Pocahontas Coalfield, which is also known as the Flat Top-Pocahontas Coalfield, is located in Mercer County/McDowell County, West Virginia and Tazewell County, Virginia. The earliest mining of coal in the coalfield was in Pocahontas, Virginia in 1883 at Pocahontas Mine No. 1, now on the National Register of Historic Places. The coal seams—Pocahontas No. 3, No. 4, No. 6, and No. 11—are some of the best coal to be found in the world, and are rated at 15,000 Btu/lb (35 MJ/kg). This operation, replete with beehive coke ovens, eventually spawned the Pocahontas Fuel Company, which operated mines in Virginia at Boissevain and Amonate, and in West Virginia at Jenkinjones, Bishop, and Itmann. History Later Pocahontas Fuel Company (formerly Pocahontas Consolidated) was absorbed into Consolidation Coal Company, which still mines coal at Amonate. The mines at Pocahontas were able to ship coal when the Norfolk & Western Railway bought the New River Railroad and extended a branch line there. As this railroad was extended westward through Mercer and McDowell Counties the coalfield expanded with it. By the mid-1880s the Bramwell area was booming with mines at Coopers and Freeman. Coal mines continued to open through the 1890s as the Norfolk & Western Railroad laid track along Elkhorn Creek and eventually reached Welch. Some of these coal mines/coal camps included Maybeury, Elkhorn, Upland, and Keystone. The coals of the Pocahontas coalfield developed a good reputation, and by 1903, U.S. Steel had set up a subsidiary named U.S. Coal and Coke to mine coal in central McDowell County. The operations centered around Gary, with numbered coal mines/camps surrounding the central coal town of Gary like coal town suburbs. Wilcoe was Gary No. 1, Ream was Gary No. 6, Elbert was Gary No.8, and Venus was Gary No. 10 and Thorpe was No.11. At first the coal was baked in beehive coke ovens at the mine site and shipped to the steel mills as coke (much as U.S. Steel had done in the Connellsville coalfield in Pennsylvania). After 1918 the coal was shipped by rail to the massive coke works at Clairton. The captive mines of U.S. Steel in the Gary area continued to thrive until the 1980s, when they were closed and Gary began an economic decline. The Pocahontas Coalfield continued to thrive through two world wars. The United Mine Workers union gained a foothold in the coalfield after the 1930s. African-Americans from