Our Vision | Frontier Forge Institute

A Permanent Home for The Forge

We have the chance to acquire the Eisenhower Building — the former U.S. Mine Academy in Mount Hope, West Virginia — 34,000 square feet of classrooms, shops, and grounds — and turn it into the Appalachian Leadership & Training Academy: a year-long residential academy that forges young men in faith, service, and skill.

Join the Building Fund

🔒 A campaign of the James Megellas Foundation, 501(c)(3)

The Opportunity

A solid, mid-century institutional campus — built by the federal government to train the nation's mine-safety instructors — is on the market and within our reach.

Tucked into the hills of Mount Hope, West Virginia, and built in 1958, the Eisenhower Building — the former U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration Academy — was constructed to a standard you simply can't build today — block and brick, room after room, made to house and teach hundreds of students at a time.

It offers 34,000 square feet, 64 classrooms, and a cavernous garage ideal for a working trades shop. It sits directly beside a disused football stadium that would make a ready-made physical-training field, and it's just minutes from the Summit Bechtel Reserve, where the Boy Scouts of America draw tens of thousands of young people every year. In short — it was practically built for what God has put on our hearts to do.

Listed at $690,000 just two years ago, this solid campus can be acquired today for under $300,000 — but that window won't stay open forever. With your help, we can secure it now.

34,000

Square feet

Classrooms

1958

Built to last

Adjacent stadium / PT field

Front entrance of the Eisenhower Building, Mount Hope WV — The front entrance — built to last, ready for a new purpose.

One of the building's many classrooms — One of 64 classrooms — future teaching and training space.

The large interior garage and mechanical bay — The cavernous garage — a natural home for a trades shop.

A long institutional hallway inside the building — Wide, solid corridors run the length of each wing.

Aerial showing the building beside the football stadium — The stadium next door — a ready-made PT field.

Exterior view of the building's wings and grounds — 34,000 square feet of brick-and-block construction.

What It Will Become

The Appalachian Leadership & Training Academy — a one-year residential program for motivated young men straight out of high school, modeled after proven academies like the International ALERT Academy in Big Sandy, Texas.

✝️

Godly Wisdom

A full year immersed in Scripture, discipleship, and the daily habits of a man of character — the foundation everything else is built on.

🚑

First-Responder Skills

Real, certifiable training in emergency medicine, rescue, and readiness — so these young men can run toward trouble and serve their neighbors.

🔧

A Marketable Trade

Hands-on mastery of a skilled trade — electrical, plumbing, welding, HVAC, automotive, and more — so every graduate leaves with a livelihood in his hands.

A young man would arrive the fall after graduation and spend twelve months living, working, worshiping, and training alongside mentors of proven character. He'd leave with his faith deepened, his body hardened, a first-responder certification, and a trade that can support a family for life. That is the kind of man this country is starving for — and this building is where we'll forge him.

How We Get There

The building is the key that unlocks everything else. Here's the path.

Acquire the building — this is where you come in

We must own the property before we can do anything else. That's the purpose of this campaign: to raise the funds to purchase the former Mine Academy outright.

Renovate & equip the campus

With the building secured, we'll bring together support from private donors, foundations, and community development partners to renovate the facility and stand up the academy — work that can only begin once the property is ours.

Open the doors to the first class

Renovate, staff, and launch a residential academy that will train young men from across the country, year after year, for generations to come.

Join the Building Fund

The goal is not a building — it's to build men. But the building is where it begins. Every gift moves us closer to the deed, and to the first young man who walks through those doors.

$350,000Our goal to acquire the building and open the doors

$20,000 raised so farGoal: $350,000

Give to the Building Fund

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Gifts to the building fund help Frontier Forge Institute acquire the former U.S. Mine Academy in Mount Hope, WV. Frontier Forge Institute is a program of the James Megellas Foundation, Inc., a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 27-3047777). Your gift is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.