Warden and Pinepoca: Ghost Towns of the Raleigh County Coalfields

The communities of Warden and Pinepoca in Raleigh County, West Virginia, are what coal towns look like after the coal runs out. Both were unincorporated communities built around mine operations in the New River coalfields during the early twentieth century, when the Flat Top and New River coal seams were opening up and railroad-connected company towns sprung up across the hollow wherever a shaft was sunk.

Company towns like these typically followed one pattern: the coal company owned the houses, the store, and often the doctor's office. Workers paid rent, bought at the company store, and sometimes received scrip rather than cash. When the mines closed or consolidated, the economic reason for the community disappeared with them. Houses were sold off or abandoned, and the population scattered. Both communities are today listed as former populated places, their names surviving on maps long after the people left. They are among dozens of such vanished or near-vanished coal settlements scattered across Raleigh County.