Red Ash Island Cemetery

Red Ash Island is a wooded, roughly 12-acre island in the New River, once part of the Red Ash mining community. The National Park Service records more than 200 graves here; most are unmarked or overgrown, and only a handful of headstones remain. Come for the coalfield history and the human scale of the loss, not a developed cemetery or an easy roadside stop.

The NPS pin takes you to the Southside Trail approach, not to a surveyed grave or a place to park. From there, the walk leaves the trail and heads over the hillside toward the riverbank; a creek is about 200 feet from the marked point, with the raised island beyond. The final spur is unmarked, and seasonal high water can cut the island off. The NPS warns that the active private railroad at Southside Junction must not be walked on or crossed. Leave graves and other historic remains undisturbed.

The island was part of everyday life as well as a burial ground: residents used its swimming holes, baseball diamond and dance platform. A smallpox pesthouse operated here in the 1890s, though accounts differ about whether patients who died there were buried on the island. Red Ash miners were among the victims of the 1900 and 1905 mine disasters, and some are reported to lie here; surviving records do not identify every grave. Most of the visit is about what the place cannot show you: a once-active community, with only a few markers left above ground.