Trips Places Foods Stories Newsletters

Take your next trip with Atlas Obscura!

Our small-group adventures are inspired by our Atlas of the world's most fascinating places, the stories behind them, and the people who bring them to life.

Visit Adventures
Trips Highlight
Central Asia yurt night stars
Uzbekistan • 15 days, 14 nights
Central Asia Road Trip: Backroads & Bazaars
from
A view of Brașov’s Old Town.
Romania • 12 days, 11 nights
Legends of Romania: Castles, Ruins & Culinary Delights
from
View all trips
Top Destinations
Latest Places
Most Popular Places Random Place Lists Itineraries
Add a Place
Download the App
Top Destinations
View All Destinations »

Countries

  • Australia
  • Canada
  • China
  • France
  • Germany
  • India
  • Italy
  • Japan

Cities

  • Amsterdam
  • Barcelona
  • Beijing
  • Berlin
  • Boston
  • Budapest
  • Chicago
  • London
  • Los Angeles
  • Mexico City
  • Montreal
  • Moscow
  • New Orleans
  • New York City
  • Paris
  • Philadelphia
  • Rome
  • San Francisco
  • Seattle
  • Stockholm
  • Tokyo
  • Toronto
  • Vienna
  • Washington, D.C.
Latest Places
View All Places »
Ñaño house with mausoleum skull in foreground.
Ñaño Casa Museo
Honningsvåg Bamse Statue
Honningsvåg Bamse Statue
The salt cairn.
The Lewis and Clark Salt Works
South entrance.
Reigate Tunnel
Latest Places to Eat & Drink
View All Places to Eat »
Names on the bartop.
The Dive
Cacio e pepe lasagna combines two classics.
C'è Pasta... E Pasta!
Spaghetto taratatà is named for the sound of rattling sabers.
Giano Restaurant
The gnocchi here get blanketed in a sugo with braised oxtail.
Cesare al Pellegrino
Romans insist you should feel the cracked peppercorns and cheese grains on your tongue.
Flavio al Velavevodetto
Recent Stories
All Stories Video Podcast
Most Recent Stories
View All Stories »
The 2,653-mile-long Pacific Crest Trail spans the entire West Coast from Canada to Mexico.
Meet the Volunteers Who Keep Thru-Hikers Moving
9 days ago
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House building on the U.S.-Canadian border.
Could New Border Restrictions Literally Tear the Haskell Free Library Apart?
9 days ago
A woman peering into the cave of Sarah Bishop c. 1900.
The Curious History of New England’s Hermit Tourism
9 days ago
The Big Well
This Kansas Town Advertised the World’s Largest Well. It Wasn’t.
10 days ago

No search results found for
“”

Make sure words are spelled correctly.

Try searching for a travel destination.

Places near me Random place

Popular Destinations

  • Paris
  • London
  • New York
  • Berlin
  • Rome
  • Los Angeles
Trips Places Foods Stories Newsletters
Sign In Join
Places near me Random place
All the United States West Virginia Scarbro Whipple Company Store
Whipple Company Store is permanently closed.

This entry remains in the Atlas as a record of its history, but it is no longer accessible to visitors.

Whipple Company Store

Smack in the midst of coal country, this collection provides a peoples' history of Appalachian miners' heritage.

Scarbro, West Virginia

Added By
Sarah Brumble
Email
Been Here
Want to go
Added to list
The center of 19th-century camp life was this octagon-frame building, now turned into the present museum   Coal town guy
The center of 19th-century camp life was this octagon-frame building, now turned into the present museum   Coal town guy
Visitors to the store label family members and friends on a panorama of Fayette County coal miners   Sarah Brumble
Memorial room to lost miners   Sarah Brumble
Accessing the third floor ballroom, via the store’s original elevator   Sarah Brumble
Antiques and artifacts line the shelves of the former store   Sarah Brumble
Cash register configured to accept company scrip   Sarah Brumble
View looking out the old town post office, located within the store   Sarah Brumble
The original, ornately decorated hidden safe belonging to the Whipple Collier Company   Sarah Brumble
Piano and soldier’s chest on display in the Whipple Company Store   Sarah Brumble
Notes and tributes left by visitors to family members, showing generations of coal’s influence   Sarah Brumble
Been Here
Want to go
Added to list

About

Located in West Virginia's Fayette County in the epicenter of Appalachian mining country is a curious building known as the Whipple Company Store. Standing almost in the middle of the road at the junction of County Roads 15 and 21/20 for more than a century, the "store" is more than just the last of its kind. Today this former coal company store functions as the repository for memories for generations of West Virginians, for whom the act of mining for coal has long ago ceased to be a mere job,  having instead given rise to the foundation for the culture and way of life visible throughout modern Appalachian society still to this day.

The 18,000-square-foot structure was originally built circa 1890 by a burgeoning coal company as it steamed its way into town on the region's new railroad. The store itself functioned as their headquarters for everything social, fiscal, and logistical transpiring in the company's town, where they housed workers for their mines.

Inside the store, its employee-residents could trade scrip—company-specific legal tender in which workers were paid — for goods like clothing, food, and the occasional frippery ("from candy to caskets"). The building's strange octagonal shape was designed as a means to control the workers, for the store's one employee could stand dead-center in the store, surrounded by its cases and shelf-lined walls, and the room itself became an echo chamber, providing the company with all the intelligence it needed to maintain the upper hand over its workers. Tours of the building include information on the store's partial second floor and secret safe, as well as the third floor's ballroom (currently under restoration, painted a crumbling "mountaineer gold") used for throwing parties for the well-heeled company heads from the region. 

It remained in operation as a coal company store until 1954, closing with the closure of the New River Company's Whipple mine. Shortly thereafter, the structure was purchased by a private party who renamed the store "Madge's Trading Post" and continued to offer services the community depended upon — like operating the post office from within the store—while accepting the U.S. Dollar. In the late 20th century, the building changed hands yet again, where for a brief period of time it housed a dinner theater. After repairs to the structure proved too costly, the one-of-a-kind building was re-posted for sale. 

In 2006, a local couple acquired the Whipple Company Store with the intention of simultaneously returning it to its original purpose, and converting it into a temple for education. The last of a once-popular sight from throughout the mountain region would be preserved as a non-profit museum dedicated to Appalachian cultural heritage, and its owners would be free to educate visitors on the peoples' history of the region, from the very place that was once the center of life in the coal camp. The story told inside the Whipple Company Store —beginning with demos of miners' personal effects like the lunch pails and head lamps, progressing through rooms decorated with hand-written tributes to lost miners by visitors, into the central room of the store itself to portray the companies' affect on the community — exists as a powerful, independent voice providing an unbiased counterbalance to the region's "king coal"-sponsored presentations of the lives of its workers. 

Many people do not realize that coal helped build the United States. Without coal and those who mined it, the large-scale production of steel would have been nearly impossible, and it was plentiful steel that facilitated the building boom and the war effort during the two World Wars. The Whipple Company Store is a standing tribute to these important coal miners and their families.

Related Tags

Coal Museums And Collections Mines Stores Collections History Octagon Buildings

Know Before You Go

Open May 1st through November 1st, 11am to 6pm. Admission, per person: $10 (Building Tour); $25 (Educational Tour); $25 (Haunted History – October evenings only, see website for details). Several levels of tours are available, depending on visitors' level of enthusiasm. For those interested in learning about the basics of coal camp living, half-hour to 45-minute tours of the building do an excellent job of covering the basics; educational tours lasting approximately two hours provide a more in-depth look at the day-to-day lives of coal miners in a bygone era, including a slightly more political take on the in's and out's of navigating company town life.  Entrance fees go toward further, ongoing renovations and preservation of the structure, as well as acquisition and preservation of local, region-specific artifacts.

Community Contributors

Added By

littlebrumble

Edited By

kpryzk, hrnick, MichaelG

  • kpryzk
  • hrnick
  • MichaelG

Published

April 5, 2016

Edit this listing

Make an Edit
Add Photos
Sources
  • http://www.whipplecompanystore.com/home.html
Whipple Company Store
7485 Okey L Patteson Rd
Hwy 612 at Scarbro/Whipple Rd.
Scarbro, West Virginia, 25917
United States
37.958809, -81.165612
Visit Website
Get Directions

Nearby Places

Hank Williams Death Monument

Oak Hill, West Virginia

miles away

Thurmond, West Virginia

Thurmond, West Virginia

miles away

Cathedral Café

Fayetteville, West Virginia

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of West Virginia

West Virginia

United States

Places 112
Stories 10

Nearby Places

Hank Williams Death Monument

Oak Hill, West Virginia

miles away

Thurmond, West Virginia

Thurmond, West Virginia

miles away

Cathedral Café

Fayetteville, West Virginia

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of West Virginia

West Virginia

United States

Places 112
Stories 10

Related Stories and Lists

The Short-Lived Octagon House Craze of the 19th Century

List

By Meg Neal

Related Places

  • The American Museum of Cutlery.

    Cattaraugus, New York

    American Museum of Cutlery

    This edgy museum will whet your appetite for the industrial history of Western New York.

  • Tobacco boxes

    Mexico City, Mexico

    Franz Mayer Museum Silver Collection

    A shining treasure trove of fine Mexican silver dating back to the 15th century.

  • The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries.

    London, England

    Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries

    This long-hidden space above Westminster Abbey now displays the battle gear of the legendary King Henry V.

  • The entrance to the Northampton Museum.

    Northampton, England

    Northampton Museum and Gallery

    The museum houses one of the world's largest shoe collections, boasting over 12,000 pairs.

  • Original arrangement of the collection

    Mexico City, Mexico

    Guillermo Tovar de Teresa House Museum

    The now-public home of a renowned art collector is full of unique pieces from viceregal and 19th-century Mexico.

  • The Hague, Netherlands

    Louwman Historic Telescopes

    The world's largest private telescope collection hides in a secret wing of a Dutch auto museum.

  • Barcelona, Spain

    Museu Frederic Marès

    An eclectic collection of thousands of items owned by the sculptor Frederic Marès.

  • Early Television Museum

    Hilliard, Ohio

    Early Television Museum

    A retro walk through the history of the tube.

Aerial image of Vietnam, displaying the picturesque rice terraces, characterized by their layered, verdant fields.
Atlas Obscura Membership

Become an Atlas Obscura Member


Join our community of curious explorers.

Become a Member

Get Our Email Newsletter

Follow Us

Facebook YouTube TikTok Instagram Pinterest RSS Feed

Get the app

Download the App
Download on the Apple App Store Get it on Google Play
  • All Places
  • Latest Places
  • Most Popular
  • Places to Eat
  • Random
  • Nearby
  • Add a Place
  • Stories
  • Food & Drink
  • Itineraries
  • Lists
  • Video
  • Podcast
  • Newsletters
  • All Trips
  • Family Trip
  • Food & Drink
  • History & Culture
  • Wildlife & Nature
  • FAQ
  • Membership
  • Feedback & Ideas
  • Community Guidelines
  • Product Blog
  • Unique Gifts
  • Work With Us
  • About
  • FAQ
  • Advertise With Us
  • Advertising Guidelines
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use
Atlas Obscura

© 2025 Atlas Obscura. All Rights Reserved.