Narrator: That year, Frederick Kimball, president of the Norfolk & Western Railroad, decided to expand into West Virginia's southern coalfields. A sophisticated Philadelphia businessman, known for wearing black scarves and jeweled stick pins, Kimball realized the future of the N&W was in hauling coal, not passengers.

In Logan County, H. C. Ragland, a real estate developer and newspaper editor, announced that "a new era was dawning in the Tug Valley."

"Before we can realize it, we will hear the snort of the Iron Horse, and see wealth and prosperity staring us in the face. There is no occasion for any man in the county to be idle who wants to work for good wages." —H. C. Ragland, Logan Banner

Narrator: As land prices shot upward in advance of the railroad, four businessmen who had loaned Devil Anse Hatfield money demanded immediate repayment. One creditor, James Nighbert, an agent for a Cincinnati lumber firm, called in a debt nine years old. To raise cash, Hatfield mortgaged his property to Nighbert's partner, H. C. Ragland, who would get the land if Hatfield defaulted.

Altina Waller: "Devil Anse represents West Virginians caught in economic and political changes that were of incredible magnitude at that time. Devil Anse and his friends were not trying to stop what we would call civilization or progress. They, in many ways, wanted it to come and welcomed it, but they wanted to have a piece of it. They wanted a part of it. They wanted to prosper with it. And the dilemma really came when it became clear that the managers of those corporate forces did not want local people to share in it. And that's really what the argument came down to, ultimately, was who was going to benefit from economic development, which really should have been a good thing for everyone?"