Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 30, 1995 TAG: 9503300062
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY KEITH
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MERRIMAC LENGTH: Long
What remains of this place, where so many people lived and worked?
"Just memories, is all," Fred Lawson says.
Here, in this shallow valley, now overgrown with briars and weeds, Montgomery County entered the Industrial Revolution. That was back in 1904, when the county's first big coal mine was opened, and farmers exchanged their plowshares for a miner's hat and pick.
Over the next three decades, Merrimac had every feature of an Appalachian coal operation: a tipple (where railroad cars were loaded with coal), a commissary and a mine shaft that plunged a mile below the earth's surface.
Lawson, now 76, moved to Merrimac as a child with his father, a miner, and those among his 13 brothers and sisters who weren't already on their own. They lived in a two-bedroom company-owned house without electricity or running water. Known as "Cody" because of his childhood affection for Wild Bill Cody movies, Lawson went to work at age 14. At one point in his mining career he earned 65 cents per day.
"It was all we knew," he recalled. "When you lived in a mining town, that was your world."
Merrimac began to disappear in the mid-1930s when a strike closed the big mine permanently. The coal tipple and the company houses were dismantled and carried away piece-by-piece like hunks of coal on railroad car.
Lick Creek now trickles quietly past two vine-covered cement pillars, once the tipple's foundation and now Merrimac's only physical vestige of coal mining days.
Fred Lawson came back home on a balmy spring afternoon this week. In terms of distance it wasn't a long journey - he lives a few miles away on Prices Fork Road. Yet there were many years to span between then and now, and it was up to him to be the guide into the past.
Spry as a grasshopper, Lawson led Craig Lukesic, a cultural resource planner with the Virginia Department of Transportation, around the old mine and community site.
Lukesic was doing some field work to gather information about the Merrimac site's eligibility to be a historic district. His examination is part of the paperwork preliminary to construction of the Huckleberry Trail, a footpath and bikeway designed to follow the abandoned rail line that once served the Merrimac mine.
Montgomery County already has historic districts in locations such as Prices Fork, Riner, Shawsville and Lafayette. Locally, the designation is only ceremonial, recognizing historical significance without imposing zoning or building restrictions.
The state Department of Historic Resources wanted to know more about Merrimac before it gave the go-ahead to build the Huckleberry Trail. And Lawson provided a wealth of information, drawn from his memory, from maps and from his collection of old photographs.
"I remember so vividly Saturday nights, when they'd clear a room in the boarding house and have a square dance. That was really something, with music and dancing. People would bring a little homemade moonshine, too," he said.
Walking along the black cinders of the old rail line, stooping to pick up a shiny piece of coal, Lawson told of a vibrant community. Here was the night watchman's house; over there was the wide spot in Lick Creek where they watered the mules that hauled the coal hoppers out of the mines.
"I can remember all the good old days, running up and down the railroad track, getting a bag of candy at the commissary for Christmas. It was a good life, but it was hard. You had to live off very meager things, especially during the Depression."
The Lawson family - like many others - also was touched by the dark side of coal mining. Fred's brother James was badly burned in a 1938 gas explosion that killed two other miners at Merrimac. Temporarily blinded, he survived by crawling 1,700 feet out of the mine.
Despite the hardships, Lawson values the circumstances of his upbringing. He says it taught the value of hard work, of family and of community.
Lawson joined many other ex-miners on the work force of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. He married his Merrimac sweetheart and raised a family. After retiring in 1973, he served for a decade as one of the area's first magistrates.
Lately, he's been busily involved with the revival of interest in the coal mining as a member of the Montgomery County Coal Miners Heritage Committee. He was an important source of information for author Garland Proco's 1994 book, "Merrimac Mines: A Personal History." Also, Lawson will appear in an upcoming documentary video about the history of coal mining in Montgomery County produced by the miners' committee and WTOB of Blacksburg.
After being led by Lawson over the hills and through the hollows of eastern Price Mountain, Lukesic said he's convinced the Merrimac area merits a historic district designation, and will recommend that to the Department of Historic Resources.
It's possible that consideration of such a designation will delay the state's approval of the Huckleberry Trail, a project already beset by delays, Lukesic acknowledged.
In the long run, however, he says the historic district and the trail will complement one another. When completed, the trail will bring new visitors through the valley of the Merrimac mines along the old rail bed.
Near the site of the old tipple, an interpretive exhibit will tell the story of the community and the miners of days gone by.
That'll be a good thing, Fred Lawson says. But he'd really like to see the old mines reopened. "There's a lot of coal still in there."
by CNB