GALLERY

This page is a work in progress and we will be adding photos and other tidbits as we continue to develop this website.

Dante WPA Sewing Project

West Dante, Virginia

http://newdeal.feri.org/attic/003.htm Source: Dante History Project, Courtesy of Mae Dingus Culbertson

The WPA West Dante Sewing Room made clothing for children and adults which was distributed through the Dickenson County Welfare Department. They worked in an old warehouse which was donated by Carter Phillips, a local businessman. This building is now used by the Phillips Chapel Baptist Church.

One of the women's first projects was to make their uniforms. The building they used had been a church, owned by Carter Phillips, a local businessman and community leader, who "brought the WPA to West Dante."

All of the women lived in West Dante except for Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Jessee, who lived several miles away. They walked to and from work, taking a short-cut through a two-mile long Clinchfield railroad tunnel.

Here's another shot taken at the Virginia City mine.

Virginia City Miners

Just West of St. Paul in Virginia City

Source: Courtesy of ???

Horses, mules and other sturdy animals were often used to haul miners and their equipment into the mines and haul coal out. These animals worked hard for their living and were treasured by the miners.

DID YOU KNOW...

It was common for miners in the coal towns to be paid on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. This meant a new employee might work as long as one to two months, depending upon when in the month he was hired, before getting his first paycheck. A miner could draw upon his outstanding wages in company scrip that could be used only at the company store. This scrip came in the form of tokens in denominations from 1 cent to 5 dollars.

Paper coal scrip was also issued. Unlike the brass, copper, nickel and aluminum tokens, the paper scrip was not re-used once it was spent at the company store. Coal company scrip continued to be used throughout the Appalachian coal regions into the early 1950s. Since scrip could only be spent at the company store the miners had to pay whatever the company charged . Some miners sold their scrip at less than face value in order to obtain hard currency to use outside the company store.