From Company Town to Community: Reclaiming Trammel

From Company Town to Community: Reclaiming Trammel. When the company left, the people stayed.. , By the 1980s, Trammel was no longer the thriving town it had once been. The coal seams had thinned, jobs disappeared, and the Big Banner Coal Company, Trammel's last major employer, had folded. V.L. Bird, the town's longtime owner, had passed away. For years, residents rented their homes from Bird's estate. Then came the final blow: the entire town was going up for auction., The news shocked the community. In just a manner of weeks, Trammel's residents formed the Trammel Homeowners Association to fight for control of their future. Neighbors launched bake sales, gospel concerts, car washes, and yard sales. Churches groups from across the U.S. sent in donations for their cause., The people of Trammel, many of them elderly or unemployed, worked together to raise tens of thousands of dollars in an effort to buy their homes on auction day., On July 12, 1986, the auction took place in the front yard of Trammel Baptist Church. Over 300 people attended. Fifty-seven houses and lots went up for sale. Some, like Clady Johnson, living on a $207 monthly welfare check, were outbid. But the Association prevailed in many cases, purchasing 25 houses for local families. By August, the group had raised over $70,000., "Everyone's pretty thrilled to be living in their own houses," said Association secretary Delores Rose. "At one point, I did lose faith… but now we have to look toward what we're going to have.", The work wasn't over. Trammel still had no sewer system and failing water infrastructure. Outhouses remained in use across towns. In the 1990s, the community partnered with local and state agencies to build a $1.3 million water and sewer system. The Lambert Land Company donated land for the new facilities, and one of the old company houses became a community center., Trammel is no longer a coal camp. It's a self-owned, self-run community, a place rebuilt not by companies or investors, but by the people who lived here, working here, and refused to leave. Their resilience has beocme a model for grassroots rural revitalization., Today, as wildflowers bloom along the tracks and childrenride bikes where coal cars once rumbled, Trammel stands as a testament to the power of community.