Ashland Company Store

Ashland History

The original Ashland Company Store, located across the street from the present building, was a multi-story many-windowed structure that also served as a social hall and inn. The building burned in 1943, and the present building was then adapted to be the company store.

The store carried everything the miner and his family needed or could want, including fresh fruit, foods, ice cream, clothing, toys, weapons, tools, automotive supplies, fabric, shoes, hats, coats, and dynamite. The store was a gathering place as much as anything else. The company stores formed the core of social and economic life for many thousands of workers who lived in the remote coal towns. The cost of the entire structure for the original company store was between twelve and thirteen thousand dollars.

The company store was open to all miners and their families. Not only did these stores offer general grocery items, they also stocked a variety of other goods including clothing, toys, tools, shoes, fabric, ice cream, and fresh fruit.

Ashland is located along the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek, one of the most heavily developed coal regions in the Pocahontas field. At its height, the North Fork valley held an estimated ten thousand people, some of whom worked for the Ashland Coal & Coke Company.

The tipple of the company mine was demolished in the 1980s and all that remains, from its nearly one hundred years of operation, is the company store and a few company houses.

Like so many of the mining companies in the Pocahontas field, Ashland Coal & Coke Company was organized by men from the Pennsylvania anthracite region. Several of the original stockholders were from Ashland, Pennsylvania, and for this reason, the company, mine, settlement, and post office were give its name. Most of Ashland's leading stockholders and officers retained their interests and residences in Pennsylvania and operated the mines at Ashland as absentees. The leading stockholder and first president of the company, W.J. Richards, remained in Schuylkill County, where he served as President of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company.

Ashland Coal & Coke was incorporated in 1892. A lease was obtained from the Flat Top Land Association on March 18, 1893, and the mine was opened with a wooden gravity-feed tipple to load the coal into hopper cars the Norfork and Western Railway. The mine was a simple drift, since the coal seam, Pocahontas No. 3, outcropped along the hillside at five feet, ten inches thick. The mine produced more than 30,000 tons of bituminous "smokeless" coal in 1894, its first full year of production. By 1935, total tonnage from the mine hit 4 million tons - all of it hand loaded. The coal seams played out in the late 1970's and the company ceased operations in 1980.