The Ghost Town of THURMOND, WV - A Good Town Gone Bad

the ghost town of thurmond west virginia a railroad town settled in the late 1800s and thrived as long as the steam engines of the chesapeake and ohio railroad kept coming through it never had a big population but the town grew in reputation over the years for both better and for worse the town of thurmond was named for william dabney thurmond who first moved to the area in 1844 and led a gang of partisans in support of the confederacy during the american civil war after the war he was hired in 1873 for a surveying job likely by the chesapeake and ohio railroad his payment was 73 acres of land along the newly completed railroad which wound through the valley along the new river william thurman didn't do too much with the land right away he built a house but it wasn't until 1883 when a freight station was built here and then thurman became a stop on the cno railroad in 1888 a post office was established and a year later the cno built a bridge crossing the new river the bridge is not the same bridge that we see standing today the original bridge was damaged beyond repair in the town's great flood of 1908 and the one today was built around 1915. the construction of the original bridge across the river at thurmond in 1889 made the town into a junction which increased the amount of trains coming through here in a single day thurmond was growing in importance as the town began to sprawl out hotel thurman was built downtown and a passenger and freight depot built at the rail junction both in 1891. like the bridge standing today the rail depot at the junction is not the original depot that was built a great fire swept through the town in 1899 burning down the rail depot and several other downtown buildings including hotel thurmond this wasn't enough to slow the growth of thurmond however in fact it was in rebuilding from that fire that the town saw its greatest boom downtown thurman saw large new buildings springing up and instead of being made of flammable materials they were made primarily of stone and brick behind me is thurman's downtown district called commercial row there were several buildings all in a row here but the end of this one right here the end of the building actually represents the original circa 1900 end of the thurman town site so the town actually terminated here however the town grew over the years and actually enlarged now there are several buildings in addition that we're here on commercial road there's only three that survive today these were all built between 1900 and 1920 the first of which i believe was 1902. this first building here at the southeast end of the commercial row is known as the mankind cox building in 1904 dr j ward mankin bought this lot for four thousand dollars in 1904 money dr menken and his wife who was a pharmacist actually opened up a drugstore and a surgery on the first floor of this building i assume the upper floors were probably private residents or at least rooms that were rented out however mankind and his wife were the surgeons and doctors for four different mining companies in the area they would all come into town if they had any sort of issues and also a surgeon for the chesapeake and ohio railroad so if there was ever any issue on the line or on one of their trains and that train happened to be coming through they would stop here and offload whoever needed the help and bring them to dr mankin or his wife the goodman kincaid building was built in 1906 it was a dry goods building and its upper floors used for offices the first floor was home to several stores throughout its history and it was a popular hangout in thurmond during the later years of the town as it was home to mrs mcclure's restaurant until the 1940s the national bank of thurman is one of two banks that the town of thurman once had and beyond it would have been a wooden structure hotel thurmond hotel thurmond was a high-end hotel it was made of wood and built in 1902 the national bank of thurman operated out of the lobby of the hotel until 1917 when this building here was built to house the bank the facade of the building was actually rebuilt in 1923 and that is what you see today hotel thurman was rebuilt in 1902 after the great fire this new hotel had a movie theater where western films were a favorite 400 electric lights and steam heat and according to local legend the hotel was built so close to the railroad that guests could lean out the window and smack the trains as they went by or spit on them in 1904 the new rail depot was built that we see still standing today and in use the depot building which was operating around the clock served as both station and signal tower and the first floor also could store baggage featuring a ticketing office waiting rooms a restroom and even a lunch and news counter because of the serene river and the imposing mountains around it the town of thurman had taken on a second purpose of becoming a pleasure destination in the 1900s and 1910s there was a church there was even schooling though the high schoolers did have to commute out of town by rail every day to a high school elsewhere thurman was truly civilized captain thurman now getting up in age strongly opposed alcohol and gambling and created rules against partaking in them within the city limits in an effort to keep thurman a town of decency this created the demand for a place where people could go where they can be how best to put it indecent in steps this enterprising fellow named thomas mikel who opened a large hotel immediately across the bridge from thurmond called the dun glen hotel and it rivaled hotel thurmond this hotel had over 100 rooms the ballrooms featured jazz and swing bands and all the drinking and gambling a fella from thurman can handle with an unhealthy dose of prostitution thrown in passions ran high at the dunn glenn hotel killings became common and deaths from over indulgence led to the owners to install a mortuary in the hotel's basement the hotel long gone still to this day holds the record for hosting the world's longest running poker game lasting 14 years it would have gone on longer but the hotel burned down which interrupted the poker game even though the hotel drew so much more business to thurman boy did this hotel drag the town down it tarnished the reputation of thurmond in fact a conductor on the cno wrote a poem about the town although his description specifically seems to be referring to the dun glen hotel you have heard of the california gold rush way back in 49 but thurman on new river will beat it every time there's people here from everywhere the colored and the white some mother's son bites the dust almost every night on payday they come to thurmond with a goodly roll of bills some gamblers get their dough and they sneak back to the hills some though near return alas and they meet a thug we find them on the railroad track or in the thurmond jug where handy is the blackjack and the price of life is low at thurmond on new river along the c and o where men are often missing after the drinkers fight and the crime laid on the river and the trains that pass at night i really feel sorry for captain thurman all things considered who wanted to do what he believed would keep his town upstanding only to see that reputation destroyed by the shady hotel across the river captain thurman died in 1910 and his family sold the town site five years later however the town and the presence of the railroad only continued to grow the chesapeake and ohio railroad was the lifeblood of thurmond it kept it alive and gave the town a purpose and thurman had become one of the more important arteries along the rural parts of the main line in 1910 alone 75 000 passengers rolled through thurman along the c o and that same year thurman set the company's record for highest in revenue receipts at nearly 5 million dollars then or 150 million dollars today and handled around 4.3 million tons of freight today there are four railroad tracks here at thurmond there's one that comes into the valley and into the town and then it splits off into a siding right down there near the coal tower and then it's two tracks right here in fact trains over two miles long we had two come through that were over two miles long actually stop here and wait for the other ones to pass so that's those two lines they're owned by csx but amtrak also comes through here a couple days a week and amtrak actually does stop here at this depot there's no ticketing booth but you can get on or you can get off and i imagine that appeals quite a bit to hikers in fact i'm a little tempted to do that later this year this line over here this is a branching line this is owned by rnj once every couple of days an empty train goes up there into a coal mine and brings out a whole bunch of coal that came through here this morning and then this fourth line right here the one i'm standing on is deactivated in fact the rails sort of just fall apart down there which is why i'm standing here without a worry that's four lines at thurman's height there were 18 different lines coming through this town it was the only place along a 73-mile stretch of track where trains could stop and refuel dr mankin and his wife were the only real surgeons during this stretch should someone get injured along the line and it was decided to turn thurman into a repair stop where engines and equipment could be repaired a large engine house was built as a repair shop and service center for locomotives of the cno line in 1905 and it was significantly expanded in 1921. the building remained preserved until relatively recently when it burned down in 1993. i'd have loved to explore the remains of it for this video and fortunately we somewhat can it was explored and documented in these photos after its abandonment a crew office and counter the foreman's office with filing drawers pulled out and scattered around the room the engine shop with an old boiler still present [Music] the tool shack within the engine shop and having been built on uneven ground along the riverbank slope we can see in one of the photographs a supporting truss that held the shop up we're walking right now in what would have been the thurman rail depot there's two lines immediately here but spread out across this whole area there would have been several more lines splitting off from the main line and this would have been a work area in fact there would have been a massive engine warehouse to my left the right of the frame and this is one of the places where the chesapeake and ohio railroad would have set aside their locomotives or any other machinery that needed work and repairs before it can be returned back to service and that was actually one of the primary functions of the town of thurmond these concrete foundations down below behind me were actually the foundations of water towers that you can actually see in an old photograph from the other side of the river you could see two tall water towers right next to each other one of these massive water towers was capable of holding up to a hundred thousand gallons of water and another one built in 1927 could hold 210 000 gallons these water towers were not to supply the residents of the town but instead were for the steam engines down below if they were for the residents of the town they'd be quite higher up the hill now there's a train coming i gotta get that shot [Music] this coal tower was built by fairbanks and morse of chicago in 1922 for the chesapeake and ohio railroad coal would have been brought in the coal hoppers would come in on this track they would stop dump their coal right down into this chute and it will be collected down at the bottom crushed up and brought up onto a conveyor belt and then buckets would hoist it up through there into an overhead staging area and then you can you might be able to make out the slope of the ceiling in here when it's ready and when cars are ready to pick it up they'd be dumped out the sides and down into another hopper to be hauled away oh it's cold in here i'm not going down there that's a sheer drop i want to see what's left underneath of it of the receiver [Applause] oh it's freezing cold in there there we can actually see just barely the hoists these would scoop up the cold from the bottom down below and bring it up into the reserve area in the tower above this is one of the conveyor belts that's not quite a belt but it's a coal conveyance be dropped into here hold up there drop down below where it gets crushed up hey this thing just keeps on going well that's as far as i'm going however i did see another youtube video where one explorer did go all the way down to the bottom it's worth watching if you want to see what's down there i'll link to that below oh we got some multi-python fans in here [Music] those would be the coal shoots up there [Music] look at all these plates there's a ton of these here more than a ton of these i'm sure for those of you wondering these plates are these it would be placed down on top of the railroad ties and spikes would be driven into them and they would hold the rail down this piece right here is the perfect cross section to look at how this would be done the spike driven into it fastening the rail down there's no getting around it thurman really was as much of a railroad town as it gets in 1920 the population was nearly 300 and in 1930 the population was nearing 500 people and around 40 percent of these people worked for the railroad thurman saw a sharp decline right after the census was taken in 1930 the cd hotel on the other side of the river the dun glen hotel burned in 1930 and the first national bank of thurman failed in 1931. the community continued for a few more decades in a slow decline as long as the railroad needed its boilers serviced but in the 1950s the chesapeake and ohio railroad transitioned entirely to diesel engines rendering much of the works at thurman obsolete the town was no longer a destination and the hotel thurmond now called the lafayette burned down in 1963. the town was never completely abandoned however the population dwindled to the dozens in the 70s and 80s and by 2000 had dropped below 10 people at the time of filming this five people are reported to live here the chesapeake and ohio railroad eventually evolved into what is today csx and csx trains still pass through the ruins of thurmond frequently just in the time that we were there to film this video which was a single full day eight trains passed by us all csx freight trains some of them surpassed two miles in length according to a park ranger amtrak also stops here a couple times a week though there is no ticketing agent this stop is certainly popular with campers coming to visit the park behind the rail yard and commercial row are about two dozen houses going up the hillside for the residents of thurmond now almost completely abandoned let's explore what remains of these houses this house is the charles well house built in 1900 it was built by william thurman himself it is one and a half stories and has not changed much since it was built it's named for charles wells who came to thurmond with his wife dorothy in the 1920s to play with the dunglend hotel's danceband it was in fairly good shape 20 years ago as we can see in this surveyor's photograph but has deteriorated significantly since then the porch has collapsed and the wooden siding is falling off behind the house is an old shed that was opened so we took a quick look in let's see wait maybe maybe no that's screwed in that's not opening across from the charles wells house was another shed this one propped up on stilts over uneven ground this structure was open but looked dreadfully unstable so i didn't enter any farther than reaching the camera inside and standing in the doorway this is the may begosky house unfortunately i couldn't find anything about who she was the house appears to be structurally sound but the elements and vegetation are indeed taking their toll the side door was open so we entered with caution going down to a cellar yeah the basement of this building is simply a coal heater united states radiator corporation detroit michigan see it branching off into all the different rooms this one might not have been abandoned all too long ago so as soon as people would have entered the front door here they would have been met with a stairwell going up to the right a bathroom in the front with a bathtub and to the left probably a sitting or a dining area with a nice fireplace kitchen's been yanked out and gutted let's take a very quick peek upstairs [Music] skin care classes look at this skin care class workbook two workbook one are people up here learning to be beauty stylists in baby shoe an old belt that's old there's only been a small landing right here before you go into either the right or the left room these would have been bedrooms i might imagine they might have had a small table or something here there's a further crawlspace in there i can't i can't reach it [Music] okay the harold smith house looked to be well preserved but was boarded up entirely the wedzel young house built sirk in 1900 by william thurman not much is known here either but the structure is in better shape than most it was fully boarded up but i was able to peek the camera into a few of the cracks i know this is coming more from the point of view of american nostalgia but i'm thinking about what it must have been like to live here and you're constantly hearing the old steam whistles down there the locomotives shuntering back and forth and cold and passenger trains coming through here several times a day all to the background of the sound of the river down below that must have been such a a wonderful living that must have been i do know of course that the reality of that is well you're going to get tuberculosis you're all breathing in cold uh so there goes your lungs people are getting shot in the town all the time it's not actually the fine peaceful living that we might think of looking back the homer nicely and charles ashley house it was built late in the game actually the final house in thurmond in 1930. it was built for a cashier at the bank a man named joe stone joe was the brother-in-law of the bank's chief stockholder and was finished shortly before the bank failed this is a cold shoot this was a big coal town so coal probably was not all that hard to get and certainly not expensive you'd open this chute up dump your coal in it would go down to the basement and in there they would shovel it into the furnace and warm your house throughout the winter [Applause] the chimney's collapsed you see sunlight coming in window frames shattered on the ground [Applause] access to the attic up there [Music] [Applause] there's a radiator [Applause] [Applause] now i'm not gonna put my weight on that hot water tank homer nicely was born in 1922 and died only recently in 2019 i can't find any solid connection with him and the house however i can presume he lived here and perhaps was even born here the sydney ward house was built by william thurmond around 1900 again i unfortunately found almost nothing about this house this is the james humphrey house the date of construction is unknown but was before 1920. there isn't much known about this one but the basement was open and inside was a furnace the thurman union church was built in 1927 and was used during the town's heyday by baptists methodists and presbyterians there is nothing of significance left of the dun glenn hotel a national park service facility has been built on the remains and supposedly incorporates some of the hotel's original foundations if you do visit thurman be cautious many of the buildings are unstable on top of that this is an historic site that deserves care and respect the park service which began restoring the town in 2003 is continuing to put effort into restoring and maintaining the park and the buildings and the historical elements here and i hope that this ghost town lasts for future generations to come and see and explore if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe i'm finally starting a patreon account that covers both my ghost town and maritime history videos please keep an eye out for an announcement video about that later this week or if you're tuning into this video after that has already been published there will be a link to sign up to that patreon in the description below thanks for watching

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 489,348

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Id: yBKOIRxeNX0

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/CloveredInBees]

Not sure if this had been shared here yet, so I figured I'd post it. The presenter does a great job discussing the history of the town and documenting its current state.

[u/Matt_WVU]

This is most old coal mining areas in southern WV.

[u/trickbear]

This is definitely worth watching, lots of information I’d never heard before.

[u/keyjan]

Very interesting!