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Coal Towns/Pine Branch, Virginia
Unique because no town ever existed there, the mines and ovens at Pine Branch did provide hundreds of jobs in the coal and coke industries from the late 1940s through the 1960s. Soon after mining operations were established at this remote site north of Roaring Fork in 1946, 180 beehive ovens were built to turn the coal into coke.
The ovens at Roaring Fork were among the last of the beehive style built and operated in the area. Workers would load the individual ovens with coal, start a fire, and when the fire grew, then close the doors on each end of the oven to force the fire to smolder. After several hours, the impurities within the coal had been cooked out leaving behind approximately two-thirds the original amount of coal in what had become coke. Coke was more valuable than coal because of the additional processing required, although it was much more labor intensive per ton. Much of the coke processed in the ovens of southwestern Virginia found its way to the mills of Birmingham and Pittsburgh where this very pure carbon fuel could achieve the high temperatures necessary to make steel.
Now, these well-preserved ovens remain easily accessible by the gravel road following the railroad tracks north from Roaring Fork. After a few miles, the ovens appear on the left of the road. Only about one-third of the original ovens remain intact, but those that still exist are in good condition with some of the doors in place. Walking on the road that runs parallel to the ovens, visitors should understand that early “pushers” would use long rakes to push the coke out the other side and into small cars to be pulled by mules to the nearby railroad tracks where it would be loaded for shipment. Due to the relative youth of the Pine Branch ovens, the coke would be pushed directly onto a belt that would travel the length of the ovens and automatically load the coke into rail cars.
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This page last updated: May 2, 2005
Maintained by: Dr. Brian D. McKnight
