Communities - Economic Foundations

Southwest Virginia began to be settled about 200 years ago when farmers migrated across the Appalachian Valley from the Atlantic Coast. Records indicate that early settlers were interested in the natural abundance of grassland and water, and these people soon made agriculture the backbone of the region.

Agriculture remained an important part of Dickenson County into the twentieth century. Until the mid 1930's, over half the land in the county continued to be actively farmed, although very few of the commodities produced were sold outside the county. The farms were devoted mainly to self-sufficient activities.

Natural resources, such as lumber, were rarely sold out of the area. The rugged terrain and the lack of adequate transportation made it difficult to ship products out of the region, and coal was mined only on a small scale for local use.

In 1915, the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway opened a rail line into the county and, for the first time, people had access to the markets in the east.

With the completion of the railroad, the lumber and coal companies, which had purchased mineral rights during the late 1800's, moved in and began to develop their rich holdings.

Between 1910 and 1920, Dickenson County’s population increased 47.2 percent as people moved in to work for the new coal mining and lumber companies.

During this time, the mining towns of Trammel, Clinchco, and Splashdam were established along the railroad, and the communities of McClure and Fremont were created as extensive timber operations began close by. The county continued to grow until the 1950's at which time the mining companies began to incorporate automation into the mining process. Also, the lumber companies exhausted the timber supply and ceased operations. The resulting loss of jobs in these two major industries forced many people to leave Dickenson County. As the coal industry continued to decline during the 1960's, Dickenson County’s population continued to decrease.

Since the county’s economy is so closely tied to the production of coal, it is expected that any near term economic fluctuations will parallel conditions in the coal industry. During the past twenty years, the development of new mining technology and heavy earth moving equipment has made it possible to remove coal by strip or surface mining, and the newly developed longwall mining methods have proven to be efficient means of coal extraction. With the incorporation of these modern techniques, mining companies have increased coal production using fewer employees; results have been high unemployment for Dickenson County.