In 1857, George Lafayette Carter (original owner) was born in Hillsville, Carrol County in West Virginia. In 1869 a post office was built on land that would be Coalwood in present day. This would be when Mr. Carter was 12. The name Coalwood would be used for the first time in 1902, when Mr. Carter was 45, able to start a company or town. The following year another post office was built in march. In 1905 a railroad was established between Coalwood and Clear Fork. The same year Carter bought twenty thousand acres of land in McDowell county and began constructing a town in Coalwood. He builds a wooden tipple later and the first coal was mined using drift and slope mines. The mine gets incorporated as the Carter Coal Mine in 1913. The next year the first shaft mine is operational. Carter sells the company to the consolation coal company in 1922. The consolation builds a new clubhouse a while after Carter already built the brick store and office building. Two years later a mine was installed in Caretta. Another ten years later the Consolation reverted the company back to Carter. The same year all the mines for the Carter Coal Company were unionized. Three years later George L. Carter dies. His son took general superintendent for the mine. In 1947 a group of industrialists bought the mine and renamed it as the Olga Coal Company Mine. About ten years later the Olga and Caretta mines are joined underground. In 1956 Olga sells the houses to Clear Fork and Clear Fork sells the houses to residents. The next year the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space which made people in the Olga mines and Coalwood think that a bomb would be dropped on them.