Life in the Coal Camps
of Wise County

Just released!

"Life in the Coal Camps of Wise County,”  is a 200-page history book full of details about life in the iconic camps. 

Local families no longer live in towns owned by coal companies. They no longer shop in company commissaries or watch movies in coal camp theaters, nor do their children attend school in the small, remote communities.

Although a handful of the houses, churches, stores and schools that made up Wise County’s coal camps are still here, many have been torn down as the communities were sold and shrunk in population. And many of the people who remember the camps in their heyday are being lost to time as well.

Because of work begun nearly four years ago by the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth and local high school and college students, hundreds of photographs, memories, relics of everyday life and news stories from the county’s old company towns are now available to the public.