Buchanan County, Virginia is one of the most remote, mountainous and rugged parts of the Old Dominion, but the coal from Buchanan County is among the best in the world. Although it's deep underground, the world famous Pocahontas Three Seam underlies most of the county, but the mountain-building process that occurred millions of years ago, formed other low sulfur, metallurgical coals as well. The commercial development of the southwestern Virginia southern and West Virginia dates to 1883 and the arrival of the Norfolk & Western railway in Pocahontas, Virginia, but the powerful N&W didn't penetrate the Buchanan County coalfield until the construction of the first N&W Buchanan Branch in 1931. By 1935, the N&W had extended its operations along the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River to Garden Creek and Dismal Creek, but it would take nearly another decade for the railroad to provide coal haulage transportation into the eastern Kentucky coalfields centered near Pikeville, Kentucky by 1945.
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