Named for its proximity to Pocahontas, Virginia, and Great Flat Top Mountain in West Virginia, the Pocahontas Coalfield or Flat Top-Pocahontas Coalfield spans 900 square miles along the Virginia-West Virginia border. Discovered in the mid-1800s, the coalfield was eventually mined in the 1860s, when local blacksmith Jordan Nelson started selling coal from his land. Cartographer Jedidiah Hotchkiss began boasting about the coalfield in his publications, and he engaged Isaiah A. Welch to survey the resources in the area.

In 1876, Hotchkiss had the coal exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition by Thomas Graham, who banded several Philadelphia businessmen together to exploit the resources of the coalfield. They expanded the Norfolk & Western Railroad (later Norfolk & Western Railway) to transport coal out of the coalfield, established the Flat-Top Trust (later Flat-Top Coal Land Association) to manage land holdings, and formed the Southwest Virginia Improvement Company (later Pocahontas Colleries Company) to develop mining operations.

In 1882, the town of Pocahontas, Virginia, was founded to support the mining operations, and the first mine in the coalfield was opened to Pocahontas Seam #3 (now known as Pocahontas Mine No. 1 or Baby Mine). A number of competing mining and land companies developed in the 1880s around the Pocahontas Coalfield. John Cooper formed the Mill Creek Coal & Coke Company in 1884, J.P. Bowen founded the Booth-Bowen Coal & Coke Company, and William McQuail operated the Turkey Gap Coal & Coke Company. Jenkin Jones established the Pocahontas Consolidated Collieries Company, Inc. of West Virginia (later Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc.), by merging the Pocahontas Colleries Company and other companies together in 1907.

In 1901, the Flat-Top Coal Land Association, a subsidiary of Norfolk & Western Railway, reorganized as the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Company of New Jersey. The next year, the Railway leased land to U.S. Steel in a deal granting it acreage to form the United States Coal & Coke Company at Gary, West Virginia. In 1939, Pocahontas Coal & Coke became Pocahontas Land Corporation, chartered in Virginia, and, in 1977, the company chartered the Pocahontas Kentucky Corporation (later Pocahontas Development Corporation). In 1982, Norfolk & Western merged with the Southern Railway to become Norfolk Southern.

In 1860, several Maryland coal operators merged their companies into the Consolidation Coal Company. The company began mining operations in West Virginia when it acquired the Fairmont Coal Company in 1903. After further expansion, Consolidation Coal merged with the Pittsburgh Coal Company into the Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Company in 1945. In 1956, the company acquired the Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., and in 1991, DuPont Energy and RWE A.G. acquired and changed the company's name to CONSOL Energy, Inc.