Wise County is a county located in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county was formed in 1856 from Lee, Scott, and Russell Counties and named for Henry A. Wise, who was the Governor of Virginia at the time. The county seat is in Wise.
Appalachia is a town in Wise County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,754 at the 2010 census.
Big Stone Gap is a town in Wise County, Virginia, United States. The town was economically centered around the coal industry for much of its early development. The population was 5,254 at the 2020 census.
The Chesterfield Railroad was located in Chesterfield County, Virginia. It was a 13-mile (21-kilometer) long mule-and-gravity powered line that connected the Midlothian coal mines with wharves that were located at the head of navigation on the James River just below the Fall Line at Manchester. It began operating in 1831 as Virginia's first common carrier railroad.
Page is a census-designated place (CDP) and coal town in Fayette County, West Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 224. It was named for William Nelson Page (1854-1932), a civil engineer and industrialist who lived in nearby Ansted, where he managed Gauley Mountain Coal Company and many iron, coal, and railroad enterprises.
John Daniel Imboden, American lawyer, Virginia state legislator, and a Confederate army general. During the American Civil War, he commanded an irregular cavalry force. After the war, he resumed practicing law, became a writer, and was active in land development founding the town of Damascus, Virginia.
The Battle of Matewan was a shootout in the town of Matewan in Mingo County and the Pocahontas Coalfield mining district, in southern West Virginia. It occurred on May 19, 1920 between local coal miners and their allies and the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency. The dead included two brothers of the detective agency's founder and Matewan's mayor Cabell Testerman, who supported the union.
State Route 160 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. Known as the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the state highway runs 8.02 miles (12.91 km) from the Kentucky state line on top of Black Mountain, where the highway continues north as Kentucky Route 160, east to SR 68 in Appalachia. Due to the mountainous terrain and numerous tight bends, Virginia State Route 160 and its Kentucky State Route 160 counterpart are signposted closed to tractor-trailers between Lynch, KY and Appalachia, VA.
U.S. Route 23 (US 23) is a part of the United States Numbered Highway System that runs from Jacksonville, Florida, to Mackinaw City, Michigan. In Virginia, the U.S. Highway runs 60.80 miles (97.85 km) from the Tennessee state line near Weber City north to the Kentucky state line near Pound. US 23, which is known as Orby Cantrell Highway for most of its course, is a four-lane divided highway that follows Corridor B of the Appalachian Development Highway System through Southwest Virginia. The U.S. Highway serves as the main east–west highway of Scott County and the primary north–south highway of Wise County. US 23 runs concurrently with US 58 from Weber City to Duffield and with US 58 Alternate between Big Stone Gap and the independent city of Norton.
State Route 68 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. Known for most of its length as Exeter Road, the state highway runs 6.13 miles (9.87 km) from the Lee–Wise county line near Keokee, where the highway continues west as SR 606, east to U.S. Route 23 Business in Appalachia.
State Route 78 is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. The state highway runs 3.85 miles (6.20 km) from U.S. Route 23 Business north to SR 600 at Stonega. SR 78 connects Appalachian with several coal mining communities in western Wise County. The state highway became a primary state highway, SR 62, in the early 1940s. SR 78 received its present number in the mid-1940s when current SR 62 received its designation.
Joshua Fry Bullitt Jr. was a Virginia lawyer who practiced in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. He was one of the leading citizens of Southwest Virginia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both as a practicing lawyer and as a political figure. His prominence corresponded with the rise of the coal business in central Appalachia. His legacy includes both the continuation of the energy companies that he helped to create and the careers of the prominent legal figures who worked with and learned from him, just as he was the heir to a series of accomplished legal figures. As the leader of a citizen police force, he was the model for a character in one of the best-selling novels in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century, following protests over its use of free convict labor. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview. It also established a coal mining camp it sold to U.S. Steel which developed it into the Westfield, Alabama planned community.
Paint Bank is an unincorporated community in northern Craig County, Virginia, United States. It is located at the intersection of State Route 18 and State Route 311 northwest of the town of New Castle, the county seat. The village is located between Potts Mountain and Peters Mountain. It is one of the westernmost communities of the Roanoke metropolitan area.
The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system.
Alexander Alan Arthur was a Scottish-born engineer and entrepreneur active primarily in the southeastern United States in the latter half of the 19th century. Flamboyant, charismatic, and energetic, Arthur used his prominent American and European financial connections to fund numerous business ventures, most of which were overly ambitious and ultimately failed. A proponent of economic advancement in what became known as the New South, Arthur played a primary role in the development of the Cumberland Gap area, and in the course of his endeavors established the cities of Middlesboro, Kentucky and Harrogate, Tennessee. The community of Arthur, Tennessee, is named for him.
Samuel Dixon was an industrialist and politician in West Virginia. Dixon was among the powerful and wealthy men who helped develop southern West Virginia's bituminous coal bearing-region during the late 19th and early 20th century.
Osaka is a Census-designated place and coal town located in Wise County, Virginia, United States, served by a branch line of the Appalachia to Stonega railroad that ran along Mud Lick Creek to Roda, which was built in 1896 by Interstate Railroads.
Stonega Historic District is a national historic district located at Appalachia, Wise County, Virginia. The district encompasses 80 contributing buildings in the coal company town of Stonega. It includes a variety of residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial buildings built after the towns' founding in 1895. Notable buildings include the Catholic Church, Stonega Colored Methodist Church, Stonega Colored School / Community Building, Stonega Bath House, and Stonega Colored School.
The Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway (DM&N) was a railroad company in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was one of the earliest iron ore hauling railroads of the area, said to have built the largest iron ore docks in the world, and later was one of the constituent railroads in the merger that formed the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway.
