William Nelson Page - Entrepreneur and Developer

Entrepreneur and Developer

A knowledgeable man with the training and experience as a civil engineer and the spirit of an entrepreneur, Page was well-prepared to help develop West Virginia's hidden wealth: huge deposits of "smokeless" bituminous coal, a product exceptionally well-suited for making steel. Former West Virginia Governor William A. MacCorkle described him as a man who knew the land "as a farmer knows a field."

Page became a protégé of Dr. David T. Ansted, a noted British geologist with large land holdings in southern West Virginia. As his career developed, Page busied himself with many enterprises to develop the natural resources which lay all around him, primarily working with iron and coal operations, often as the manager for absentee owners.

He was the general manager of the Hawks Nest Coal Co. between 1877 and 1880, superintendent of the Victoria Blast Furnace at Goshen, Virginia from 1880 to 1885, and he located and built the Powellton bridge for the C&O between 1885 and 1889. After developing the Mt. Carbon Collieries, he organized and developed the Gauley Mountain Coal Company, and he became a consulting engineer for other coal-producing firms as well. He was also involved with the Virginia and Pittsburgh Land Association (a land development company) and the Pittsburgh and Virginia Railroad Company.

Of course, with his background with the C&O, Page was intensely interested in railroads, and he gained even more practical railroad experience after winning the contract to convert the C&O branch-line track, from the New River main line, up the mountainside to Ansted, to standard gauge. The project was completed on 20 August 1890, at a cost of $35,038.44.

He was later a principal of the Page Coal and Coke Company.

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