Wordless Wednesday -- Tralee, West Virginia: A Coal Camp

According to my grand aunt, Henrietta Muir's obituary, she was born in 1920 in Tralee, West Virginia. Tralee was a coal camp, established to house the miners who worked for the Harty Coal Company or Bakers Creek Coal Company. These mines were operated under the leadership of the John C. Sullivan, who named the town after his hometown in England. In addition to the two companies named above, Mr. Sullivan was also the general manager of the Mead-Pocahontas Coal Company, Wood-Sullivan Coal Company, and the Pickshin Coal Company.

Harty Coal Company store and office located on Barkers Creek.

Side view of the amusement hall.

Timber was cut from the land, sawed into boards, and shipped to Huntington,
West Virginia, where prefabricated houses were constructed; the wall sections
were shipped back to Tralee and constructed onsite.

Four-room hip-roof houses along the railroad tracks. The horse-drawn
wagon was the transportation of the day.

Houses along the railroad tracks and Barkers Creek.

Houses on the hillside.

All the photographs and text comes from Coal Towns of West Virginia: A Pictorial Recollection by Mary Legg Stevenson. These are the only photographs I have of where Robert Muir and his family lived in West Virginia.