Cinder Bottom was a red-light district in Keystone, West Virginia, a small town in McDowell County where brothels, saloons, and gambling halls operated openly from the 1890s through the mid-twentieth century. The district made Keystone notorious enough across the southern West Virginia coalfields to earn the nickname “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and it ran along Elkhorn Creek beside the Norfolk and Western Railway main line.
Why Keystone Instead of a Company Town
Keystone began as a hamlet called Cassville and took its new name after the Keystone Coal and Coke Company opened the first mine there in 1892.1West Virginia University Libraries. Keystone Historic Buildings Survey It was incorporated in 1909 and grew into a regional commercial center serving miners and families from the company-owned towns scattered through the surrounding valleys.2e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Keystone
What set Keystone apart was its independence. The company towns around it were rigidly controlled, segregated, and overseen by coal operators, while Keystone had no resident political elite of the kind that lived in nearby Bramwell or the county seat of Welch. That gap in authority gave Cinder Bottom room to operate.3American Jewish Archives. The Jews of Keystone
Life Inside the District
One scholar described Cinder Bottom’s economy as the “commercial exploitation of human weakness”: liquor, cards, and prostitution, tolerated by the local power structure in part because the trade helped coal operators attract and keep a workforce. The district was also unusual for its racial mixing. White and Black prostitutes served a mixed clientele in the brothels, which drew sharp criticism from outsiders at a time when the rest of coalfield society was heavily segregated.3American Jewish Archives. The Jews of Keystone
Keystone’s demographics shaped the clientele. Coal companies had recruited Black workers from the American South in large numbers after the railroad arrived, and by 1900 Keystone was 40 percent Black; by 1910 the figure passed 50 percent.3American Jewish Archives. The Jews of Keystone Miners worked long hours for low pay under some of the weakest safety laws in the country, lived in company housing, and could be evicted for joining a union or breaking the terms of a contract.4National Park Service. Introduction to the West Virginia Mine Wars Keystone’s saloons and brothels sat outside the reach of the company town, and for many workers that was the point.
How It Ended
Temperance killed the open trade first. By 1910, 37 of West Virginia’s 55 counties were already dry under local option. In 1912 voters ratified a state constitutional prohibition amendment by a majority of more than 92,000, and the Yost Law of 1913 created a Department of Prohibition to enforce it. Statewide prohibition took effect at midnight on June 30, 1914, two and a half years before the federal ban.5e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Prohibition Scholars have pointed to that date as the beginning of Keystone’s decline as what one called the “mecca of the coalfields.”3American Jewish Archives. The Jews of Keystone
The coal industry finished the job. After 1950, mine closures and mechanization — machines that could load coal automatically eliminated thousands of jobs — drove McDowell County’s population into a long decline. Keystone had reached roughly 2,500 residents by 1950, and its businesses, saloons, and brothels shut as people left. Floods and fires added to the losses.2e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Keystone
What Survives in Print
Cinder Bottom’s reputation was vivid enough in its own day to produce a primary source. In 1912 an anonymous author writing as “Virginia Lad” published a pamphlet titled Sodom and Gomorrah of Today, or the History of Keystone, West Virginia.6e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Sodom and Gomorrah of Today A digitized copy is held at the West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University, within the William Archer journalist research papers.7West Virginia University Libraries. Sodom and Gomorrah of Today, Archival Object The district was also the subject of a 1994 Goldenseal magazine article titled “Cinder Bottom: A Coalfields Red-Light District,” and a 1975 Bluefield Daily Telegraph feature, “Ashes, Memories Have Settled on Keystone’s Cinder Bottom.”
The district has inspired fiction as well. Glenn Taylor’s 2015 novel A Hanging at Cinder Bottom is set in the district at the turn of the twentieth century and follows Abe Baach, the son of an immigrant barkeeper, and Goldie Toothman, a woman raised in a brothel, through a story of gambling, cons, and a death sentence in what the Los Angeles Times described as “an Appalachian equivalent of the Wild West.”8Los Angeles Times. A Hanging at Cinder Bottom by Glenn Taylor Taylor drew on the “Virginia Lad” pamphlet and on the memories of descendants of Keystone families, including the Totz family, who had owned a saloon in the area.9Southern Literary Review. Donna Meredith Interviews Glenn Taylor Denise Giardina’s 1987 novel Storming Heaven, set during the West Virginia mine wars, bases its fictional town of Annadel on Keystone.2e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Keystone
A National Park Service survey of the National Coal Heritage Area has recommended Keystone as a National Register Historic District, with a period of significance from 1896 to 1950 and areas of significance including the coal industry, commerce, and African American history.10NPS History. National Coal Heritage Area Survey A historic buildings survey of the town was conducted by the West Virginia University Public History Program and the West Virginia Department of Culture and History in 1987 and 1988.1West Virginia University Libraries. Keystone Historic Buildings Survey
Keystone Today
The district itself is gone as a physical place. The town’s population was 453 at the 2000 census and 176 at the 2020 census, a drop of more than 90 percent from its midcentury peak. What remains of Cinder Bottom lives in the pamphlet, the magazine and newspaper features, the novels, and the archival surveys that documented a few blocks along Elkhorn Creek where the coalfield economy and the trade that fed on it ran side by side.