine opened at Norfolk as the Algoma Coaling Station to supply coal to Norfolk & Western Railway locomotives.

02The Coke Ovens

In 1897, Algoma added 175 coke ovens to convert its raw coal into coke — the carbon-rich fuel needed for steelmaking. The coke operation expanded to 225 ovens and ran until 1919. Coke production was essential to the steel boom that drove West Virginia's coal economy through World War I.

03What Happened in 1902

The Number 7 Mine explosion on September 15, 1902 killed seventeen men. The cause was methane accumulation over the weekend when the mine's ventilation fans had been reduced. Monday's opening shift found the gas, and the gas found an ignition source — either a flame, a spark from equipment, or an open carbide lamp. The explosion propagated through the mine, killing everyone working that morning.

The disaster was one of many in the McDowell County coalfield. Early twentieth-century coal mining in Appalachia had essentially no safety regulation. Methane monitoring was crude. Ventilation was inadequate. Explosions killed thousands of miners across West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania between 1890 and 1920.

04What Happened to Algoma?

Algoma died slowly. The coke ovens shut down in 1919. Mining continued through the 1920s, 1930s, and into the post-World War II period, but the easy coal was exhausted and mechanization required fewer workers. By the 1950s and 1960s, population declined steadily. The company store closed. Schools consolidated into larger towns. The post office held on until the 1980s before finally shutting.

05What Remains of Algoma Today

Ruins. Foundations of the company store and workers' housing. Abandoned coal infrastructure. The Algoma Coal Impoundment — a reservoir once used to process mining wastewater — remains a mapped geographic feature in McDowell County. Much of the site has been reclaimed by forest, the way most abandoned West Virginia coal camps have been.

McDowell County is accessible via US Route 52 from Bluefield. Visitors interested in Appalachian coal history can see multiple abandoned coal camps in the county, including Algoma, which represents a grimly representative example of the industry's arc: boom, disaster, bust.