It has always been known that there were significant coal seams in the Bend. Even George Washington noted a “hill, which the Indians say is always a fire.” Commercial mining operations are said to have begun as early as 1805 or ’06 near Pomeroy, four years before such operations began in Wheeling and a decade before similar mines were opened near the Kanawha Salines, though these were small operations mostly intended to provide coal for home heating. Similar operations are said to have started on the West Virginia side near Mason in 1819.

Yet, it wasn’t until 1832, when Samuel Pomeroy and his four sons/sons-in-law began their work, that serious business began. Soon enough, half a dozen mines were laid out between Pomeroy and Middleport, in an area that soon became Coalport.

The first several loads of coal were shipped via flatboat, approximately 1,000 bushels (80,000 lbs. or 40 short tons) at a time. These flatboats were replaced in 1836 by Valentine B. Horton’s steamboat Condor, the first steamboat purpose-built as a towboat and also the first successfully powered by coal instead of wood. Thus, the mines in the Bend suddenly grew in importance, as a coal refueling station located exactly halfway between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

These developments provided a steady income for the local mines, though still not nearly enough to encourage major industrial operations. That came in 1849 with the opening of the salt furnaces.

Using Meigs County as an example (as exact numbers for Mason County do not exist until 1883), there were 500 short tons of coal mined in 1832, the year Samuel Pomeroy began his operations. In 1837, after the coal-fired Condor was launched, 20,000 short tons of coal were mined in Meigs County.

In 1860, once the salt furnaces were in full-swing, a record 611,817 short tons of coal were mined near Pomeroy and Middleport. Exact numbers for Mason County in 1860 are difficult to gather, but based on newspaper records, our production was likely about half of Meigs County’s at roughly 300,000 short tons.

For example, in 1872, the Clifton Coal Company alone, one of the smaller operations on our side of the Bend, mined over 38,000 short tons of coal. In 1875, the German Salt Furnace alone was burning 12,000 short tons per year, meaning that the amount of coal burned by the combined 11 furnaces in Mason County was well over 150,000 short tons. In 1879, the Sehon Mines near Hartford produced over 116,000 short tons of coal.

By 1898, production had slowed dramatically, but these figures will help press my point. In that year, Mason County produced 120,376 short tons of coal. Of that amount, 45,224 short tons were sold to local trade, meaning 38% of the coal mined in Mason County went straight into the salt furnaces. 100% of the Hartford, Juhling, and Hope coal production went into the furnaces, along with half of the Clifton coal. Of the coal that was shipped out in 1898, 94% came from Senator Johnson Camden’s Consolidated Coal Company (Standard Oil) mines at Camden/Spillman and New Haven.

This stayed true until World War One, when coal production in the Bend spiked to over 1 million short tons per year to power the dreadnoughts of the U.S. Navy, before a sharp drop during the Great Depression. Coal production spiked again in the 1950s and 1980s, coinciding with the completions of the Philip Sporn, Kyger Creek, Gavin, and Mountaineer Power Plants. 

Information from the Weekly Register, Annual Reports for the Coal Mines in West Virginia (1898-1900), “History of the Coal-Mining Industry in Ohio” by Douglas L. Crowell, and historical maps of the area showing salt furnaces and coal mines.