It is often said, "Old mother nature must have laughed heartily at the
pioneer, who in his mad rush to go west hurried down through the wide
troughs between the mountains, hurrying on through the valleys, passing
unheeded the wealth in forests on either side, the wealth in minerals
under his very feet." But there came a time when the mountain men
discovered the treasure.
Over in Johnson County, adjoining Floyd, where Walter Scott Harkins had
an eye for timber, his young friend was being twitted for a different
reason. "John Caldwell Calhoun Mayo," they'd string out his long name,
"when you're cooped up in the poorhouse or the lunatic asylum, you can't
say we didn't warn you to quit digging around trying to find a fortune
under the ground."
But young Mayo, like his friend Harkins the lawyer, would only say,
thumbs hooked in suspenders, "He who laughs last, laughs best."
Some of his youthful companions continued to poke fun but John Caldwell
Calhoun Mayo turned them a deaf ear. On foot he trudged endless miles
when he was a poor lad, or rode a scrubby nag along the Warrior's Path,
always seeking coal deposits, pleading with landowners for leases and
options on acreage he knew to be rich in minerals. He surmounted
seemingly impossible barriers, even having legislation enacted to set
aside Virginia land grants. He tapped hidden treasures, developed the
wealth of the Big Sandy country that had been locked in mountain
fastnesses for centuries. Through his vision, thriving cities blossom
where once was wilderness.
The United States Geological Survey shows one eighth of the total coal
area of the nation to be in this region; it supplies nearly one quarter
of all the country's bituminous coal.