{"id":1694,"slug":"quinnimont-iron-furnace-ruins-quinnimont-west-virginia","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Before Quinnimont was a coal town it was an iron town. In 1870 the Charter Oak and Iron Company built a furnace at the settlement Jacob Smith had founded in 1827 — the oldest European-settled community in the New River Gorge — marking the first industrial operation in a valley then still given over to subsistence farms."]},{"heading":"Documented history","paragraphs":["The gorge's heavier industry arrived within three years: Joseph Beury opened his first New River Gorge coal mine at Quinnimont in 1872, the Chesapeake and Ohio mainline came through in 1873, and that fall Quinnimont shipped the gorge's first load of coal. The town grew past 500 residents at its peak, with a station, store, post office, hotel, and railroad boarding houses.","The furnace did not share that long career — its ruins are what the Park Service lists among Quinnimont's surviving industrial features, standing near the CSX yards and the two abandoned churches that trace the town's segregated streetscape. Quinnimont itself remains inhabited; the record here is the furnace site alone, its public access unverified."]}],"name":"Quinnimont Iron Furnace ruins","aliases":[],"type":"INDUSTRIAL_RUINS","type_label":"Industrial Ruins","cats":["INDUSTRIAL_RUINS"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Remains of the early ironworks at an inhabited New River community.","full_desc":"Quinnimont Iron Furnace ruins is an industrial ruins in Quinnimont, West Virginia. Remains of the early ironworks at an inhabited New River community. HauntHunt files it with industrial ruins. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Quinnimont","county":null,"state":"West Virginia","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":null,"lon":null,"coord_kind":null,"status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Quinnimont as a whole is not abandoned. This record concerns specific furnace remains; public access and exact ruins coordinate are unverified.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":55,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"The Charter Oak and Iron Company built a furnace in 1870. NPS identifies furnace ruins among surviving features of Quinnimont. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Quinnimont' carry the record. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Quinnimont","url":"https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/historyculture/quinnimont.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Quinnimont","url":"https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/historyculture/quinnimont.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}