Newcastle Carries Young County's Coal Chapter

Newcastle's name tells you what the backers wanted people to notice. Coal work drew workers to nearby Whiskey Creek in 1906. Rail service arrived in 1907, and the Belknap Coal Company sank a shaft in 1908. That same year a post office moved from old Fort Belknap, and the new community took the name of the English coal town Newcastle upon Tyne.

Coal gave the place its shape quickly. Newcastle had about 800 residents in 1909, when 56 Belknap miners went on strike and formed a local of the United Mine Workers. Within three years of the town's founding, residents also had a school, a bank, and several churches. A later coal strike lasted 22 months in 1914 and 1915.

Local coal mining ended in 1942. That leaves Newcastle as a Young County reminder that this area was not just ranch and oil country. Before pumpjacks became the easy shorthand, a coal shaft helped put this spot on the map, and the name kept the memory in plain sight. Coal gives Newcastle a different texture from Graham, Olney, or the fort country. That texture earns its own line in the county story, not a footnote under oil.