In the 1910s, the East Gulf Coal Company opened what came to be known as the Helen Mine and Coal Camp as a model town built to attract a more reliable and family-oriented workforce. Helen included a boarding house, company store, clubhouse, movie theater, and telephone exchange, but its residential areas and businesses were segregated. Although African Americans lived in separate neighborhoods, they could vote, hold public office, and send their children to school. In the coal mines of southern West Virginia, some equality existed underground, where black workers received equal wages for equal work; about 75 percent became coal loaders, while others worked as daymen and coke workers. Picking and loading coal was hard, dangerous, back-breaking work, but it offered the greatest opportunity to earn money. Helen's population, especially its African American population, began to decline in the 1950s with the advent of new machinery, and after 1953 hand loaders and other unskilled laborers were no longer needed, beginning the town's long decline in population and vitality. Its coal heritage endures in the community's street names, including Lantern, Check, and Scrip Alleys.