Mid-Lothian Mines - The Grove Shaft EarthCache
Mid-Lothian Mines - The Grove Shaft
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A relatively new park in Chesterfield County, VA. Path is mostly
paved or hardpack and your round trip to/from the parking lot will
be right at half a mile.
Park at N37 29.702, W77 38.551
Commercial coal mining, which was underway in Chesterfield County
by 1730, comprised not only the county’s first true industrial
development but also the first such operations undertaken in North
America. Coal was first discovered in Chesterfield during the early
1700’s near Manakin Town, a French Huguenot settlement. Later,
several French Huguenot families such as the Trabues, Salles,
Ammonettes and DuVals operated coal pits near Falling Creek and the
James River. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, stated
that the quality of Chesterfield’s coal was excellent. Eventually,
mine workers settled in the vicinity of Midlothian, responding to
the opportunity for employment in Chesterfield County’s coal pits.
By the second quarter of the eighteenth century a number of private
coal pits were operating on a commercial scale. Miners immigrated
to Chesterfield from Wales, England and Scotland and the Heths, who
were English investors, opened coal pits in the county. The
Wooldridge family was among the first to undertake coal mining in
the Midlothian area and it was likely that the mining community got
its name.
During the Revolutionary War, Chesterfield County’s coal pits
supplied the cannon factory at Westham (near Richmond) with fuel
that was used in making shot and shells for the Continental Army.
In 1781, British General Phillips and his men entered Chesterfield
County; marched to the courthouse, which they set ablaze; and then
continued on to destroy the county’s coal pits. This act attests to
the im-portance of Chesterfield’s coal mining industry in the war
for American independence. During the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries the largest concentration of mines in the
Richmond Coal Basin (a geological formation that extends across
several counties, to the west of the James River’s fall line) was
in the Midlothian area. The largest coal mines in the Midlothian
area during the late eighteenth century were the Black Heath pits,
which were opened in ca. 1788.
Coal mining quickly emerged as Chesterfield’s most important
industry, enabling the county’s citizens to lobby successfully for
publicly supported transportation systems. In 1802 Chesterfield’s
coal manufacturers and residents petitioned the General Assembly
for permission to construct a turnpike between Manchester and
Falling Creek, using part of the old Buckingham Road. The
thoroughfare was opened to travelers in 1804 and was the first
lengthy road in Virginia to have a graveled surface.
Chesterfield County’s first railroad, which began operating in
1831, was the second commercial railroad to be built in the United
States. It was a 13 mile long mule-and-gravity powered line that
connected the Midlothian coal mines with wharves that were located
at Manchester. The Chesterfield Railroad was supplanted by the
Richmond and Danville Railroad, which reached Midlothian in 1850.
The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad (chartered in 1836), the
Winterpock railroad (chartered in 1840 to haul coal from
southwestern Chesterfield’s mining district to the Appomattox
River) and other rail lines were built to several coal pits. The
Richmond and Danville Railroad, chartered in 1848, was in operation
by 1849. Its tracks cut across the northwestern part of the county,
passing through Coalfield (Midlothian).
During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Chesterfield
County’s coal mines reached the pinnacle of their importance,
thanks to modernized production techniques. By 1825, the Black
heath, Railey, Stone Henge, Cunliffe, Wooldridge, Maiden Head and
Union mines were producing a million bushels of coal annually.
Industrial development in the northern United States provided
markets for Chesterfield coal, as did local manufactories such as
the Bellona Foundry, established in 1810. There were seven or eight
major mines in the Midlothian area by 1835, where production
reached an estimated 75,000 tons of coal annually. The most
important of these enterprises was the Mid-Lothian Coal Mining
Company. These mining facilities employed a large number of men
(both black and white), whose pay infused a sizeable sum of money
into the local economy.
Some mines, such as the Creek Company’s Green Hole pits, were
worked by company-owned slaves; most mines, however, depended upon
a combi-nation of hired slaves, whites, and free blacks . The coal
mining industry prospered during the 1840’s and 50’s and it was
during these decades that Midlothian grew into one of the largest
settlements in Chesterfield County. Henry Howe, who visited the
Midlothian mines in the summer of 1843, described not only their
productiveness, but the strangeness of the underground labyrinths
in which the miners worked. He estimated the daily output of all of
Chesterfield’s mines at approximately 250 tons.
During the mid-1850’s, the mines in the Midlothian area were rocked
with a series of explosions that claimed many lives and caused
earth tremors over a several mile radius. Such incidents caused an
exodus of workers from the Midlothian mines and alarmed the local
population. Sometimes, the earth beneath standing structures was
undermined to the point that cave-ins occurred.
When war broke out between North and South in 1861, Chesterfield
County’s coal industry was stimulated, for the fossil fuel was
sorely needed by the Confederacy’s defense industry, especially in
the Tredegar Iron Works, which produced heavy ordnance. Although
the Union Army marched up the Buckingham Road and through
Midlothian in May, 1864, intending to destroy the county’s
railroads and prevent reinforcements from reaching the embattled
Confederates at Drewry’s Bluff, no combat is know to have occurred
in the immediate vicinity of the Mid-Lothian Coal Mining Company’s
property. After the fall of Richmond, 100 troops of the 9th Vermont
Infantry were detailed to guard the Midlothian mines and encamped
in the vicinity of the Railey Hill pits for about a month. One of
the 9th Vermont’s officers, who occupied the home of the mine
superintendent, reportedly etched his name in a window pane in the
parlor.
After the Civil War, coal production in Chesterfield fell off
sharply and the Midlothian coal mines never again became a truly
successful business enterprise. In 1882, when an explosion at Grove
Shaft led to the loss of 32 lives (a tragedy that was followed by
an embezzlement scandal involving the company’s superintendent),
the last large scale mining operation in Midlothian was shut down.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, efforts
were made to revive Chesterfield’s mining industry, but they never
attained success. During the 1880’s the population of Midlothian
declined significantly. A map of Chesterfield County that was
produced by J. E. LaPrade (1888) reveals that a sizeable number of
structures were then present on the Mid-Lothian Coal Mining
Company’s property. In 1923, when Midlothian’s mining industry
folded completely and its lumber mills closed, many residents of
Midlothian moved away.
The main building of the Grove Shaft mine is the only currently
surviving structure that is associated with coal mining in the
Richmond Coal Basin. Nearby is a surviving section of the
Chesterfield Railroad, a 13 mile long mule-and-gravity powered rail
line that was operational by 1831, constituting the second
commercial railroad to be built in America.
One thing
that may seem odd about this park is that there are currently no
information signs giving any of the history listed in this cache
page. When the park was first opened, there were temporary
laminated cardboard signs posted throughout the park. You may still
see one or two of them during your stroll, but weather and vandals
have claimed most of them. Permanent metal signs are being
drafted and produced and should hopefully be up some time
soon.
When logging this EarthCache, please post
a photo of yourself or your GPSr in your outstretched hand in front
of the ruins of the main building. To get credit email me a
description of the type of rock along the trail and where you think
it came from.
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