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June 30, 2026 - The coal industry was, at its height, central to the prosperity and growth of both the United States and West Virginia. However, growth in each locale came from a different end of the coal industry.
While West Virginia itself profited from the extraction of coal to be sold in domestic and foreign markets, the rest of the country, as well as many parts of the broader world, prospered from using coal as a thermal source to create the steel that built the railroad systems and cities that powered the world.
"Coal is intimately linked to the iron and steel industry," said West Virginia University associate professor of history William "Hal" Gorby.
And the pair — coal and steel — were vital to the Industrial Revolution.
Coal has been mined in the hills of West Virginia since before the state seceded from Virginia. But in the early days of the industry, the fuel was primarily used to heat homes. Once coal became intrinsic to the production of steel by the mid-19th century, a greater emphasis was placed on the coal industry to produce the technology of the future — from tools to trains to skyscrapers, Gorby said.
As steel companies were founded, sourcing high volumes of bituminous coal became a priority, and West Virginia was one of the few places that had both the right kind of coal and the volumes needed for industrial production.
While cooler-burning anthracite coal was plentiful in eastern Pennsylvania and New York, it did not burn hot enough for steel production. Bituminous, or metallurgical, coal, however, was abundant in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Gorby said.
In order to capitalize on proximity to source materials, many steel producers and steel-product manufacturers established themselves near Pittsburgh and Wheeling, where they also had access to nearby shipping lanes via the Ohio River.
The U.S. Steel Corp. was chartered in 1901 and would go on to become the world's first billion-dollar corporation. However, the tech giants of today, like Apple and Amazon, dwarf even U.S. Steel at its height.
One reason steel companies never reached the size of modern tech companies was their reliance on raw materials and the high costs associated with expansion. In order to secure enough coal, many steel companies expanded into the coal-mining industry by setting up subsidiaries in hopes of funding their growth.
"They can only continue to grow if they have large deposits of this coal and coke," Gorby said, referencing the substance created when coal is baked in an industrial furnace without oxygen. "So that's where you start seeing a lot more expansion into parts of southern West Virginia, which had already been developing in the late 19th century, mainly to service the major railroads."
At that time, steel was used by nearly the entire manufacturing industry and boomed as the automotive industry began to grow. Additionally, coal was used to generate much of the electricity in the Washington area.
"Senator Robert C. Byrd used to like to talk about that when he was in Washington — that much of the coal heating and lighting the capital was coming from his home state," Gorby said.
During the turn of the 20th century, the coal industry was also central to the labor-rights movement.
"Basic things like having a collective bargaining agreement to dictate conditions — not just about wages and hours ... [and also] concerns about safety protocols, concerns about occupational health hazards like black lung and other types of respiratory diseases and programs to compensate miners when they were no longer able to work," Gorby said.
"I like to say often that mine workers were like the foot soldiers of the labor movement," Gorby continued, saying miners had the highest level of organizational structure among labor-rights activists because all underground workers shared an understanding of the risks associated with the job and the personal detriments of living in the company-town system.
Demand for coal remained at historic levels for decades. However, domestic demand began to plateau after World War II, especially as trains switched to diesel fuel, the U.S. Navy no longer powered ships with coal, and more electricity was generated using oil and natural gas, Gorby said.
However, the world still needed steel and, by extension, coal. Plants creating the materials needed to rebuild much of Western Europe following the war still had high demand, and West Virginia coal was also being sold to India and China as those nations developed during the mid-20th century.
"Other places needed coal for that rapid development of their steel industries," Gorby said, noting many places around the globe do not have their own naturally occurring deposits of metallurgical coal.
While China eventually developed its own coal mines, American coal was, and is, still purchased and used because Chinese mines are not able to fully meet the nation's consumption needs, Gorby said.
The United States has similar issues, such as sourcing rare earth metals for technology products, and several countries in Europe are reliant on Russia or other neighbors for natural gas to support electrical-generation needs.
But, "as time goes on, the amount of coal that West Virginia sends to some of these countries has slowed, the market value of it has shrunk as some of these countries are either producing their own coal, or sometimes sourcing it from other places," Gorby said, noting this was particularly the trend in the 1950s and '60s.
This decrease in demand, both domestically and abroad, came just as technological advancements in underground mining were reducing the number of miners needed to meet demand.
Gorby said these back-to-back blows to the industry caused "devastation in waves" for West Virginia.
Many coal-mining communities that had boomed while the industry was on the rise experienced a bust. First among these were the New River Gorge area and parts of Tucker and Randolph counties, Gorby said.
These places were particularly affected because of how long coal had already been mined there. The deeper a mine goes, the more difficult and expensive extraction becomes.
And much of what was left in these localities was no longer very marketable, Gorby said.
But declines did not stop there.
McDowell, Wyoming and Raleigh counties, which all had high levels of metallurgical coal, also saw steep declines because of decreased demand as many U.S. Steel subsidiary mines were closed when expansion was no longer deemed feasible.
The coalfields from Morgantown to Clarksburg also saw large declines as metallurgical coal was no longer needed and high-sulfur coal could not be used for electric generation without expensive pollution-control technology known as scrubbers following amendments to the Clean Air Act.
"By the early '80s, you had massive layoffs across much of the state," Gorby said.
Coal-mining employment peaked at more than 120,000 workers in the 1950s but was cut in half by the 1960s as machinery began replacing pick-and-shovel jobs. By 1990, employment had fallen below 30,000.
Since 2009, coal-mining employment has fallen by more than 50%. Today, there are about 13,000 coal miners in West Virginia.
Even with a workforce that was recently cut in half, the coal industry still makes up about 22% of West Virginia's gross domestic product, West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton said, noting the industry accounts for $23 billion in annual economic activity.
"Even in our reduced profile, coal is still a major contributor behind our state's economy and industrial job base. There's over 13,000 direct miners and another 35,000 contractors and individuals that work at our preparation plants, in the transportation of coal, and all the vendors and suppliers who provide a service to our industry," Hamilton said.
Much of the recent decline in coal-industry employment was caused by competition from natural gas, technological shifts requiring fewer miners and stricter regulations as renewables gained a larger share of the electric-generation market.
In 2023, coal was used to produce just 16.2% of the nation's electricity, while renewables were responsible for 21.4%. Natural gas led the nation, producing 43.1% of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Despite this, Gorby said coal is not going anywhere.
"It's always going to be around. We're still going to need it for steel production," Gorby said. "And the electric power system in the country is still heavily reliant on coal."
While hydrogen has been used on a limited basis for steel production in recent years, Gorby said it does not pose a threat to coal in the short term. However, he noted it could be the next technology to disrupt the coal industry.
While this could lead to a decline in demand for metallurgical coal, steam coal will still be needed as increased electrical generation is required by the growing number of AI data centers in Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Gorby said.
Additionally, investment in the coal industry, whether from private or public sources, to retrofit coal-fired power plants — such as the $700 million package recently announced by President Donald Trump's administration — will help ensure demand for these facilities for years to come.
"I think this conversation would have been different 5 years ago. But with this growth in AI and the need for those companies to have this massive amount of electricity, there's no way that the power industry, particularly in West Virginia, can decline anymore because that demand is just growing astronomically," Gorby said.
Despite a continued decline in employment over the last 100 years, mining remains a source of pride for many West Virginians.
"That pride goes through generations. It's been such a big part of our heritage and culture over the years," Hamilton said. "All you have to do is go to one of our universities' football games and see when they ask everybody that knows someone involved in the mining industry to stand up and wave, that practically all 60-some-thousand people stand. ... Every single person in our state has a connection to the coal industry."
Those who work in underground mines are among the highest-paid blue-collar workers in the state because of the advanced skills needed to operate industrial equipment, Gorby said, noting that the same equipment has contributed to employment declines.
The average salary of a coal miner in West Virginia is $110,000 per year, according to Hamilton.
"Coal keeps our businesses vibrant, keeps our houses cool in the summer and warm in the winter and coal has always been a major component of our national defense system as well," Hamilton said. "These miners are real patriots. And they all deserve a great American award, in my opinion."
"I don't think any one individual industrial worker contributes so much to our quality of life and society overall as a miner," he continued.
Despite this pride, there are areas throughout the state that have been economically devastated by mine closures following the industry's decline.
"The two areas of the state that declined earliest in the '50s have both made the pivot to tourism or outdoor recreation," Gorby said, referring to the New River Gorge and Tucker County regions.
But Mingo, Boone and Logan counties, among others, have so far been unable to make the switch.
"That's the part of the state that I worry about a lot. They're going to need so much infrastructure development that ... was being done by the coal companies that ran those places," Gorby said. "When they left, the largest taxpayer left, the company that was maintaining the sewer and water systems left."
Gorby said he hopes these areas may one day transition to sustainable agriculture or become bedroom communities for people able to work remotely who do not wish to live in cities. |
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