Where’s Bullpush?
More importantly, why Bullpush?
In 1928, the US Geological Service first listed the west fork of Smithers Creek as Bullpush Fork. In 1910 and earlier it had been noted as Buffalo Fork. What changed between these dates?
Fayette County GIS and local signs indicate that Bullpush Road runs a short distance past a trailer park on the west side of Smither’s Creek. However, Google and the USGS both list Bullpush Road as what local signs refer to as Supply Hunt Carbondale Mine Road and Fayette GIS lists as Supply Hunt Road.
Notes from the family that named the location, and our own exploration comparing landmarks in person suggest that Fayette GIS likely indicates the historical location of the Bullpush house which stood at the mouth of Bullpush Hollow and Bullpush Fork.
At first, Bullpush was a colloquial name for the hollow where the Cooper family kept a bull to stud and the name extended to include the area where Thomas and Elizabeth Cooper’s house sat. The house straddled the Fayette/Kanawha county lines and as different family members were born in different rooms, they were also born in different counties. I’ve noted the approximate location of the house below and on the story map as Bullpush.
After moving to West Virginia a young couple, Thomas and Elizabeth initially lived in company housing near the New River and then in Boomer. Although they eventually bought property in Cannelton, Bullpush was the family’s longest-term residence. All of the Cooper children as well as daughter and son-in-laws such as CC lived here at some point as did many boarders.
In a 1976 interview, Roxie Cooper, whose oldest child was born there, explained:
I thought that Ruth named that… She used to write Bullpush on her letters and I never did know of a place named Bullpush. We just nicknamed it that. That was just up Cannelton Hollow; one branch, and Dad kept his cattle up there. And in the mountain, he had a gate, from one mountain to the other–a fence and then a great big gate.
Dad kept masculine [a bull]. People took their cows there to breed ‘em. We had a big barn dad kept his cattle in. …in the summer time they were up this hollow.
At some point in the coming decades, the name became official. As an adult, Roxie’s daughter Margaret regularly reported the place of her birth as Bullpush Hollow.
The story told in Bullpush Hollow is the story of a people and their history that is rarely told. When it is told, it is not often told in detail and from the perspective of the people who lived it. While many people wrote about pieces and the arc of coal camp history, the story of individual families was recorded sporadically and often by outsiders. This is their story and it should be told in their voices. It is much richer and more personal when seen from that perspective. For me and my family, much of this story starts in Bullpush.
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If you will take a map of West Virginia , you will see that it is much like the map of any other State…One can easily imagine the life that goes on in these towns as being the same that goes on in small towns everywhere. He can imagine people owning their own homes, following a variety of occupations, attending to their own little affairs, and sharing in the town’s common activities. He can imagine them acting like the independent citizens of other communities. But he will be mistaken. Nothing of the sort goes on there. In the coal mining fields of West Virginia…the dots on the map do not stand for towns in the ordinary sense. They do not indicate places where people lead an interrelated, many-sided, and mutually dependent existence. They stand for clusters of houses around a coal mine. They indicate points at which seams of coal have been opened, tipples erected, and coal has been brought forth as fuel. True, people live here, but they live here to work . The communities exist for the coal mines . They are the adjuncts and necessary conveniences of an industry. — Winthrop Lane, 1921
