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Trammel Mining Camp

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1917–1944. VA 63
  • Miners' Houses (Virginia Department of Historic Resources)
  • Former company store and post office (Virginia Department of Historic Resources)

Stretching about a mile along both sides of VA 63 as it winds through mountainous terrain between Nora and Dante, this camp was built at the northern base of Sandy Ridge by the Virginia Banner Coal Corporation. The collection of frame buildings is the best-preserved mining camp in Dickenson County. Primarily consisting of about one hundred small one-story dwellings rented to miners working in the local mines, the camp also includes several company-built facilities including a former company store and post office, a schoolhouse, and a Baptist church. Each three- to four-room house is a simple, frame and weatherboarded, gable-roofed structure with deep eaves, six-over-six, double-hung windows, and a recessed one-bay corner porch. Heated by central coal-fired stoves and lighted by a single light bulb in each room, the houses had no running water, and every three households shared a privy.

The company store and post office (1917; VA 63 at VA 626) is a gabled two-story wooden building with flanking shed-roofed wings. A concrete platform extending across the front of the building provided access to the store and post office entrances. The building has been abandoned, but the Trammel Baptist Church (1944), a simple, one-story, frame building still serves the residents of the community. In 1986, the town of Trammel and most of the houses were sold at auction.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Anne Carter Lee
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Data

What's Nearby

Ervinton Elementary School

Citation

Anne Carter Lee, "Trammel Mining Camp", [Dante, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-02-DI6.

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