Red Jacket, WV

Red Jacket is a Mingo County census-designated place in the Tug Valley, with 525 people in the 2020 census across 5.3 square miles. The name honors Red Jacket, the Seneca chief, while the place's working history is tied to Appalachian coal. Red Jacket sits in the Williamson-Thacker coalfield, where mining families and immigrant workers built communities along narrow river valleys. The Red Jacket Consolidated Coal and Coke Company became part of a landmark West Virginia labor case over union organizing, giving this small community a place in the state's larger coalfield history.

Today, the post office and homes sit within the same Appalachian corridor that connected miners, company facilities, and neighboring coal camps. Red Jacket's 2020 population makes clear how small the CDP is, while its name carries two histories at once: a Seneca namesake and a coal town shaped by migration, company power, and labor conflict. The hills and river corridor are part of the place's civic geography, keeping Red Jacket tied to the Mingo County coalfield even as the older mining era has receded.