SunEven though there is hardly anything left of them anymore, the Sun coal mines were one of the largest coal and coke operations in the New River Coalfield. In 1920, they employed 380 people and produced 208,442 tons of coal. Sun, WV, was constructed (probably in the 1890s) by the New River Smokeless Coal Company. Around 1909, the New River Collieries Company acquired Sun, and they operated it until 1923. The final owner of the Sun mines was Stonega Coal & Coke Company, which operated Sun until it closed in 1931. Sewell coal was mined in Sun Nos. 1, 2, & 3 mines, and some of it was coked in the facility's 125 beehive coke ovens. Nothing remains of the coke ovens today, and I have never seen a picture of them, either. According to state mining records, Stonega Coal & Coke Co. took over the Sun coal mines in 1924. Stonega's production peaked in 1927 when they mined 503,574 tons of coal at Sun. The mines were closed in 1931. [Credit to the original source, which I cannot now find.]
On 28 February 2022, I drove through Mt. Hope and the area that used to be Sun. I spoke to an older lady working in her yard who had grown up there but moved to Florida in the 1970s. There are only a few, mostly newer houses, and one church there now. She said that in the 1920s, there were about 1,000 houses, schools, and 4 churches, in addition to the company store.
McDonaldOne of the earlier coal towns, MacDonald, was designed by Symington MacDonald, the owner of MacDonald Collieries Company. Located just south of Sun (see the map below) on 830 acres of land leased from Thomas McKell (who brought the railroad to this area), the company constructed its tipple on the hill above Dunloup Creek, attracting workers from near and far. MacDonald, opened in 1893, grew rapidly alongside Mount Hope. functioning essentially as one community until the mid-20th century. By 1915, most of MacDonald had been annexed into Mount Hope. The mine ceased operation in 1938.