Qualla: Kay Moor, West Virginia

Kay Moor, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NKS22, Public domain. Most coal towns built on flat ground. Kay Moor built up a cliff. The mine portal sits on a narrow shelf called Sewell Bench, 560 feet above the river. The processing plant sits on the river bank at Kaymoor Bottom, where the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway runs along the canyon floor. Between them, a complex system of conveyors and rail incline carried coal down the cliff face from the seam to the loading tipple. Workers walked up. The town that grew around this vertical arrangement existed from 1899 to the early 1960s. Now it is one of the most evocative ruins in the New River Gorge - a stacked, gravity-driven coal operation slowly being eaten by the forest and preserved by the National Park Service.

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Image: NKS22 | Public domain

Kay Moor, West Virginia: An Iron Company's Coal Reserve

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amsmit24, CC0. Abiel Abbot Low was a New York merchant and shipping magnate who in his later years invested in the iron industry. He served as managing director of the Low Moor Iron Company, based in Low Moor, Virginia, which needed coal and coke for its blast furnaces. In 1873 his company boug...

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Image: Amsmit24 | CC0

Kay Moor, West Virginia: Stacking the Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amsmit24, CC0. Because the seam ran in the bench above the river but the railroad ran along the river itself, the operators had to solve a problem of vertical logistics. They did so with three levels. At Kaymoor Top, on the plateau above the gorge, sat the management offices, the schoolhouse, a...

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Image: Amsmit24 | CC0

Kay Moor, West Virginia: Decline and Closure

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amsmit24, CC0. In 1925, the Low Moor Iron Company sold the Kay Moor operation to the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Berwind-White Corporation of Philadelphia. Production continued through the Depression and World War II, but the postwar coal market shift...

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Image: Amsmit24 | CC0

Kay Moor, West Virginia: Walking the Ruins

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amsmit24, CC0. Today Kay Moor is accessible to hikers on two trails. The Kaymoor Miners Trail descends steeply from Kaymoor Top - reachable from County Route 9/2 off US Route 19 - by stairs and switchbacks, then continues down to Kaymoor Bottom by another long set of stairs. The route is dramat...

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Image: Amsmit24 | CC0