Cranberry, West Virginia

Near Beckley, Cranberry was one of the few shaft mines in Raleigh County. Most of the region's coal came out through drift entries cut straight into the hillside, but the Cranberry seam sat deep enough underground that the New River Company had to sink a vertical shaft to reach it. The mine opened in the early nineteen hundreds, drawing on the same Sewell seam that made this corner of West Virginia famous.

The company store was built in nineteen twenty-seven. The mine ran until nineteen fifty-eight, sat idle, then reopened in the late nineteen sixties, and finally shut for good in nineteen seventy-three. The creek the community takes its name from flows on, indifferent to the silence where the shaft once turned.