Nallen, named for Wilderness Lumber Company camp manager John I. Nallen around 1916, grew in a community first settled by the John Bayes family in 1825 and later by James Miller, who operated a ferry across Meadow River. The Fayette-Nicholas community was served by Sewell Valley and later an NF&G connection to the C&O Railroad, and it had a post office by 1917, a depot and station, a company store, apartment buildings, a lodge hall and soda fountain, Methodist and Baptist churches, and a school built in 1917 that was replaced in 1954 and closed in 1967. Wilderness Lumber Company, chartered in 1909 through a merger with C.L. Monger, set up the Double Band-M 11 mill in 1916. It was served by a narrow gauge railroad and small Shay engines and was noted for quality draft horses used for skidding logs. During the 1920s, employing 800 men, Wilderness was reputedly the largest hardwood mill in the world. In 1929 it supplied special white oak timbers to restore the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, and in 1946 it merged with Mower Lumber.