By Charles Owens
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
WELCH — Work is underway on a new attraction in McDowell County that will pay tribute to the region’s rich coal mining history.
In keeping with the city of Welch’s “CoalTown USA” theme, the coal miner heritage park project will include replicas of a coal company story, a mining house, a possible coal miner related statue and more.
The project is planned along Stewart Street in Welch, according to Welch Mayor Harold McBride.
“We’ve adopted the CoalTown USA (theme). That’s our heritage and that is where we are going to go with it,” McBride said. “We are working on a coal miner heritage park up on Stewart Street up past the elementary school.”
Work on the project is underway with the hope of having it ready possibly by this summer.
“The old company store will be CoalTown Company Store No. 1,” McBride said. “Hopefully we will finish them up this summer.”
McBride said officials also hope to have equipment and other items on display at the coal miner heritage park as well. He said the replica of the old coal company store is now under roof.
“It’s going to turn out pretty neat,” McBride said. “We are hoping to put a little statue of a coal miner up there.”
McBride said the coal mining heritage park would be an attraction for not only local residents to enjoy, but also out of town visitors who travel to the county to ride the Hatfield-McCoy Trails and to visit other local attractions.
McDowell County’s history is linked to the coal mining industry. As part of the city’s CoalTown USA theme, the goal is to remember the region’s coal mining heritage while honoring the many citizens who carry on the tradition and continue to work as West Virginia coal miners.
Many immigrants traveled to the United States to work in the coal mining industry early in the 20th century and many of those families ended up in McDowell County. But the coal industry began to experience sharp declines and job losses in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Around that time, the street lights in the city of Gary were cut off after the massive U.S. Steel operations in the area began shutting down. A few years later U.S. Steel’s giant Alpheus preparation plant in Gary, a historic landmark that stood for many years as a testament to the legacy coal, was demolished.
A copy of the Daily Telegraph at the time that pictured aerial photographs of the demolition of the preparation plant was accompanied with the headline, “Going, going gone.”
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