Within the National Coal Heritage Area, the Coal Heritage Trail follows more than 187 rugged miles of industrial landscape tied to the southern West Virginia smokeless coalfields, where thousands of miners produced coal that helped create modern America, fueled industrial growth, provided jobs and homes for people fleeing persecution and oppression, enriched investors, and shaped a distinctive working-class culture marked by industrial strength and racial and ethnic diversity. In this mountainous region, the Great Bend Tunnel was built because a direct rail line through Big Bend Mountain, though more than one mile long, was far more economical than a roughly ten-mile route following the Greenbrier River around the mountain, cutting about nine miles of haulage in either direction and saving time by avoiding the sharp turns that would have slowed trains. When Chesapeake and Ohio Railway construction crews arrived to build the tunnel, a small settlement called Rollinsburg stood on the east side of the Greenbrier River, with a post office, general store, blacksmith shop, the Rollynsburg Baptist Church, and about eight houses, while the west side, named Talcott Station by the railway, was mostly farmland with a grist mill on Hungards Creek owned by Zachariah Augustus Woodson. The post office remained in Rollinsburg until 1882, and after the Talcott Post Office was completed that year, Rollinsburg became part of Talcott, though some descendants still use the older name. With the completion of the train depot named for Captain Talcott, the railway's resident engineer for the Great Bend Tunnel, farmers and merchants gained access to markets that had previously been out of reach, demand for goods and services increased, and a fuller town developed, although Talcott later declined from its once prosperous role as a trading center.