Qualla: Matewan Historic District

Matewan Historic District: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mayor Cabell Testerman was holding a warrant in his hand when Albert Felts shot him. It was about three in the afternoon on May 19, 1920, on Mate Street in Matewan, West Virginia, in front of the Chambers Hardware Store. Felts was a Baldwin-Felts detective. The warrant Testerman held was a forgery the detectives had brought to justify the day's evictions. Within seconds, Police Chief Sid Hatfield was firing back, miners on the rail platform across the street had opened up with rifles, and ten men were dying — seven detectives, two miners, and the mayor of a coal town who had refused to let the evictions go forward.

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matewan Historic District: A Town You Can Still Walk

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Matewan Historic District is the small town center that witnessed the shooting. It sits on a narrow shelf of floodplain on the north bank of the Tug Fork, hemmed in by hills that rise steeply on every side and by Mate Creek to the east. Two main streets parallel the river: Ma...

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matewan Historic District: Company Town, Company Detectives

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Matewan in 1920 was a coal town. The mines that ringed it were essentially company kingdoms — operators controlled housing, stores, scrip, and the deputized force that kept order. When the United Mine Workers of America began signing up miners in Mingo County that spring, the Sto...

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matewan Historic District: The Dead and What Came After

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Albert Felts and his brother Lee Felts both died. So did five other detectives, two striking miners, and Mayor Testerman. The Urias Hotel that had served as the detectives' headquarters is gone now, one of the few historic structures lost from the district. The event radicalized ...

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Matewan Historic District: What the District Preserves

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore, CC BY-SA 4.0. Matewan was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, an independent institution on Mate Street, documents the events of 1920 and 1921 in the buildings where they happened. Bullet holes in the brick storefronts are still pointed out to v...

Image: FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore | CC BY-SA 4.0