Pioneers settled the White Oak Valley in the 1800s. In 1892, mineral rights were sold, and the White Oak Fuel Company and the Whipple Colliery Company sank five mine shafts at Whipple, Carlisle, Oakwood, Scarbro, and Wingrove. Each of the five coal camps operated as a distinct town, with its own company store and a one-room school for whites and another for blacks. By the 1920s, a consolidated school for whites was built near the Whipple Company Store, and ten years later a consolidated school for blacks was built in Gentry Town, an area independent of the coal camps. A baseball diamond behind the Whipple Company Store served all five coal camps. In the late 1800s, West Virginia was sparsely populated, and coal mines needed workers, so companies attracted African American miners from the South and workers from around the world. The 1920 census of the five towns in the White Oak Valley showed significant numbers of African Americans and immigrants from Poland, Lithuania, England, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Slovakia, Germany, Scotland, Spain, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Syria, and Wales. The largest group of foreign-born immigrants in Whipple came from Poland and lived on Hunk Hill beside the Catholic Church. Between 1870 and 1914, more than 2.6 million people left Poland for economic opportunity in the U.S. and to escape political struggles and religious persecution. The 1910 census showed many Welsh and Italian residents, but by 1920 only one Welsh resident and 13 Italians remained. Scholars believe the Welsh left West Virginia in the 1910s because unions were stronger elsewhere, while the departure of many Italians from the White Oak Valley remains uncertain, possibly tied to the influx of Polish immigrants, Polish-language Mass at the Catholic Church, and the appeal of places with larger Italian communities such as nearby Kilsyth.