Matewan Floodwall Murals

The country around the Tug Fork was, for thousands of years, the ancestral homeland and shared hunting ground of the Shawnee, the Cherokee, and other nations whose descendants continue elsewhere today. By the late 1800s the valley had become the setting for the Hatfield and McCoy feud, a long and bloody quarrel between two families divided by the river and the West Virginia and Kentucky line, and the murals give that saga its due.

Matewan itself grew up with the Norfolk and Western Railway and the coal boom that followed. The trains hauled out the coal that the surrounding hollows produced, and the town became a rough, lively hub of miners, merchants, and railroaders. The murals move through these chapters in sequence, so that walking the wall is a way of walking through the town's whole life.

In the spring of 1920, coal miners in the area voted to join the union, and the coal company responded by evicting families from company-owned houses. When Baldwin-Felts detectives came to town to carry out the evictions, they were confronted by the town's police chief, Sid Hatfield, and mayor, Cabell Testerman. A gunfight erupted on Mate Street, and when it ended ten men lay dead, including the mayor and several detectives. It became known as the Matewan Massacre.

The killing did not end the conflict; it inflamed it. The tensions that boiled over in Matewan led the next year to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in American history, where thousands of miners took up arms. The murals treat this history with the seriousness it deserves, and the nearby West Virginia Mine Wars Museum tells the fuller story of the men and women who lived it.

The floodwall was raised to protect downtown Matewan from the Tug Fork, which has flooded the town many times over the years. Rather than leave the long gray barrier blank, the community used it as a canvas, and local and regional artists filled it with scenes drawn from Matewan's past. The result is a public history that anyone can read on foot, free of charge.

Each section of the wall takes up a different chapter, and the panels are meant to be walked in order like pages. You will find the railroad era, the feud, the massacre, and everyday coalfield life all represented. Because it sits right in the compact historic district, the wall connects easily to the old bank, the depot, and the other landmarks of a town small enough to see in a single unhurried stroll.

Matewan remains a real coal-country town rather than a polished attraction, and that is part of its appeal. The historic downtown is a National Historic Landmark District, and the surrounding hills and hollows are laced with the trails of the Hatfield-McCoy off-road system, which draws riders from across the country to the region.

The Tug Fork still runs green and cool below the wall, the trains still rumble through, and the ridgelines rise steep and forested on every side. Visitors who take the time to walk the murals, step into the museum, and look up at the hills come away with a rare, grounded sense of what the coalfields were and are.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.