Virginia's Black Nuggets Await Pick

Old Dominion Awake to Possibilities if Her Long-abandoned Coal Mines Again Become Only Tidewater Field as Scientists Predicts

By Robert C. Harper

Great cities have been developed through the discovery near by of gold, silver, iron, coal and oil. Richmond may double its population within 15 years if Mother Earth yields the coal which outside capitalists believe can be extracted from the Chesterfield coal basin.

It was in Chesterfield that the first coal mined in North America was produced in 1750, according to mining engineers, and Mother Earth may yet give the royal nod to Richmond and convert it into one of the wonder industrial centers of the New World.

Twenty years ago the late Meriwether Jones, outstanding Richmond mining engineer thoroughly familiar with Richmond coal basin, reduced to writing a remark which may prove to be prophetic.

"I can't advise an engineer to go into this field with a promotion company," he wrote in 1916, "but with parties who wish to go into the business of mining coal with a capital necessary to carry it on regardless of the size of the operation, this field is waiting for some such company." Citing numerous failures resulting there, Mr. Jones said:

"I have given these long accounts to show their failures were due either to lack of proper methods, lack of capital or to the operators not properly informing themselves of what to do. None of these failures has been due to the coal not existing, but to causes which, if pursued in other undertakings, would have produced failure."

Mr. Jones said "our work developed one and a quarter million tons of coal," and Federal geologists as far back as 1897 estimated the entire Richmond coal basin might yield a billion tons of free-burning soft coal.

What Coal"Dreams" May Mean to Richmond

Before reviewing the historical background of coal mining in Richmond area, it might be interesting to ponder the possibilities inherent in successful resumption of coal mining operations at Richmond's doorstep. If the "dreams" of the latest promoters achieve fruition, some of the results would be:

Electric power could be furnished at a lower rate.

Jobs would be provided for thousands of miners.

Industrial plants galore could be brought here because of the cheapness of coal, thus creating new jobs for workers.

Building of homes would be stimulated.

Production of coal on a large scale would bring about speedy completion of the James River deepening and widening project.

In short, Richmond would become the only spot in North or South America having a tidewater coal basin 11 or 12 miles from shipping facilities.

Until such a dream materializes, or mining operations on a large scale actually are begun, the current steps toward reviving an industry which contributed to Richmond's early growth must, for the purposes of this article, prove the medium for recounting the wealth which has been dug out of the Chesterfield basin, and the considerable sums lost there in search of additional wealth.

Meriwether Jones' admirable treatise was penned in 1916. Earlier writers devoted articles to the story of the Richmond coal basin. In his "Story of American Coals" W. J. Nicolls said mines were opened and worked on the James River near Richmond in 1750, and for a number of years not only Richmond by Philadelphia and New York obtained supplies of coal from these mines. According to Parker, this preceded by 19 years the first reliable record of the use of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania.

Professor Thomas Leonard Watson of the University of Virginia in his work "Mineral Resources in Virginia" published in 1907 in connection with the Jamestown Exposition, added this connection: "There is, however, no record of the amount of coal produced prior to 1822 when, according to Taylor in his 'Statistics of Coal,' 54,000 short tons were mined."

A Billion Tons May be in Area

Quoting from reports submitted by Professors Shaler and Woodworth, based on a detailed geological survey of the area and published in the United States Geological Survey for 1897-98, Professor Watson sets forth the extent of the Chesterfield coal bed as follows:

"On the eastern margin, where the beds are best placed to be exposed in natural sections and where they have been most extensively worked in former years, there is a fair presumption that the deposits are substantially continuous.

"When all the evidence is weighed, it leads to the conclusion that the central portions of the area most likely contain coal beds in something like the measure that they are exhibited in the margin. Leaving out of the reckoning the southwestern portion as possibly lacking the coal-bearing beds, there remains an area of about 150 square miles (Henrico, Chesterfield, Goochland, Powhatan and Amelia) where the deposits may reasonably be expected to occur.

"Although the information obtained from the existing and the old workings show the coal to vary greatly in thickness, and some of the beds much in quality, it is not an unreasonable estimate that the average thickness of the workable material is 12 feet. Allowing for occasional strips of coal which have been crushed by faulting and for loss of treatment in the breaker, the yield per acre may be roughly estimated at 1,000 tons per foot in depth or a total 12,000 tons. The total area which is reckoned as most probably coal bearing (150 square miles by 640 acres) equals 96,000 acres which, on the basis of yield above adopted, would give a total content of 1,152,000,000 tons. This reckoning, it should be said, rest altogether on probabilities.

(Concluded next Sunday)

[Note: Part 2 not available]