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Altitude: m. ASL.
Region:
United States > Virginia
Cache type: Virtual
Size: No container
Status:
Archived
Date hidden: 2016-11-08
Date created: 2016-11-08
Date published: 2016-11-08
Last modification: 2016-12-14 
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Rated as: n/a
Cache attributes
Description
EN
Pocahontas is a town in Tazewell County, Virginia. It was named for Chief Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas who lived in the 17th Century Jamestown Settlement.
Pocahontas Historic District is a national historic district located at Pocahontas in the Pocahontas coalfield, Tazewell County, Virginia. It is near Pocahontas Exhibition Coal Mine, a U.S. National Historic Landmark which was Mine No. 1 of the Pocahontas coalfield.
The district encompasses 17 contributing buildings and 1 contributing structure in the town of Pocahontas. Notable buildings include the City Hall (1895), the stone Episcopal Methodist Church, Catholic Church, the old brick medical dispensary, a Synagogue, the first millinery shop in the coalfields (now the Emma Yates Memorial Library) and a Masonic Hall.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Pocahontas was the location of the start of this region's coal boom with a spur line that launched the Norfolk and Western Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) into national prominence during the 1880s. The large two-state coal region bears the town's name.
These large safes in the picture are all that remains of the Company Store, the first store that the Pocahontas Fuel Company built in 1884.
Virginia Historical Marker number XP-8 was placed here by the Department of Historic Resources in 2012.
Marker text:
The Southwest Virginia Improvement Company first developed a town at Pocahontas in 1881-82 to house its workers and support its mining efforts. The commercial district lay along Centre and St. Clair Streets. The 1884 Company Store, the first and largest of its kind in the region, was its centerpiece. To foster the growth of the town, the company sold lots to competing entrepreneurs, many of whom were Jewish immigrants, who established drugstores, saloons, and general stores. Many buildings bore elaborate iron-front facades, attesting to the importance of the coal-mining industry. Most development stopped by the 1920s, as the coal-mining boom that had driven growth slipped into a slow decline.
Department of Historic Resources, 2012.
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