Stonega Historic District

Stonega is a coal company town strung along Callahans Creek in the mountains of eastern Wise County, near the Kentucky line. The Stonega Coke and Coal Company opened it in 1896, and most surviving buildings date from 1895 to about 1915. The remaining resources fall into three groups: Red Row, a historically Black neighborhood of double houses; a central area made up of the Park, Quality Row and Hunktown; and Midway, a later row of single-family houses built in 1914. Housing followed company rank, with large frame houses for managers and doctors on Park Place and board-and-batten duplexes for miners. The Stonega Colored School, a two-story frame building, served as a school and a community meeting place for the segregated Red Row community. Two brick buildings from the late 1930s, a bathhouse and a supply warehouse, survive near the old coke oven site. The district is recognized for its architecture and its role in coal industry history from 1895 to 1952.