Although its plans of the early 1890s to build a line into the Upper Greenbrier Valley were thwarted by depressed economic conditions, as related in the last chapter, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway kept an interest in the area. The C&O was the logical railroad to enter the valley as it had the choice of several “water level” routes, an advantage held by none of its competitors for the resources for the region. The railway was in good financial condition as the Nineteenth Century was coming to a close and only needed the right conditions to arise before constructing the long-planned line into the Greenbrier River watershed.
(Note on the company’s name. When the main line was built across West Virginia after the Civil War, the company was the C&O Railroad. Following a financial organization in 1878 it became the C&O Railway.)
On November 16, 1897, a charter was issued for the Greenbrier Railway Company for the purpose of building a railroad from the C&O main line in Greenbrier County to the Forks of the Greenbrier River in Pocahontas County. The incorporators of the new company were all men associated with the C&O, including C&O President Melville E. Ingalls and Vice-president Decatur Axtell. Axtell also became Vice-president of the new company.1
As related in the last chapter, the C&O had been looking towards building a rail line into the Upper Greenbrier Valley for a number of years. In the early 1890s a plan for an east/west railroad through Pocahontas County involving the West Virginia and Pittsburgh Railroad and the C&O was developed but fell victim to the Panic of 1893, financial problems with the WV&P, and probably some potential problems with operating the proposed line.
According to recollections of Axtell, written a number of years later, the formation of the Greenbrier Railway Company came upon the recommendations of Ingalls following conferences between him and owners of timber in the Greenbrier area.
Axtell did not say who these timber owners were, but the owners of the St. Lawrence Boom & Manufacturing Company attended at least one meeting with Ingalls and other railway officials. At this meeting were Thomas Shryock, Charles Homer, Francis Hauck, and George Hauck. Others at the meeting were R. S. Turk, Daniel O’Connell, John Luke, David Luke, Joseph Cass, and Charles Moore. According to Moore, an effort was made by all at this meeting to convince the railroad officials to build from White Sulphur Springs.
A line from White Sulphur Springs up Anthonys Creek and down either Douthards Creek or Cochrans Creek to Knapps Creek would be of particular value to St. Lawrence as it would provide direct access to the company’s timberlands. Compared to moving logs by water, rail transport of logs would not depend upon the vagaries of the weather, would be available year-round, and could handle all species of timber, not just those that floated well.
Probably of more importance to the C&O’s decision to form the Greenbrier Railway was J. T. McGraw and his associates in the Rochester Boom and Lumber Company. The name of the company had been changed to the Greenbrier River Lumber Company in October 1897 and some 104,900 – 101,906.5 in previous chapter – acres of land transferred to its name. Also, the land was mortgaged for $400,000 to provide operating capital. With this amount of money available, the Greenbrier River Lumber Company could assure the C&O that the lumber company’s property would be developed if a railroad line was constructed. It was right after these transactions that the chartering of the Greenbrier Railway took place.
However, there is little doubt that the main reason the C&O finally began construction of the railroad into the Upper Greenbrier Valley was the plans of another large company, the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company.
At some point in the late 1890s this company began looking towards the vast spruce forests on Cheat Mountain as a new source of the pulp needed for the manufacture of paper. In February of 1899 WVP&P purchased the 66,150 acre Dewing property on the Shavers Fork of the Cheat River in Pocahontas and Randolph Counties. At the same time that the timber land purchase was being planned, the paper company was also making plans to construct a new paper mill to use this new source of spruce pulp wood.
Henry G. Davis hoped to have the new paper mill located on the West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway. He corresponded in early 1899 with John G. Luke, president of the paper company, and encouraged him to locate the mill on his railroad. After it looked liked the paper company was going to go with a location of the paper mill on the C&O, Davis suggested the best way to access the Cheat Mountain timber was by an extension of the Huttonsville branch of the WVC&P.
WV Pulp and Paper Company decided in early March 1899 to locate their new paper mill on the C&O and selected a site on its main line near Caldwell in Greenbrier County. The next month, however, the company changed the location from Caldwell to Covington, Virginia. The major reason for the change was probably the threat by the city of Hinton, located on the Greenbrier River below Caldwell, to file suit for pollution of the river, its source of water. The paper had been having similar problems at its mill in Luke, Maryland, with the city of Cumberland, Maryland, over pollution of the Potomac River.
(For more details on the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, see Chapter XI.)
The location of the paper mill at Covington did not change the need for a railroad line into the Cheat Mountain area to obtain the spruce pulp wood. The C&O was already making its plans for a branch line into the Upper Greenbrier Valley.
Starting in January 1896 the railroad began a number of surveys to determine the best route from its main line. These first surveys all started in White Sulphur Springs, with two different routes to Minnehaha Springs and a variety of routes on to the Greenbrier River. It was not until early 1898 that the route entirely along the river was considered. When the site of the paper mill was moved, consideration was given to extending the Hot Springs Branch into the Greenbrier Valley but on May 24, 1899, the final decision was made by the C&O Board of Directors to locate their new branch line along the river for its entire length.
Bids for the construction work between Whitcomb (the junction with the main line) and Marlinton were received in July 1899 and the work on the new branch line was underway in early August. Work on the grade above Marlinton started in late August.
Once underway, work on the new railroad proceeded at a rapid rate with completion to the mouth of Leatherbark Run the goal. This was the site picked by WVP&P for its access to its Cheat Mountain timber. Given the name of Cass, the company also planned a sawmill for its new town.
• work on the Knapps Creek bridge and the tunnel north of Marlinton was underway in September 1899
• by early October work was in progress as far north as the future site of Hosterman
• the two bridges over the river were under construction by mid-October
• the Droop Tunnel was completed and twelve miles of track laid by the first of May 1900
• twenty-nine miles of track were in place by the first of July
• freight was being hauled as far as Renick by mid-July and to Locust Creek by mid-September
• the first shipment, two cars of stock from Renick, was made in September
• forty miles of track were laid by the end of September
• on October 26, 1900, Marlinton had its official “first train” with an appropriate day of ceremony
• track was laid as far as the tunnel above Marlinton in early November
• Stony Bottom was reached by track layers before the end of November
• passenger service to Marlinton began on December 17
• the track was at its most important objective, Cass, by Christmas and the paper company began shipping pulp wood to Covington at the end of January 1901
Having reached Cass, the completion of the line on to Durbin took on a more leisurely pace. Track laying was suspended until the first of June 1901 and was still three miles from Durbin in early December. Work ceased for the winter and it was May 26, 1902, before the line between Cass and Durbin was finally opened for traffic.
The contract to extend the line to Bartow was let in August 1903 and service to that point was available by April 1904. The final extension of the Greenbrier Railway was to Winterburn the following year, 1905. This section of track was built in cooperation with the George Craig and Sons Lumber Company. (See Winterburn in Chapter X for more details.) The line to Winterburn was completed in the summer and brought the railway to its greatest length, 100.96 miles.
On October 13, 1903, the Greenbrier Railway was consolidated with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.
COAL AND IRON RAILWAY
Although H. G. Davis had failed to build his railroad south into the Greenbrier Valley in the middle 1890s, he remained interested in the project and remained in contact with C&O officials about a possible connection between their railroads. Once the C&O had made its final decision on building up the Greenbrier River, serious correspondence began concerning a junction near the forks of the river in northern Pocahontas County. Survey work out of Elkins was underway in July 1899. In December 1899 Davis and his associates received a charter for the Coal and Iron Railway.2
Work on the two tunnels on the new railroad was underway by February 1900 and grading work had begun by May. Although half the length of the Greenbrier Railway, the C&I was a more difficult construction job. It had to cross two mountains to reach the head of the West Fork of the Greenbrier River. The line was not completed to Durbin until July 23, 1903.
Construction of the Coal and Iron in Pocahontas County came at the cost of the lives of six workers killed by an explosion of dynamite on December 27, 1900. The ----- get details ---- occurred north of Durbin.3
In January 1902 Davis sold his railroad properties and in 1905 the Coal and Iron became part of the Western Maryland Railroad. In 1909 the Western Maryland underwent a reorganization and became the Western Maryland Railway.
IRON MOUNTAIN AND GREENBRIER RAILROAD
(White Sulphur and Huntersville Railroad)
The third common carrier rail line constructed into the timberlands of the Upper Greenbrier Valley served a smaller area and was not a branch line of a major railroad. As related in Chapter V, the Iron Mountain and Greenbrier Railroad was incorporated in July 1901 by the owners of the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company to build a railroad between White Sulphur Springs and the mouth of Beaver Creek in Pocahontas County. This action came after the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway decided on an “all-river” route for its new branch line into the Upper Greenbrier Valley, rather than using a route that included Anthonys Creek.
Although its main purpose was to provide logs to the mill of its owners, the IM&G was a common carrier and served a number of other other mills, the most important being the one constructed at Neola in 1907-08. SLB&M built its own mill near Neola in 1909. See Chapter XIV for details on the mills on Anthonys Creek.
In two articles in November 1902, The Pocahontas Times reported that the northern end of the railroad had been changed to Huntersville and the map and profile for IM&G up North Fork and down Douthards Creek to Huntersville had been filed at the Pocahontas County court house. The paper commented “The real object of this road is supposed to be the development of the vast iron field in the central part of Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties.”4
An article in the Hinton Daily News in October 1903 gave an optimistic view of the future for the new railroad. The article said about twenty miles were completed and it is planned to extend the line on to Durbin for a connection with the C&O and Wabash System. The article goes on:
This road, when completed, will open for market more than 2,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber and inexhaustible deposits of high grade iron ore, limestone and marble.
Valuable deposits of coal are found in many localities through which this road will be built, but as yet little is known of the area.
Along the projected route of the G. & I. M. [sic], through Pocahontas County, are many groups with countless numbers of the world’s greatest healing fountains, which for medicinal and table use stand without a parallel.
The Sherwood Company, a corporation of West Virginia, owns 100,000 acres of choice virgin forest along the G. & I. M. Ry., and is shipping daily 100,000 feet of logs to the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company’s mills at Ronceverte.
Over $25,000 has been expended by the company in developing its iron ore property which geologists find to be the largest and most valuable iron ore field in the south. At a certain place where a cross tunnel has been constructed the iron ore deposits proved to be 150 feet thick. With iron ore, limestone and coal all in such a position pig iron can be produced in this field and marketed with a greater profit than that made anywhere else in the United States.5
Unfortunately, most of the predictions in the article failed to come about. The railroad did haul logs and lumber for its parent corporation, SLB&M, and other sawmills along its line, but the other resources did not prove to be anywhere close to the value suggested by the article. As will be related in Chapter XIV there was an attempt to mine iron ore but where the figure of ore deposits being 150 feet thick came from is a mystery. The railroad went into bankruptcy in 1911 and was reorganized as the White Sulphur and Huntersville Railroad in ---. However, it takes more than a name change to lay track and the hoped for extension to Huntersville never came about and the line was never laid further than the existing track to the head of the North Fork of Anthonys Creek. The winding down of the lumber industry on Anthonys Creek eliminated most sources of revenue for the WS&H and in February 1927 the railroad applied to the West Virginia Public Service Commission for permission to discontinue all passenger and freight service. In November the request was approved by the PSC. There was some activity at Neola into the early 1930s so the rail line might have been active for a few more years after receiving permission to abandon.6
in the Disque material there are references to the Wood Motor Parts Corporation leasing the railroad for three years, at $3,500 per year, with an option to buy for $55,000. No date found but would have been before August 1928 sale to Moxham
- - - - - - - - - -
A few other railways were planned to enter the Upper Greenbrier Valley in the early 1900s.
In 1900 the Cherry Valley Railroad was incorporated by a group of Richwood men with the purpose of building of line between their town and the C&O. This company had a route surveyed by the end of the year. A tunnel under Droop Mountain was considered during the planning but not part of the final route, which was a tortuous one. It began on the C&O near Kennison, climbed across Droop Mountain onto Bruffeys and Hills Creeks, crossed over --- Mountain to the North Fork of the Cherry River, and then down that stream to Richwood. It is not surprising that this line was not constructed.7
The plans of the Chesapeake and Western Railroad to build on west into West Virginia were reactivated (see Chapter VIII for first its first years) by new owners of the company (which was now the C&W Railway). Various surveys were made through Pocahontas County in 1901 and 1902. Maps and profiles were filed in the court house in November 1902 under the name Midland Railway. Some right-of-way agreements were obtained earlier in the year.
In June 1901 there was this report in the Times "A corps of engineers commenced work at the mouth of Sitlington's Creek and will survey towards Highland County by way of Frost and Galford Creek." 8
Unfortunately for the CW investors, coal deposits in the area of Stokesville, Virginia, that were to provide the funds for the line into West Virginia did not warrant development. Thus the CW ended at Stokesville and never made use of the survey into the Greenbrier Valley. This railroad settled into life as a short line and is still operating in ---- as a -----.
There was intense media speculation in the early 1900s about the plans of George J. Gould to expand the Wabash Railroad into a transcontinental railroad from Baltimore to San Francisco with the hopes that the line would come through the Greenbrier Valley. A survey under the name Atlantic and Western Railroad from Sitlington, along the mountains on the west side of the river, through the Stony Creek gap, and down the Williams River was filed in 1904. Gould’s grand plans never came about, the victim of a number of factors.
In August 1905 the West Virginia Midland Railroad was incorporated by John T. McGraw and others to build a railroad from Sutton to Webster Springs, up the Elk River, and to Marlinton. This was a reorganization of McGraw’s existing Holly River and Addison Railroad which was already built to Webster Springs. The line was eventually constructed up the Elk River in the late 1920s as far as Bergoo. There it connected with Greenbrier, Cheat and Elk Railroad, which at this time was owned by the Western Maryland Railway. The WM purchased the Bergoo to Webster Springs section of the WVM in 1929.9
Within the first few years of the new century all the pieces for the development of the vast timber resources of the Upper Greenbrier Valley were now in place. The necessary railroad lines were constructed, the timber land was in the hands of companies with the necessary capital to do the work, the growing national economy needed the lumber and other wood products, ------. The economic development long sought by many (but certainly not all) in the valley was ready to happen. In 1905 probably no one could conceive that it would take less than twenty-five years to strip the valley’s mountains of their timber cover.
Logging The Greenbrier Valley 