Rush Run Community Ruins
Rush Run Community Ruins is a ghost town in West Virginia. Former coal town whose connected mine suffered a fatal 1905 disaster. The Rush Run Coal Company established the town in 1889. A 1905 explosion in the connected Red Ash and Rush Run mines killed 24 men; abandonment followed mine closure in the 1940s.
Ruins are interpreted along Southside Trail. Stay off structures and do not collect artifacts. Nearby active railroad is private; NPS prohibits walking on or crossing it.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Rush Run Community Ruins haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
Rush Run was the first of the gorge coal towns on the trail's timeline — established in 1889 by the Rush Run Coal Company, the earliest mining community along this stretch of the old C&O railway. It was a proper company town while it lasted, equipped with its own post office and saloon.
The mines underneath it were conjoined with Red Ash's, which made the 1905 disaster effectively the sequel to Red Ash's 1900 explosion: another blast in the connected workings killed 24 men five years after the first catastrophe.
The ruins
The town survived its mine by a few years at most. When the Rush Run mine closed in the 1940s the community was abandoned, and its foundations and walls now line the final mile of the Southside Trail in New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
The National Park Service notes that the surviving stonework of Rush Run and Red Ash now stands too intermingled to attribute confidently — two company towns dissolving into one ruin field. The file holds no paranormal claims; it documents a town, a mine, and a death toll.
Documented history
The Rush Run Coal Company established the town in 1889. A 1905 explosion in the connected Red Ash and Rush Run mines killed 24 men; abandonment followed mine closure in the 1940s. A ghost town's file is unusual: the emptiness itself is documented, and this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'Rush Run Community Ruins'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.
Verified historyNational Park Service
Sources on file
- 01Rush Run Community RuinsNational Park Service · government · A1
Field notes & open questions
Individual settlement identity confirmed by NPS. Exact boundaries, county and coordinates remain to be verified; no supernatural claim.