Escapes: Its population may be tiny, but Thomas, W.Va., is popping

It’s almost 9 p.m., and TipTop coffee shop is hopping.

Waiters decked out in suspenders and bowlers serve up designer coffees, gluten-free chocolate coconut pie and prosciutto, Gorgonzola and caramelized onion pastry.

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A few doors down, artists toil behind an antique desk at the White Room Art Gallery. Some of the eccentricities on offer include mirrors with snarling tentacles made from silver spoons and bike spokes, ceramic purple elephants in the shape of inflatable pool floats (cute, I promise) and an assortment of snarky cards.

Steps from there, girls in skinny jeans and cowboy boots twirl to the banjo twang of a four-man bluegrass band.

Adams Morgan? Columbia Heights? No. It’s Thomas, W.Va., population 586. Buried deep in the Allegheny Mountains, Thomas is a small town (just four by seven miles) with increasingly hip tastes.

In the past year, art galleries, antiques stores and a brick-oven pizzeria have sprung up on East Avenue, the town’s main drag. In a couple of months, a new bed-and-breakfast is slated to open.

“I’ve been here 11 years,” says John Bright, owner of the Purple Fiddle, a combination bluegrass venue, cafe and guesthouse founded in the old general store. “Things have changed dramatically just in the last year. The town has really attracted a lot of creative people.”

He imagines, in the very near future, three to four options for live music every night. Already, TipTop hosts an occasional singer-songwriter. And nearby Mountain State Brewing Co. has been known to bring in a band for a dance party or two. “We’re on our way,” Bright says, “to becoming a destination.”

It wasn’t always like this. By the late 1800s, just a handful of families had settled in Thomas. At the time, there was little besides log cabins. “Wild beasts could be seen and killed from the very house doors,” notes historian T. Nutter in his 1906 history of the town.

The discovery of coal in 1884 turned Thomas from pit stop to mountain cosmopolis, bustling with immigrants from all over Europe. At one time, Thomas’s main street boasted an opera house, a saloon and one of the first railway stations with electric lights. A statewide Italian-language paper was published here as well.

By 1915, more than 2,000 people lived in Thomas. But the local Davis Coal and Coke Co. faltered in the 1940s, and the last underground coal mine closed in 1956.

Even today, most of East Avenue has the feel of a frontier town at the turn of the 20th century. Squat brick buildings with wooden windows and gingerbread trim look out onto the mountainside across a wide main street. A cowboy or a crotchety sheriff wouldn’t seem entirely out of place.

Flying Pigs Breakfast and Lunchery, where I had breakfast, is nestled in one of these main-street haunts. The cozy diner is stuffed with tables and chairs that could have come from your mom’s kitchen. Linger long enough over the piping-hot chili or sweet potato pancakes, and you’ll feel as if the entire town has passed through for a bite. (The waitress, who serves the entire joint, will probably look as if she feels that way, too).