The last movie I saw in a theatre, before the pandemic shut everything down, was a 4K restoration of the 1987 film Matewan at the Carnegie Science Center’s IMAX theatre. It’s a film about union labor organizing in a West Virginia coal mining town, and the violent struggle between the company and workers. It stars Will Oldham, one of my favorite musicians, in his first cinematic role. Both the director and Oldham were in person for the screening and held a Q+A after the film.
Although Matewan is a real place, the film was shot about a 100 miles northeast in the abandoned town of Thurmond, West Virginia. Both towns were built along the railroad, with the tracks in Thurmond acting as a “main street” for its commercial strip. Until 1921 those tracks were the only way to access the town, which served as a thriving hub for the local coal mining community along the New River. Thurmond’s peak was in 1910, when it supported multiple hotels, banks, and even a movie theatre. Over 75,000 people passed through the Thurmond depot that year.
A few weeks ago we visited the New River Gorge National Park, which Thurmond now sits within. After winding deep within the gorge you enter the town by crossing a one-lane railroad bridge, near a dramatic bend in the New River, to discover what is effectively a ghost town.
