St. Charles, Virginia
Although St. Charles isn’t an official Ghost town, I thought it was important to document this coal mining town before any more structures are lost to time.
St. Charles. Virginia is located in Lee County in the southwest tip of the state. In the late 1800s coal mining exploded in the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. In the Lee & Wise County, Virginia area mining camps popped up like Bonny Blue & Benedict.
St. Charles was the main hub for at least 8 of these camps for mining including Bondurant Coal Company and Black Mountain Mining Company. The first train arrived in St. Charles in 1906 and the first bank opened the next year in 1907. In the early years coal companies paid their workers in Coal Scrip. These metal tokens could only be redeemed at the company store to purchase food or clothes or to pay rent for the housing provided by the company. This insured that the workers were always in debt to the company basically guaranteeing their loyalty to that coal company.
In 1907 St. Charles was named after combining the names of coal official Charles Bondurant and his office assistant whose surname was “St. John”, hence, St. Charles.
In 1908 a Post Office was established in St. Charles and is one of only a few entities still surviving in the town today.
By 1910 the combined population of St. Charles and the surrounding coal camps was about 1,000 people with reports that the population of all these camps grew to over 10,000 by 1928.
In 1913, before St. Charles even became a city, the first automobile was driven into town by Omer Reliford driving a National automobile.
In 1914 the town was incorporated by the Lee County, Virginia Circuit Court on January 10th. Also in that year a toll road was opened to Pennington Gap just 5 miles South.
In 1915 the town was electrified.
In 1924 St Charles became so busy and established that the mud streets were smoothed over with concrete, the first town in Lee County to have concrete roadways.
By 1928 the coalfields in the St. Charles area were producing 140 car loads of coal per day. With that much prosperity, 30 businesses were serving the public in St. Charles in the late 1920s.
Over the years St. Charles had 3 movie theatres, The Rainbow, The Virginian and Turner’s Station, a Kroger store, trucking companies, had its own Police and fire Departments, cafes, taxi cabs and a city bus, the Fry Furniture Company, Markets, a railroad depot, a beauty shop, a sewing factory, a hardware store, bars, restaurants, a hotel, a car dealership, laundry mats, bottling company, clothing stores, gas stations, dentist and doctors offices, a pharmacy, an auto parts store, a skating rink and a candy company. St. Charles had it all!
Unfortunately between the new mechanized mining equipment reducing the need for manual labor and the coal seams running out, the mines began shutting down one by one. In the 1950 census, St. Charles had 550 residents. By 2020 the population dropped to 72. When we were there in December of 2025, there were probably more Roosters in town than people.
In 2022, the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill to terminate the town’s charter, citing that nobody had run for town office in the past two elections.
Although only a shell of its former self, St. Charles has some very interesting stories to tell.
During WWII one of Rosie the Riverters was Kiley Parsons Long who was born in nearby Ely Pucketts Creek, Virginia just 2 miles southwest of St. Charles.
St. Charles once had a beautiful train depot right in town. Unfortunately it was purposely set on fire in 1976 by an arsonist and burned to the ground.
In the late 1970s the Bank of St. Charles was robbed by a local resident who was apprehended later that day. It was reported that it appeared he had a gun in his pocket during the robbery but apparently after the arrest it was determined he only had a banana. Some people now call this the Great Banana Bank Robbery of St. Charles. The bank closed in 1989.
Leila’s Cafe once a popular restaurant in town stood next to the post office. Unfortunately an arsonist set it on fire in 2017 and the entire building was lost.
In the late 1930s religious sects in the South began snake handling as a way of defying the devil and trusting that God will protect them from poisonous bites. In 1947 St. Charles was part of this bizarre ritual with Reverend Oscar Hutton of the Holiness Church being a familiar face during these events along the Kentucky/Virginia border. These events were eventual outlawed in some areas and the State Police would be sent in to arrest the violators.In 1977 the United Mine Workers of America conducted a nationwide strike which included the St. Charles area. The strike lasted 110 days and is widely seen as a concessionary contract. Workers lost their cradle-to-grave health and pension benefits, were forced to pay for part of their health care for the first time in 30 years, and were forced to resume working under a productivity bonus system eliminated in 1946. Meanwhile, the union’s primary goal—winning the right to strike over local issues—was never accomplished.
This high school was built in 1927 with 4 additional rooms added in 1928. and closed as a high school in 1970. The first graduating class was in 1930 with 7 students receiving their diplomas. The building is still used as an elementary school which includes the main office, the gym and classrooms.
St. Charles has experienced flooding from time to time but in 1977 the town saw several floods with the April 4th storm categorized as the worst storm in the past 100 years. Straight Creek which flows through the center of St. Charles flooded extensively although the main portion of the storm hit about 75 miles Northeast of town dumping 15.5 inches of rain over a 3 day period on the town of Jolo, West Virginia.
St. Charles had at least one bottling plant and possibly up to 3 plants. A bottling company owned by G. W. Barker bottled Orange Crush. This company may have also bottled Coco-Cola and Pepsi-Cola as there have been bottles found featuring both brands with “St. Charles” embossed on the bottle.
However the town isn’t dead. It’s just downsized from what it once was. We met some really nice people in town when we visited and there’s some really great people on the “St. Charles Virginia” Facebook page and the “Humble Beginnings in Lee County, Virginia Facebook page.
On top of that, this year they have car shows scheduled for St. Charles! Check them out!
GPS Location: 36º48’16.6”N 83º03’26.5”W
