Coal-country ghost town gets new life as a curiosity
Few residents hope tourism resurrects what tech killed
Traffic didn’t stall when a long freight train ran through downtown at 5:43 p.m. on a recent weekday. There were no motorists or pedestrians to watch the clattering convoy whip past the bank and mercantile, and the crows and pigeons had taken wing for the high ground.
Thurmond, population five or seven (depending on whom you ask), is a coal-country ghost town killed by technology … and sustained by recreation. As political debate roils over mining ’s future, the preservation of this oncethriving town of 500 fits quietly into state and federal plans to promote heritage tourism.
Thurmond is at the end of W.Va. 25, a slim, twisting path that mirrors the last six miles of Dunloup Creek before reaching the New River, a prime destination for adventure travelers.
New River Gorge National River, established in 1978 to protect the many rapids for whitewater sports, drew 1.3 million visitors last year, according to Dave Bieri, of the Park Service. It, Gauley River National Recreation Area (downstream) and Bluestone National Scenic River (upstream) generated $58.6 million in tourist spending, and New River Gorge “accounts for about 95% of that,” says Bieri.
To the north, the U.S. 19 bridge far above the deep gorge draws up to 70,000 folks to see daredevil leapers at the autumn base-jump. There’s a kayak/canoe put-in across the bridge from intriguing but often forlorn Thurmond.
Thurmond was founded in 1873 at a sharp bend in the New River, where shores were wide enough to hold a community. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway put tracks over the gorge and a rail yard made Thurmond an important depot for area coal and lumber. In 1910, Thurmond produced more C&O freight tonnage than Cincinnati and Richmond, Va., combined.
Thurmond had two banks, two hotels, stores, a cinema and offices. Three-story brick buildings faced a “Commercial Row” that was never paved. As Bieri says, “Main Street was the railroad tracks.”
A combination of factors emptied Thurmond. The Great Depression killed one bank and caused the other to move. Thurmond’s rail yard withered as trains switched from steam to diesel. Buildings were destroyed in fires and never rebuilt, their locations now marked with foundation remnants and placards.
DEATH BY TECHNOLOGY
As debate roils over mining’s future, the preservation of this once-thriving town fits quietly into plans to promote heritage tourism.
America shifted from rails to roads, and from coal to other forms of residential heating. The railroad offices closed in 1984. The post office lasted until 1995, the year the Park Service restored Thurmond’s two-story depot as a seasonal visitor center.
You see what remains of Thurmond when you cross the narrow bridge. The fast-moving New River is to the left, screened by brush from a gravel-topped lot where the rail yard used to be. Across three sets of tracks is the nowempty downtown. Straddling the tracks at the far end of Thurmond looms the massive CSX coaling station, built in 1922, where chutes dropped ore into coal cars that passed below it.
Thurmond’s tracks are rusted on the sides but clean on the tops. CSX trains and those from the RJ Curman short-line use them, but cargo is transferred farther up the line these days. Amtrak will still make a flag stop when it comes through on Wednesdays.
No businesses are open on the main street.
The Park Service’s Bieri says the residents are looking for an opportunity to get commerce downtown — though the large buildings that remain, all owned by the government, “would take a lot to get into shape.”
But the green mountains squeezing the New River rise 10 stories at a steep angle — a great vista — and an easy, 2-mile railroad-grade walking trail at the kayak put-in takes you to great overlooks of the deserted village.
Weekends attract cars, motorcycles and boats to Thurmond. A July Train Day event pulls 700 or so visitors. Bieri estimates that close to 7,000 people this past summer came to the place where time stands still (until a train barrels through).