In the late 1800s, speculators, mining companies, and investors were drawn to the vast coal seams beneath the mountains of West Virginia, where the first operators established company towns, or coal camps, that controlled nearly every part of miners’ lives through company housing, stores, doctors, and even churches. Some early coal barons were paternalistic, while others ruled harshly, including Samuel Dixon, a controversial English-born operator who opened West Virginia mines in 1893 at Scarbro, Carlisle, Oakwood, and Wingrove, then in 1906 bought Whipple and other mines to form the New River Company and dominate the New River coal field. That same year Dixon began mining, Justus Collins opened the mine at Whipple and several others, building identical octagonal company stores in his camps and advocating a “judicious mixture” of racial and nationality groups to discourage unionization. Dixon and Collins bitterly feuded, even coming to physical blows, and in 1906 Collins sold the Whipple mine to Dixon and left the area. Many Southern West Virginia coal barons were drawn to nearby Bramwell, which became prosperous with Victorian mansions and an elaborate social life and was once considered the richest town in the U.S., with more millionaires per capita than any other town in the nation.