The year was 1742, and the nation was about to discover coal. The location was none other than Boone County, West Virginia.

Most everyone who resides in this area of West Virginia knows the story of how John Peter Salley, near Peytona, found coal and how Boone County was formed from Cabell, Kanawha and Logan counties in 1847.

What many may have forgotten over the years is that most of the first Boone County miners were from other countries – Ireland, Poland and Italy.

They were brought to these southern coalfields by railroad cars and were the first settlers of our small communities.

Perhaps it was their desire to live with people who spoke their native languages, or prepared and ate the same food – for whatever reason, these first coal miners congregated in even smaller groups within their small coal mining communities.

Take the coal-mining town of Prenter, W.Va., as an example.

The Prenter graveyard has very few tombstones standing, but one of them lists a death in 1893, one year after the settlement of neighboring town, Seth, in 1892.

Today, when you ask people in the area where to find Prenter, you are immediately told that there are several “parts” to the ten-mile stretch down Prenter Road that make up Prenter Hollow.

There is Hopkins Fork, they’ll tell you, at the beginning of the Hollow, near Route 3. Hopkins Fork was named after a guy named Hopkins who worked on a surveying crew, and has two other names - “Shadeed” and “Jew Hollow.”

This is because the original store there was owned by the Shadeed family who, because they were from Lebanon, were believed to be Jewish. History books do not tell us what religion the Shadeed family practiced, but the reference of “Jew Hollow” still remains a part of Prenter among area residents to this day.

Then, there are the “camps” of Prenter. Today, residents can point out where Camp 5, 2, and 3 were located, but have more difficulty telling you where Camp 1 and 4 were located.

Most of the original houses in Prenter Main camp were constructed by Rock Castle Lumber Company, which was owned by Lackawanna Coal and Lumber Company. They were built of local timber, which was milled at a sawmill just below Cabot, which was called Camp 2.

All of these original houses were constructed before 1935 when Appalachian Power took over the power service to the houses.

Many people may not remember, or be aware, that in 1927, the state legislature passed a law to provide for the building of a sanitarium to house those infected with tuberculosis. This was constructed on top of Williams Mountain, nearby.

In 1938, the Charleston Gazette reported that the Red Parrot Coal Company, the reason for Prenter’s existence, was opening a new tipple, providing 500 new jobs.

“There are no accommodations for more residents in Prenter and nearby hamlets, so practically all the additional help must be hauled in and out over a road that, in best weather, provides 10 miles of bumps from Seth, where it departs from Route 3… the large amount of other traffic to this, the largest mine in Boone County and soon to be the largest on the C&O Railroad,” the newspaper states.

The Federal Coal Company laid the Seth to Prenter railroad track. With its arrival, the need for a town name became necessary.

W.B. Prenter, of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, decided to name the town after himself.

By 1947, Prenter had a movie theatre that was also used by basketball teams and other school activities throughout the year. Civic buildings were constructed throughout the hollow, from a one-room schoolhouse to local Boy Scout house.

In 1948, Red Parrot Coal Company brochures show a model community and from all reports, a small community at the heart of an underground mine was thriving.

The residents of Prenter were resourceful and used their resources to their advantage.

Under Dr. W.V. Wilkerson, who resided in Prenter in 1947, there was a health and accident center that was described at the time as “such as is seldom afforded outside of full-fledged cities. His X-ray apparatus alone entitled him the envy of county practitioners.”

As coal companies merged or sold their businesses, so too did the people come and go who lived in Prenter.

According to records maintained by area residents on a community website, Augers began operating in the area in the late 1950s.

In 1973, Armco acquired the properties from Big Mountain Coals, Inc.

Peabody Coal Co. acquired the Big Mountain properties from Armco, Inc. in Feb. 1984.

The name change to Pine Ridge Coal Company came in 1994. By summer of 2001, Pine Ridge was producing 9,000 tons of coal per day, six days per week.

Today, the town of Prenter remains in the news not so much for the numbers of jobs it is creating, or the tonnage of coal it extracts from the earth, though these numbers are significantly high.

What has Prenter in the news of late is the lack of a safe, drinkable water supply.

While many area residents prepared their Thanksgiving feasts in the comfort of a kitchen with clean water, the residents along Prenter hollow have been lugging jugs of water to and from area churches, such as Amazing Grace Church, and community centers, such as Racine Community Center.

Simple household tasks like boiling water to make pasta, taking a bath, cleaning clothes or cleaning the floor are made more complex with unsafe water in the wells and homes of the Prenter communities.

"Having tested household water in the community of Prenter, West Virginia, I am convinced now more than ever that freshwater supplies need to be delivered to

communities PRIOR to large scale mining, and particularly, underground injection of coal slurry. Once again, nearly all of the wells in this community exceeded water quality standards for metals.” writes Dr. Benjamin M. Stout, III, professor of biology at Wheeling Jesuit University.

Dr. Stout went on to write in his findings of water samples taken in the Prenter communities, “The tragedy in Prenter and other Appalachian communities is that folks had good water, then over a period of time their water gradually degraded to the point where it is obviously not fit for bathing much less drinking and cooking.



During that period of degradation, from good to obviously unfit, they have been unknowingly exposed to high levels of metals that have well-known human health consequences."



In its history, the vitality of the Prenter community was based on a natural resource – coal. It would seem that the future vitality of Prenter relies just as heavily on another natural resource – water.

Contact Joanie Newman at jnewman@coalvalleynews.com or call 304-369-1165.