During the coal boom, coal towns appeared virtually overnight on Paint Creek. Burnwell grew so rapidly that it experienced a housing shortage, and many single miners lived in a boarding house. At the height of the coal boom, the coal company employed nine full time carpenters to build houses. The Imperial Colliery Company began mining coal in Burnwell in 1906 after the completion of a branch of the C & O Railroad to its mine. By 1910, 201 homes housed miners and their families. Today, the railroad and the town no longer exist.