Coketown
"COKETOWN" A RECONSTRUCTED HISTORY
By Douglas Waugh
Dr Brooks, Instructor
12/2/85
For the former residents of Coketown……
Coketown. The name becomes more vague and meaningless as time progresses and will continue to do so until its historic significance eventually vanishes. In ten years Coketown will be less than a faded memory to most, and in twenty perhaps it will be entirely forgotten, as those who remember it best will no longer be alive to carry on its story. The fact is, few northern panhandlers can say very little, if anything at all, on the topic of Coketown. Quite undramatically, as most of these people recollect, the small sector of land allotted to 20 families by Wheeling Steel in the early 1920's evolved, existed, and died within a span of some 40 odd years….and that's that. What they fail to recognize is that it did have a history, and that it was respected enough to secure its own spot on most of the northern panhandle and county maps released before 1960 and even released today. By relating the following information, I hope to redefine Coketown's existence and history for those who know little or nothing of it, and to establish a sense of worth which the small burrough can take to its grave. Douglas Waugh From a prospectus for Dr. Brooks
Introduction
Modern industry had forged its way into the Upper Ohio Valley by the early to mid 1800's, and by the turn of the nineteenth century numerous industrial establishments began cropping up along the Ohio River in what we today call the Steubenville/Follansbee area. Among the more noted of these establishments included the La Belle Iron Works in Steubenville, The Jefferson Glass Company in Follansbee (1907), The early Follansbee Steel plants (1904, 1906, & 1907), and the Koppers Industrial Products Division, also in Follansbee (1914). (1: 30 & 33)
The advent of this new industrial growth brought about the creation of several mill and mining towns and housing projects south of Steubenville on the West Virginia side of the river. Follansbee is a prime example of such an excursion, having been established between 1902 and June of 1906 (its charter date) by Benjamin J Follansbee and the Brooke County Improvement Company as a town originally intended to house employees of the Follansbee mill and other industries in the immediate vicinity and their families. Other such towns included Power, Windsor Heights, and Beech Bottom, all created by the Beech Bottom Power Company in West Virginia about ten to fifteen miles south of Follansbee. (2: 76-8, 80).
Between 1910 and 1915 the La Belle Iron Works Corporation, realizing its need for an immediate resource to efficiently operate its Steubenville plant, approached the Wheeling Steel corporation's Ohio County branch and expressed the economic benefits that a coke-producing plant in the immediate Follansbee vicinity could provide for local industries. If Wheeling Steel would erect such a plant, it implied, not only would La Belle itself have direct access to a coke source to drive its iron blast furnaces, but the other major steel corporations such as Weirton and Follansbee would benefit as well. (4: Care)
The Wheeling Steel organization, already having plans on the table for the construction of an electrically-driven sheet mill at Beech Bottom, decided in favor of this idea and agreed to establish a coke-making division near the Koppers plant in Follansbee; however, it has not been confirmed that its decision to build this plant north of Follansbee was directly influenced by La Belle's need for a closer and therefore less expensive access to the vital iron-making resource. Regardless of its motives, The Wheeling Steel Corporation opened its new plant in 1917, envisioning the same success and prosperity as the other local industries. (2: 138) (3)
A need for housing
The new Wheeling Steel Coke Plant immediately encountered a problem common to plants in rural areas such as Follansbee. Wheeling Steel's hierarchy, like many officials from the other plants was forced to hire labor from out-of-town because of a shortage of local employees. One must remember that Follansbee had a relatively small population in the early 1900's, and that most of its inhabitants were already employed by other forms of occupation (ie…mills, glass-making, farming, etc…). In short, the labor demand in the immediate Follansbee area exceeded the available labor force. This, compiled with the cost and time factors of transporting out-of-town employees daily to and from work, placed the plant at a disadvantage. (4: Care, Pugh)
Beset with these problems, Wheeling Steel confronted the La Belle Iron Works Corporation, seeking to quickly obtain nearby land for the building of company lodgings to house its out-of-town workers and their families. Not only would such a plan solve Wheeling Steel's labor shortage, but it would also offer incoming employees an adequate and inexpensive housing opportunity. La Belle was more than happy to oblige. The company owned several large tracts of forest and grassland across the river which, because of their location, were useless, and recognizing the new coke plant'' need for land and housing, it dealt these plots to Wheeling Steel at a reasonable cost. (3)
In all probability, money was only a slight factor in La Bell's decision to sell, but the crux of the transaction was more of a "my brother's keeper" policy that a means of obtaining a financial stronghold; the bottom line was that La Belle needed Wheeling Steel's coke, and it wanted to do all in its power to keep the new plant happy and thriving. (4: Care, Pugh)
So, on a policy of trust, La Belle sold numerous plots of land to Wheeling Steel; these transactions were assumed to have been "policies of trust" because Wheeling Steel began constructing a housing project in 1921, and the actual deed of sale for the land wasn't signed by both parties until April 10, 1923. The reason for this two-year lapse of time remains uncertain.. * (3: Deed)
Coketown is born
Perhaps the most important plot of land purchased by Wheeling Steel from La Belle was a strip roughly 600 feet long, just east of the plant and north of new Follansbee. If not the most important piece of land, it was probably the most prominent to citizens in the Upper Ohio Valley and the most memorial to Follansbee and Steubenville residents. It was here that Coketown was born. (3 & 4)
The Wheeling Steel Corporation hauled 20 prefabricated houses onto the newly purchased strip, and completed the La Belle Iron Works Detail Layout* in less than six weeks (see map 2). The plant management immediately hired twenty out-of-town employees to fill the vacant homes, and therein they completed the establishment of Coketown. Some have argued that the 20 houses were transported from an abandoned mining town near Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, and were reconstructed on the newly acquired property, but Wheeling Steel and the majority of former Coketown residents maintain that the buildings were new. (4: Care, Pugh, Stift, Columbo, Columbo, & Stoaks)
*It has been asserted that because the deed wasn't signed until 1923, that La Belle, by law, had to assume responsibility for the housing construction. This is reinforced by the fact that Coketown's proposed layout was not entitled "Wheeling Steel's Detailed Layout" but "La Belle's Detail Layout". (refer to map 2)
The new employees paid for their new lodgings through an $18.00 deduction from each of their paychecks. The plant management increased this deduction to $23.00 as the Ohio Valley began to recover from the Depression, and again they raised it to amounts of $35.00 and $48.00 in the 1940's and 50's to accommodate inflation rates. This deduction covered all utility expenses except electricity, which was a very minimal extra expense. The plant assumed all responsibility for repairs and maintenance of the buildings, but employee families obligingly accepted some basic maintenance duties. (4: Columbo, Columbo, Stift)
The layout of Coketown
Coketown was arranged into four rows of five houses each, with "row one" being the northern most line of houses, "row two," the next line, and so on, moving southward. The porches of the first row faced northward; those of the second south; the third, north; and those of the final row, south. The plant apparently arranged the rows this way so that no house would face the rear of another, and more importantly, to more efficiently accommodate the proposed dual sewage pipeline system (of which rows one and two would share one line and rows three and four would share the other). Combination out houses/ coal storage sheds were erected between rows one and two and between rows three and four, each line of five running parallel to the two sewage pipes running east to west (there was one out house for every two houses). (4: Columbo) (3: see map 2)
Being that the small town rested upon a gradual decline (from east to west), draining ditches were conveniently dug along each row of houses so that water could drain, along with the sewage, into the main sewage pipeline. (4: Pugh) (3: map 2)
The town obtained its electricity from a power line stretching north to south, installed by the Monongahela West Penn Power Company to serve the entire northern panhandle of West Virginia. Coketown residents even had convenient access to a small trolley system and station, and also to the main telephone line supplied by Bell's telephone service in Follansbee. )2: 140 & 141) (3: Map 2)
Quite remarkably, in the time span of less than six weeks, the Wheeling Steel Corporation managed to erect a mini-modern town, and by establishing this independent dwelling, it staked its claim as another of the industrial giants in the northern panhandle. (4: Care)
Life in Coketown
There was nothing remarkable or alluring about newly developed Coketown; Wheeling Steel wasn't exactly concerned with the project's beauty, but rather with its practicality. The houses were identical in appearance, "shoebox" constructions, 30 x 22 feet each, with each having a living room, small kitchen, and two bedrooms (Coketown didn't have modern, built-in bathrooms until the 1940's). However nonelegant this small housing project may have appeared to outsiders, its occupants soon settled and began to recognize it as home, and the members of these 20 families soon established a closely-knitted relationship. (4: Columbo)
Most Coketown residents recalling the town agree that a tie between the 20 families was unavoidable in the early days of the establishment. Most of the families were new to the Follansbee area and didn't know many people in the surrounding towns, and although they used a trolley car as transportation to neighboring Steubenville and Follansbee, these families found it much more convenient to remain at home and befriend their immediate neighbors then to seek friendship elsewhere. This does not imply that Coketown residents had no friends or ties in these other towns, but rather these residents kept mainly to themselves, that is until advanced transportation, the advent of public schooling in Follansbee, and the expansion of neighboring towns bridged the gap between seclusion and social interaction. In the 1920's the men worked the mill daily and were forced to know each other, and geography basically brought the children of Coketown together, and where happy friendships existed, so did a general repor amongst the mothers of these children. (4)
As times progressed and paths between Follansbee and Steubenville began to widen with the formation of Sinclair Ave (now Route 2) and the beginning of an independent bus system from Wellsburg to the Steubenville Bridge by the Mewha family in 1935, the people of Coketown started becoming interchangeable in a sense and sometimes synonymous with Follansbee citizens. Tradition still kept Coketowners together, but then such common ground as Follansbee High School, Wheeling Steel's expanded Coke plant (at which more Follansbee men then worked), and the Follansbee's commercial mainstreet began to draw the two populations together. (4)
The Mewha bus, also instrumental in this interaction process, was an important link between Wellsburg, Follansbee, Coketown, and Steubenville. After the depression, rugged Sinclair Avenue between Coketown and the Steubenville Bridge was bricked and even paved in spots, and the bus made several daily runs from Coketown to Wellsburg and vice-versa. Sinclair Avenue was eventually paved with the rest of Route 2, leading southward to Wheeling, and the entire stretch of highway became basically the modern Route 2 we know today. (4)
Coketown, although not possessing the commercial genre' of a Follansbee or Steubenville, did produce a few memorable social facilities of its own. Places such as the Red Horse Tavern, a speakeasy opened by McCreary and Jones after prohibition) later changed to the Red Flamingo under the Banfis), and Young's Diner, an abandoned trolley car converted into a makeshift restaurant just south of the housing complex, were generally associated with Coketown. Likewise George Y Dean's Tea Company, located in the Coketown landlord's farmhouse (marked by an "X" on map 2), and Calick's Gas Station (later Durham's), a candy source for Coketown's youth, just behind the farmhouse, were other examples of the small town's enterprises. Amusingly enough, Coketown even boasted its own fire department, a small fire hose on wheels, accessible just adjacent to houses 10 and 15 of rows two and three. (4)
The children of Coketown were as innocent and inseparable as in any others their age in the 40's and 50's. The boys played football in an uneven field just north of their houses, while the girls, using collected bottle and box labels from empty grocery containers, set up a simulated store and created their own local economy. At nightfall all of the kids would return to their homes, blackened by the sooty air, to soak in a scalding tub until their skin regained its original color. (4: Columbo)
Bathing and washing clothes were two facets of the Coketown repertoire which could not be neglected. Wives would wash and rewash laundry daily to keep a step ahead of the filthy mist constantly circulating throughout the town. Children sometimes bathed twice a day, and a soiled husband, returning from a day's work at the plant, was "immediately hikes to the tub to strip and receive his scrubbing". (4: Columbo) Women today complain of having to dust their furniture once a week, when in contrast, Coketown women dusted twice daily! Combating the filth of Coketown became commonplace to the house occupants, but in no way did it detract from their intrinsic happiness or their standard middle-class respectability (most residents of the Upper Ohio Valley then and today are predominately middle-class). (4) Demise
So, this was Coketown, and such was its story. Supposedly temporary housing development, having been given a life expectancy of five to ten years, had somehow survived its fourth decade by 1960, and time and weather had savagely beaten this small establishment during that forty-year-span, and the buildings were visibly in need of drastic repair; the houses were deteriorating more rapidly than Wheeling Steel could mend them. Soon it became evident that these old and weakening houses wouldn't endure many more years, and Wheeling Steel finally announced plans to condemn the town as each house was vacated. (4)
The corporation issued no eviction notices, nor did they force any of the families to vacate their dwellings by any other means. The people merely foresaw the eventual fate of their beloved neighborhood and one-by-one began seeking alternate housing in Follansbee and other nearby areas; as each family moved out, its house was destroyed. The families began moving between 1963 & 1964 approximately, and Wheeling Steel condemned the last of Coketown by 1968 or 1969. A once-thriving section of the Follansbee/Steubenville area, having had a personality of its own, quietly crept towards its demise and eventually became just another passing triviality, to go unmentioned in all recorded historical documents to follow. (4)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REFERENCE MATERIAL
1) Diamond Anniversary: History of Follansbee. Eura Cox Ulrich McIntosh, Ed. (Follansbee City Building, Follansbee) 1984
2) Caldwell, Nancy L A History of Brooke County. (Brooke County Historical Society, Wellsburg) 1976
3) Cumulative data, compiled maps, and deed information supplied by the Brooke County Courthouse in Wellsburg, WV, the Follansbee City Building in Follansbee, WV, and the WV State Road Department in Wellsburg, WV
4) A compilation of extensive interviews with several former occupants of Coketown and individuals who were in some way connected with Coketown
Grover Pugh, former resident, now head engineer of Follansbee sewage
Shirley & William Columbo, former residents
Tom Care, former head of payroll department at old Wheeling Steel
John Stift, oldest living resident, born 1906
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE, WITHOUT WHOSE HELP I COULDN'T HAVE COMPILED THIS REPORT:
Ray Stoaks (city manager of Follansbee), Grover Pugh, Shirley (Mayhew) Columbo, Bill Columbo, Vivian Young (tax assessor of Brooke County), Tom Care, John Stift, Janet Piccirillo, Matz Malone (Steubenville Herald Star staff photographer and writer), Follansbee City Building, Brooke County Courthouse, and the WV State Road Department.
And a very special thanks to my father, Roy "Carlo" Waugh, for his invaluable legwork and "connections."
Dr Brooks, Instructor
12/2/85
For the former residents of Coketown……
Coketown. The name becomes more vague and meaningless as time progresses and will continue to do so until its historic significance eventually vanishes. In ten years Coketown will be less than a faded memory to most, and in twenty perhaps it will be entirely forgotten, as those who remember it best will no longer be alive to carry on its story. The fact is, few northern panhandlers can say very little, if anything at all, on the topic of Coketown. Quite undramatically, as most of these people recollect, the small sector of land allotted to 20 families by Wheeling Steel in the early 1920's evolved, existed, and died within a span of some 40 odd years….and that's that. What they fail to recognize is that it did have a history, and that it was respected enough to secure its own spot on most of the northern panhandle and county maps released before 1960 and even released today. By relating the following information, I hope to redefine Coketown's existence and history for those who know little or nothing of it, and to establish a sense of worth which the small burrough can take to its grave. Douglas Waugh From a prospectus for Dr. Brooks
Introduction
Modern industry had forged its way into the Upper Ohio Valley by the early to mid 1800's, and by the turn of the nineteenth century numerous industrial establishments began cropping up along the Ohio River in what we today call the Steubenville/Follansbee area. Among the more noted of these establishments included the La Belle Iron Works in Steubenville, The Jefferson Glass Company in Follansbee (1907), The early Follansbee Steel plants (1904, 1906, & 1907), and the Koppers Industrial Products Division, also in Follansbee (1914). (1: 30 & 33)
The advent of this new industrial growth brought about the creation of several mill and mining towns and housing projects south of Steubenville on the West Virginia side of the river. Follansbee is a prime example of such an excursion, having been established between 1902 and June of 1906 (its charter date) by Benjamin J Follansbee and the Brooke County Improvement Company as a town originally intended to house employees of the Follansbee mill and other industries in the immediate vicinity and their families. Other such towns included Power, Windsor Heights, and Beech Bottom, all created by the Beech Bottom Power Company in West Virginia about ten to fifteen miles south of Follansbee. (2: 76-8, 80).
Between 1910 and 1915 the La Belle Iron Works Corporation, realizing its need for an immediate resource to efficiently operate its Steubenville plant, approached the Wheeling Steel corporation's Ohio County branch and expressed the economic benefits that a coke-producing plant in the immediate Follansbee vicinity could provide for local industries. If Wheeling Steel would erect such a plant, it implied, not only would La Belle itself have direct access to a coke source to drive its iron blast furnaces, but the other major steel corporations such as Weirton and Follansbee would benefit as well. (4: Care)
The Wheeling Steel organization, already having plans on the table for the construction of an electrically-driven sheet mill at Beech Bottom, decided in favor of this idea and agreed to establish a coke-making division near the Koppers plant in Follansbee; however, it has not been confirmed that its decision to build this plant north of Follansbee was directly influenced by La Belle's need for a closer and therefore less expensive access to the vital iron-making resource. Regardless of its motives, The Wheeling Steel Corporation opened its new plant in 1917, envisioning the same success and prosperity as the other local industries. (2: 138) (3)
A need for housing
The new Wheeling Steel Coke Plant immediately encountered a problem common to plants in rural areas such as Follansbee. Wheeling Steel's hierarchy, like many officials from the other plants was forced to hire labor from out-of-town because of a shortage of local employees. One must remember that Follansbee had a relatively small population in the early 1900's, and that most of its inhabitants were already employed by other forms of occupation (ie…mills, glass-making, farming, etc…). In short, the labor demand in the immediate Follansbee area exceeded the available labor force. This, compiled with the cost and time factors of transporting out-of-town employees daily to and from work, placed the plant at a disadvantage. (4: Care, Pugh)
Beset with these problems, Wheeling Steel confronted the La Belle Iron Works Corporation, seeking to quickly obtain nearby land for the building of company lodgings to house its out-of-town workers and their families. Not only would such a plan solve Wheeling Steel's labor shortage, but it would also offer incoming employees an adequate and inexpensive housing opportunity. La Belle was more than happy to oblige. The company owned several large tracts of forest and grassland across the river which, because of their location, were useless, and recognizing the new coke plant'' need for land and housing, it dealt these plots to Wheeling Steel at a reasonable cost. (3)
In all probability, money was only a slight factor in La Bell's decision to sell, but the crux of the transaction was more of a "my brother's keeper" policy that a means of obtaining a financial stronghold; the bottom line was that La Belle needed Wheeling Steel's coke, and it wanted to do all in its power to keep the new plant happy and thriving. (4: Care, Pugh)
So, on a policy of trust, La Belle sold numerous plots of land to Wheeling Steel; these transactions were assumed to have been "policies of trust" because Wheeling Steel began constructing a housing project in 1921, and the actual deed of sale for the land wasn't signed by both parties until April 10, 1923. The reason for this two-year lapse of time remains uncertain.. * (3: Deed)
Coketown is born
Perhaps the most important plot of land purchased by Wheeling Steel from La Belle was a strip roughly 600 feet long, just east of the plant and north of new Follansbee. If not the most important piece of land, it was probably the most prominent to citizens in the Upper Ohio Valley and the most memorial to Follansbee and Steubenville residents. It was here that Coketown was born. (3 & 4)
The Wheeling Steel Corporation hauled 20 prefabricated houses onto the newly purchased strip, and completed the La Belle Iron Works Detail Layout* in less than six weeks (see map 2). The plant management immediately hired twenty out-of-town employees to fill the vacant homes, and therein they completed the establishment of Coketown. Some have argued that the 20 houses were transported from an abandoned mining town near Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, and were reconstructed on the newly acquired property, but Wheeling Steel and the majority of former Coketown residents maintain that the buildings were new. (4: Care, Pugh, Stift, Columbo, Columbo, & Stoaks)
*It has been asserted that because the deed wasn't signed until 1923, that La Belle, by law, had to assume responsibility for the housing construction. This is reinforced by the fact that Coketown's proposed layout was not entitled "Wheeling Steel's Detailed Layout" but "La Belle's Detail Layout". (refer to map 2)
The new employees paid for their new lodgings through an $18.00 deduction from each of their paychecks. The plant management increased this deduction to $23.00 as the Ohio Valley began to recover from the Depression, and again they raised it to amounts of $35.00 and $48.00 in the 1940's and 50's to accommodate inflation rates. This deduction covered all utility expenses except electricity, which was a very minimal extra expense. The plant assumed all responsibility for repairs and maintenance of the buildings, but employee families obligingly accepted some basic maintenance duties. (4: Columbo, Columbo, Stift)
The layout of Coketown
Coketown was arranged into four rows of five houses each, with "row one" being the northern most line of houses, "row two," the next line, and so on, moving southward. The porches of the first row faced northward; those of the second south; the third, north; and those of the final row, south. The plant apparently arranged the rows this way so that no house would face the rear of another, and more importantly, to more efficiently accommodate the proposed dual sewage pipeline system (of which rows one and two would share one line and rows three and four would share the other). Combination out houses/ coal storage sheds were erected between rows one and two and between rows three and four, each line of five running parallel to the two sewage pipes running east to west (there was one out house for every two houses). (4: Columbo) (3: see map 2)
Being that the small town rested upon a gradual decline (from east to west), draining ditches were conveniently dug along each row of houses so that water could drain, along with the sewage, into the main sewage pipeline. (4: Pugh) (3: map 2)
The town obtained its electricity from a power line stretching north to south, installed by the Monongahela West Penn Power Company to serve the entire northern panhandle of West Virginia. Coketown residents even had convenient access to a small trolley system and station, and also to the main telephone line supplied by Bell's telephone service in Follansbee. )2: 140 & 141) (3: Map 2)
Quite remarkably, in the time span of less than six weeks, the Wheeling Steel Corporation managed to erect a mini-modern town, and by establishing this independent dwelling, it staked its claim as another of the industrial giants in the northern panhandle. (4: Care)
Life in Coketown
There was nothing remarkable or alluring about newly developed Coketown; Wheeling Steel wasn't exactly concerned with the project's beauty, but rather with its practicality. The houses were identical in appearance, "shoebox" constructions, 30 x 22 feet each, with each having a living room, small kitchen, and two bedrooms (Coketown didn't have modern, built-in bathrooms until the 1940's). However nonelegant this small housing project may have appeared to outsiders, its occupants soon settled and began to recognize it as home, and the members of these 20 families soon established a closely-knitted relationship. (4: Columbo)
Most Coketown residents recalling the town agree that a tie between the 20 families was unavoidable in the early days of the establishment. Most of the families were new to the Follansbee area and didn't know many people in the surrounding towns, and although they used a trolley car as transportation to neighboring Steubenville and Follansbee, these families found it much more convenient to remain at home and befriend their immediate neighbors then to seek friendship elsewhere. This does not imply that Coketown residents had no friends or ties in these other towns, but rather these residents kept mainly to themselves, that is until advanced transportation, the advent of public schooling in Follansbee, and the expansion of neighboring towns bridged the gap between seclusion and social interaction. In the 1920's the men worked the mill daily and were forced to know each other, and geography basically brought the children of Coketown together, and where happy friendships existed, so did a general repor amongst the mothers of these children. (4)
As times progressed and paths between Follansbee and Steubenville began to widen with the formation of Sinclair Ave (now Route 2) and the beginning of an independent bus system from Wellsburg to the Steubenville Bridge by the Mewha family in 1935, the people of Coketown started becoming interchangeable in a sense and sometimes synonymous with Follansbee citizens. Tradition still kept Coketowners together, but then such common ground as Follansbee High School, Wheeling Steel's expanded Coke plant (at which more Follansbee men then worked), and the Follansbee's commercial mainstreet began to draw the two populations together. (4)
The Mewha bus, also instrumental in this interaction process, was an important link between Wellsburg, Follansbee, Coketown, and Steubenville. After the depression, rugged Sinclair Avenue between Coketown and the Steubenville Bridge was bricked and even paved in spots, and the bus made several daily runs from Coketown to Wellsburg and vice-versa. Sinclair Avenue was eventually paved with the rest of Route 2, leading southward to Wheeling, and the entire stretch of highway became basically the modern Route 2 we know today. (4)
Coketown, although not possessing the commercial genre' of a Follansbee or Steubenville, did produce a few memorable social facilities of its own. Places such as the Red Horse Tavern, a speakeasy opened by McCreary and Jones after prohibition) later changed to the Red Flamingo under the Banfis), and Young's Diner, an abandoned trolley car converted into a makeshift restaurant just south of the housing complex, were generally associated with Coketown. Likewise George Y Dean's Tea Company, located in the Coketown landlord's farmhouse (marked by an "X" on map 2), and Calick's Gas Station (later Durham's), a candy source for Coketown's youth, just behind the farmhouse, were other examples of the small town's enterprises. Amusingly enough, Coketown even boasted its own fire department, a small fire hose on wheels, accessible just adjacent to houses 10 and 15 of rows two and three. (4)
The children of Coketown were as innocent and inseparable as in any others their age in the 40's and 50's. The boys played football in an uneven field just north of their houses, while the girls, using collected bottle and box labels from empty grocery containers, set up a simulated store and created their own local economy. At nightfall all of the kids would return to their homes, blackened by the sooty air, to soak in a scalding tub until their skin regained its original color. (4: Columbo)
Bathing and washing clothes were two facets of the Coketown repertoire which could not be neglected. Wives would wash and rewash laundry daily to keep a step ahead of the filthy mist constantly circulating throughout the town. Children sometimes bathed twice a day, and a soiled husband, returning from a day's work at the plant, was "immediately hikes to the tub to strip and receive his scrubbing". (4: Columbo) Women today complain of having to dust their furniture once a week, when in contrast, Coketown women dusted twice daily! Combating the filth of Coketown became commonplace to the house occupants, but in no way did it detract from their intrinsic happiness or their standard middle-class respectability (most residents of the Upper Ohio Valley then and today are predominately middle-class). (4) Demise
So, this was Coketown, and such was its story. Supposedly temporary housing development, having been given a life expectancy of five to ten years, had somehow survived its fourth decade by 1960, and time and weather had savagely beaten this small establishment during that forty-year-span, and the buildings were visibly in need of drastic repair; the houses were deteriorating more rapidly than Wheeling Steel could mend them. Soon it became evident that these old and weakening houses wouldn't endure many more years, and Wheeling Steel finally announced plans to condemn the town as each house was vacated. (4)
The corporation issued no eviction notices, nor did they force any of the families to vacate their dwellings by any other means. The people merely foresaw the eventual fate of their beloved neighborhood and one-by-one began seeking alternate housing in Follansbee and other nearby areas; as each family moved out, its house was destroyed. The families began moving between 1963 & 1964 approximately, and Wheeling Steel condemned the last of Coketown by 1968 or 1969. A once-thriving section of the Follansbee/Steubenville area, having had a personality of its own, quietly crept towards its demise and eventually became just another passing triviality, to go unmentioned in all recorded historical documents to follow. (4)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REFERENCE MATERIAL
1) Diamond Anniversary: History of Follansbee. Eura Cox Ulrich McIntosh, Ed. (Follansbee City Building, Follansbee) 1984
2) Caldwell, Nancy L A History of Brooke County. (Brooke County Historical Society, Wellsburg) 1976
3) Cumulative data, compiled maps, and deed information supplied by the Brooke County Courthouse in Wellsburg, WV, the Follansbee City Building in Follansbee, WV, and the WV State Road Department in Wellsburg, WV
4) A compilation of extensive interviews with several former occupants of Coketown and individuals who were in some way connected with Coketown
Grover Pugh, former resident, now head engineer of Follansbee sewage
Shirley & William Columbo, former residents
Tom Care, former head of payroll department at old Wheeling Steel
John Stift, oldest living resident, born 1906
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE, WITHOUT WHOSE HELP I COULDN'T HAVE COMPILED THIS REPORT:
Ray Stoaks (city manager of Follansbee), Grover Pugh, Shirley (Mayhew) Columbo, Bill Columbo, Vivian Young (tax assessor of Brooke County), Tom Care, John Stift, Janet Piccirillo, Matz Malone (Steubenville Herald Star staff photographer and writer), Follansbee City Building, Brooke County Courthouse, and the WV State Road Department.
And a very special thanks to my father, Roy "Carlo" Waugh, for his invaluable legwork and "connections."