Scotts Run / The First Shack

By the 1930s, 10,000 residents representing 28 nationalities and tied to the coal industry crowded the hillsides of Scotts Run, suffering severe poverty brought on by a coal recession and the Great Depression. The Shack and Scotts Run Settlement House provided needed services and drew First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's interest in relief programs. The first site of The Shack, 50 feet north, was a community center established by Presbyterian mission worker Mary Behner to serve the mining families of Scotts Run. It opened in 1932 in a former stable of Pursglove Coal Co. and became a site for educational, religious, and community service programs, as well as political, social, and labor meetings, before being relocated in 1938.

West Virginia · United States