Located in the New River coalfield, Mt. Hope became an important service center for the oldest of southern West Virginia's three smokeless coalfields. Unlike the Pocahontas field, where town building followed railroad and coal development, Mt. Hope was founded before large-scale mining reached the area. Its plateau offered fertile ground for agriculture, and pioneer settlers raised crops and livestock for market, transporting cattle by early turnpikes. The town was unofficially founded in the early 1870s after a schoolhouse and post office were established, and it took its name from its position at the head of the fruitful valley called Egypt, where farmers grazed cattle in the spring. Mining came to the area in 1894 when the MacDonald Colliery Company shipped its first coal from nearby MacDonald, and within a few years four mining operations employing four hundred men had opened within walking distance of Mt. Hope. The coal boom revived the town, which was incorporated on June 1, 1895, and brought stores, homes, and scores of company houses during the 1890s. Surrounded by mining companies and limited in room to expand, the town nevertheless developed rows of stores and businesses along the old stagecoach road that became Main Street, and with only the MacDonald company store, independent merchants prospered. In 1910, a fire that began in a downtown business spread rapidly through the closely spaced wood-frame buildings and consumed nearly a half-block within an hour. Fire-fighting crews from surrounding towns and miners released from the mines fought the blaze, and mining crews dynamited a saloon and other structures in an unsuccessful effort to stop it. The town was quickly rebuilt with modern brick buildings, becoming the county's most modern and up-to-date town, with paved streets and sidewalks lit by electric lights. In 1917, the New River Company completed its main office building at MacDonald, and within a few years more than twenty coal companies had offices in Mt. Hope. Although the town itself was not large, its leaders said that more than thirty thousand people lived within walking distance. Like many service cities in the state, Mt. Hope reached its peak growth at the end of the 1920s, and its most dramatic decline came in the 1950s because of recession and especially the mechanization of mining.