In the late 1600s and early 1700s Europeans began to come into the Greenbrier Valley, with the first being fur traders, both French and English. The French would have probably come down the Ohio River and reached the Greenbrier region by coming up the Kanawha and New Rivers. They may have had a hand in giving the Greenbrier River its name. A 1778 map refers to the river as the “Renceverte or Green Briar River.” The original name of area where Ronceverte is located was the St. Lawrence Ford, which may also reflect a French presence in the valley. However, the results of the French and Indian War, 1754-1763, ended any claims the French may have had to the Greenbrier Valley.1
English traders would have also used the New River as one access to the Greenbrier Valley but more likely came into the area from the east by various routes directly across the mountains.
The fur traders were followed by people from the established settlements in eastern Virginia with more permanent settlement in mind. Their motives in coming west no doubt varied. The earliest were probably those who just naturally wandered, with the inability or desire to settle in one place for long. Others, coming later, were looking for their own land, as the best land in the eastern part of Virginia became occupied. People of “lower class” moved away from the settled areas to get away from the class-based society of the east. The Valley of Virginia was populated first and by the late 1600s, people were heading on west, and settlement reached the eastern side of Allegheny Mountain in the early 1700s. At this time there was a brief halt to the western movement of settlement. However, by the 1740s Europeans began coming across the Allegheny Mountain into what is now West Virginia.
The Greenbrier region was, of course, not without prior claim of ownership. The Native Americans had been in the valley for centuries and reasonably believed the Europeans to be trespassers. In coming to the Greenbrier Valley, the first settlers were in violation of the Treaty of Albany with the Iroquois. Signed in 1722, this document forbade Europeans from coming west of “the high ridge of mountains.”2
However, there were two grants that included the Greenbrier Valley made in 1745. One was to the Greenbrier Company for 100,000 acres “on the Green Brier River, north West and West of the cow Pasture and Newfoundland.” The other grant was to Henry Downs and for 50,000 acres on the Greenbrier River. The people receiving these grants were required to settle one family for each thousand acres within four years.
The early Greenbrier Valley settlers were also in violation of the Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III in October of that year, which was designed to regulate the territory England had acquired from France and Spain as a result of the French and Indian War. Part of the Proclamation set off the area west of the Alleghenies as Native American territory. There was to be no settlement west of the watershed separating the rivers flowing west to the Mississippi and east to the ocean.3
However, like almost all treaties and orders from on high regarding the Native Americans, these tended to be ignored and Europeans continued their western movement in the New World.
Two men, named Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, are credited by many historians as being the first European settlers west of the Allegheny Mountain. In can be argued historically whether they intended to become permanent residents of the region or were only exploring, but they did come to the present site of Marlinton about 1749 and were there for several years. During this time they had their famous dispute, supposedly over religion, and were living in separate quarters, a cabin and a hollow tree, when found by Andrew Lewis during a surveying expedition for the Greenbrier Company in the valley in 1751. They did not remain at this location too long. Tradition has Sewell moving on west and being killed by Native Americans on the mountain that bears his name in Greenbrier County, while Marlin returned to the east. Other sources have Sewell also returning to his home.
Other people, more interested in making permanent homes, soon followed Marlin and Sewell into the region, despite the treaty restrictions.
By the Treaty of Hard Labor and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, both in 1768, and by the Treaty of Lochaber in 1770, a number of the tribes gave up their claims to the area that now includes West Virginia, making the Greenbrier settlements legal, at least on paper.4
However, the newcomers were to discover that the original human users of the resources of the Upper Greenbrier Valley were not about to just fade away and let others have the land they had occupied for centuries.
At the time the European movement into the Greenbrier Valley was getting underway, there were no Native American settlements in the valley. The reasons for this are not clear, but conflict between the Iroquois in the north and the Cherokee to the south may have created a “no-man’s land” in much of present-day West Virginia.
There is certainly ample archeological evidence of Native American habitation of the valley, but the size of any permanent settlement is unknown today. As the time of the first European settlement, the occupation of the Greenbrier Valley by Native Americans was on a seasonal basis, mainly by Shawnees from Ohio. They came for hunting and the working of flint deposits for projectile points and tools.
This absence of permanent settlement made the resistance to newcomers no less fierce, and although the final outcome was to be inevitable, the Native Americans were able to delay the total European takeover of the Greenbrier Valley for most of the 1700s. At least three times the area was virtually emptied of settlers following their attacks. However, unfortunately for the Native Americans, the British lost the Revolutionary War and this took care of the limited protection provided by the treaties signed by the British government. But not until the new United States government took action against the natives in the mid-1790s, was the Greenbrier Valley completely free from possible attack.
Even before the danger from attacks by Native Americans was totally gone, sufficient population lived in the Greenbrier Valley, perhaps three to four thousand people, for a petition to be made in 1777 to the Virginia General Assembly for a new county. At this time the valley (and most of today’s West Virginia) was divided between Botetourt and Augusta Counties. These two counties had been created in 1738 from Orange County, which covered the western part of Virginia.
The Assembly agreed and a new county, Greenbrier, was created in 1778 out of Botetourt County. As formed, Greenbrier County was much larger than today, extending to the Ohio River. In 1782 Lewisburg became the first incorporated town in the valley.
As the population west of the Blue Ridge continued to grow, new counties were created and by 1800 the Greenbrier River Valley was divided between Greenbrier, Randolph (1786), Pendleton (1787), and Bath (1790) counties.
As population increased in the upper part of the valley, a similar desire for their own county grew among these people. In 1821 the General Assembly received a petition from Upper Greenbrier residents requesting a new county. The petition gave as the main reason for wanting a new county was the distance to the three “seats of justice” (county seats) that residents of different parts of the proposed county had to travel to carry out legal business. The Assembly acted favorably to the petition with the formation of Pocahontas County. Most of the area for this new county came from Bath County with parts of Pendleton and Randolph Counties. A small part of Greenbrier was added in 1824. The name for the new county, Pocahontas, was not in the petition requesting the creation of the county, but selected by the Assembly. The governor of Virginia at this time, Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., was a descendant of Pocahontas and perhaps he suggested the name to the Assembly to honor his ancestor.
The final form of Pocahontas County did not take shape until a Boundary Line Commission set the boundary between Pocahontas and Randolph Counties in 1880. The boundary was changed from a straight line from — to — to one following the mountain ridges around the headwaters of the Greenbrier River. As a result of this action, Pocahontas acquired some valuable timberland on the West Fork of the Greenbrier River from its neighbor. (Not surprisingly, the Randolph County members of the Boundary Line Commission were opposed to the results of the commission’s work and reading the description of the borders of Pocahontas County in the act creating the county, they may have been correct in their opposition.)
Native American resistance was not the only challenge to be overcome before permanent settlements could be established in the valley, of course. The mountains made access from the existing settlements difficult in both directions – for the settlers wishing to come to the Greenbrier Valley and for the economic exchanges necessary if more than a small population of hunters, trappers, and farmers was to be supported. Finding the economic base to support families and communities was necessary before serious settlement could occur.
Given the topic of this text, the interest is the impact the forests had on the progress of settlement. From the beginning of European settlement in the New World, the almost total forest coverage of the land must have been impressive to these first arrivals. The people coming to Virginia and most of the other colonies in northeastern portion of the future United States were mainly from the British Isles and by the 1600-1700 period the ancient forests of their home land were almost gone. Purchase agents for the Royal Navy were one group who would have looked with lust on the tall trees and spreading oaks of the new land. The needs of its navy had long since placed the forests of Britain under great strain. Providing timber for the Royal Navy helped to make New England merchants prosperous.
However, for the majority of settlers to the New World the vast forests of their new home were probably considered a hindrance, not an opportunity. One author referred to the “instinctive feeling of the colonist against his natural enemy, the forest, . . .” Some trees were needed, of course, to provide building materials, fuel, and fencing. A good example is the chestnut, a tree of great usefulness, both for its wood and its nuts that provided food for both man and animal. Also, the animals living in the forests were a source of food. However, since the livelihood of the settlers was mainly from agriculture, it was necessary to clear the land of timber before growing crops and raising livestock could begin. There was some open land, as the existence of buffalo in the Greenbrier Valley at the time of the first European settlement indicates. The amount of non-forested land is not known, nor how much was the result of natural forces and how much was due to clearing activity by Native Americans. However, it is safe to say that most land had trees removed before farming could start.5
(The number of board feet of merchantable timber that went up in smoke or was left to rot must have brought tears to the eyes of any later day lumberman who thought about it. In defense of the actions of the first settlers, there was, of course, no market for the timber they removed even if they had wanted to sell it.)
A tract of land in the Williams River watershed was used several times by writers in The Pocahontas Times as an example of how little value was given to timber by the original settlers in the valley. The most recent reference was in 1944 when Times Editor Calvin W. Price wrote:
Before I forget about it, let me again put in the record the classic as to how thick the trees stood in the Black Forest. Many thousands of acres on Williams River were owned by the late Col. Paul McNeel. The land surveyor was his friend John Yeager. He employed Mr. Yeager to spend some time looking over the land. The report was discouraging – the timber stood so thick as to make the land worthless – it could not be profitably cleared!6
Other references to the same tract were:
• (1896) The agents sent to examine on the part of the original owners reported that the land would likely be of no practical use as all that was of any good was covered by such big trees that it would take all it was worth to clear it, while the rest of it had nothing on it but pine.
• (1906) About 1850 a farmer, a Southern colonel, realizing the wonderful richness of the Williams River country, began to acquire it and entered the land in blocks of twenty-seven acres and less. After his death his heirs, unwilling to pay taxes on wild land, decided to sell them. Before doing so they sent two surveyors into the woods to make a report. They reported that the land was without value, because the timber was too big to make it practical to clear. The holders then were glad to sell at forty-two cents an acre this heavily timbered land, underlaid with the best of coal.
• (1911) The owners were numerous and when a chance occurred to sell it, sent a committee to go over it and make a report on it. The committee looked it over and reported that while the land was very rich, that it was without value, because the timber was so heavy that the land could never be cleared to advantage. Acting on this advice the owners sold for forty cents an acre, what is now some of the best coal and timber land in this or any State. The scouts found the timber to be highly undesirable weeds.
• (1917) This land was heavily timbered and was underlaid for the most part with coal. Having received this offer, a committee of three were sent into the woods to look it over and on their report the land was sold. The report showed that the land was practically worthless for the timber was so large that it would cost more to clear the land, than the land was worth.7
In the 1906 article it was stated that one of the heirs “proved contrary and he held on to a three thousand acre tract on Black Mountain – and got fifty thousand dollars for it three years ago. And it has doubled in value since then.” The tract referred to was probably one of 2,837 acres, sold by Charles E. Beard to E. W. Campbell in 1902 for $33,333. The article was a little off on the selling price, but it was still a good increase in value.8
The absolute facts behind these reports are not certain, but much can be confirmed from existing records. Paul McNeel received grants to over 40,000 acres on the Cranberry and Williams Rivers prior to the Civil War, which was —- see if the tracts in the following can be traced back to Col. Paul
After McNeel’s death in 1872, the ownership of the land went to various heirs. In March 1879, the owners of land, given as 49,861 acres in eleven tracts, gave one of their fellow owners, D. A. Penick, the authority to sell, with the price to be not less than $0.30 per acre. In 1882 he was able to make the sale, to William M. Hovey, of Charleston, and got a better price than required. The deed, made in August, was for 48,314 acres (1,546 acres —-) at $0.42 per acre, $20,291.88.9
In November 1884 Hovey turned most of the land, 42,864 acres, over to a trustee, Wesley Mollahan, with the power to sell at not less than $3 per acre. Mollahan was also to sell up to 86 certificates and make them available to those wishing to purchase them, at $500 per share. In October 1889 the trustee sold the land to Johnson N. Camden for $100,730.40. This was only $2.35 an acre, but the “holders of a majority of said shares have approved said sale.” It was certainly a big increase in price from the $0.42 an acre only seven years before.10
The land not included in the transfer to Mollahan, 5,450 acres on the Gauley River, was sold to James H. Huling in November 1885. Camden also acquired this tract in October 1889, paying $12,807.50.11
The 1911 article made reference to the change in attitude on timber. “Twenty-five years ago we were giving out contracts to belt or hack trees. The working man would get seventy-five cents an acre for killing trees. Such work now would soon give him seventy-five years in jail.”12
A similar increase in land value was related in a 1904 Times article on the “Upper Tract,” referring to the northern section of Pocahontas County. Richard Smythe got a survey of — acres in 1794 and a 41,000 acre tract was obtained by Henry Phillips in —. “These men seemed to know a good thing when they saw it, but were about a hundred years ahead of time.” About 1840 the tracts were divided into parcels and sold in tax sales at around a half cent per acre. Uriah Hevener purchased a total of 12,013 acres of this land in two deeds, 1877 and 1882, paying $11,075, not quite $1 for an acre. In 1889 he sold 10,231 acres for $30,000, just slightly over $3 per acre. The 1904 article notes that up to 1897, the highest price was $8.50 per acre, with $3 the fair price. In 1904, the land was going for $25 to $40 an acre.13
In a 1912 court case involving some land on the West Fork of the Greenbrier River, testimony on land values in this area in the 1880s was that timber land would sell from fifty cents to no more than seventy-five cents per acre.14
Many of the natural resources of the western part of Virginia were unknown (or unneeded) to both the Native Americans and the early European settlers. Coal, iron ore, oil, and gas are found in geologic layers beneath the surface and untouched until well into the Twentieth Century. Another resource, salt, was important to both groups, but was obtained only where it came to the surface in springs.
On the other hand, the Allegheny pioneer attacked the forests, the soils, and the wildlife with a prodigality unknown to the Indians. In the process, he developed attitudes which enabled him and his descendants to view with but little concern the rapacious greed and wanton destruction which later laid waste to so much of the natural wealth.15
Since many of us living today in the Upper Greenbrier Valley would love to have seen this valley with its pre-settlement stand of timber, we can only hope that at least a few of the first of the European settlers saw the forest as a thing of beauty and not just an impediment to making a living.
What was the makeup of the forest found by the first European explorers, fur traders, and settlers to come to the Greenbrier Valley which later attracted the attention of lumbermen?
The mountains of eastern West Virginia were and are home to the largest variety of tree species in the state because of the range of altitude and the resulting differing climatic conditions. In the Upper Greenbrier Valley section that is the topic of this writing altitude ranges from below 1,700 feet at Ronceverte to nearly 5,000 feet in several locations and the geology of the region produces varying soil conditions. Moisture conditions also change across the area, being wetter in the far western parts of the region. These factors determine the type of tree species that flourish in various sections of the valley.
The pre-settlement forests in the valley were, of course, the result of millions of years of evolutionary and climatic changes. The most recent major climatic factors were those associated with the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. (This area never was ice covered.) A number of plants, now found in more northern areas, were forced south due to the ice and remain in the valley today.
A common misconception is that the first Europeans found only old-growth “virgin” forests, unchanged for eons. This is not true, since forests are in a constant state of change,
arising from the growth and senescence of the trees themselves, from consequent changes in the micro-climate and edaphic site, from normal forest succession, and from regional climatic and geologic changes. Interferences with normal growth and development are common, and it is meaningless semanticism to try to distinguish between “natural” disturbances and “artificial” disturbances caused by man. To the tree, it makes little difference if a fire is set by lightning or by a human incendiary, if the soil is upturned by a plough or by a tree uprooted in a storm, if a leaf is eaten by an insect who came by wind or one that came by airplane, or if cellulose is consumed by a fungus bred on the roots of a neighboring tree or one introduced on a piece of lumber from overseas. Disturbance to tree development and growth are normal, instability of the forest is inevitable, and the changeless virgin forest is a myth.16
In the Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia, published in 1836, the section on Pocahontas County took note of the variety of tree species. “The principal timber which it produces is white and black spruce, yew, pine, white oak, chestnut, sugar maple, hickory, beech, walnut, buck-eye, &c., &c.” The author went on to describe the inhabitants of the county as “honest, industrious, hospitable and enterprising citizens.”17
As noted before, the first European explorers, fur traders, and settlers found the valley to be almost entirely forested, with only a few open areas, some that were natural and others that had been created by the activities of the Native Americans. These latter were often referred to as “old fields” by the settlers. Hence the name of Old Field Fork of Elk, for example.
Native Americans made extensive use of fire to create open forest land and to create grazing land. They may have created much of the mid-western prairie and there are reports that the eastern forests were so open the first European settlers could drive carriages through the woods. However, given the lack of permanent Native American settlement in the Greenbrier Valley at the time of European settlement it is extremely doubtful any carriages could have been driven through these forests. As previously noted, there was some open land, as the presence of grazing animals such as buffalo and elk would indicate.
With all they had to do just to survive and establish an economic base for the future, the early settlers did not have time to leave behind written descriptions of the Greenbrier Valley forests as they found them. However, most of the pre-settlement forest was still intact following the Civil War when written descriptions began to be circulated.
To the timberman, the white pine was of great interest. This magnificent tree occurred in pure stands to the east of the Greenbrier River at elevations up to 2,500 feet and in the watersheds of Anthonys Creek, Spice Run, Laurel Run, Knapps Creek and its tributaries, Sitlington Creek, and Deer Creek. There was also white pine in the Spring Creek and Stony Creek watersheds on the west side of the river. Individual trees grew to be 120 feet in height with a diameter of four to five feet.
As will be related in Chapter V, the white pine was the first of the valley’s tree species to be commercially developed. This was due to the tree’s suitability to be moved by water and fortuitous location (for the logger, not the trees) along the streams.
In addition to the white pine, trees found along the streams and in low lying areas included the sycamore, river birch, black willow, and silver maple.
At the other end of the altitude scale grew another tree of great commercial value, the red spruce. This tree covered the higher elevations in the headwaters of the Greenbrier, Shavers Fork of Cheat, Cranberry, Williams, and Cherry Rivers with an estimated 220,000 acres in Pocahontas County and 33,500 acres in Greenbrier County originally. Red spruce grew to sixty to ninety feet in height and were two to four feet in diameter.
Above 4,000 feet, the red spruce was found in pure stands. Below that elevation it was mixed with hemlock and some of the hardwood species, such as yellow birch, beech, basswood, and sugar maple.
The hemlock was the third important softwood tree in the valley and it covered much of the land between 2,500 and 3,000 feet, particularly in the watersheds of the Cranberry, Williams, and Gauley Rivers. Commercially, this tree was perhaps more valuable for its bark than its wood, since hemlock bark was the main domestic source of the tannin used in leather tanneries in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Below 2,500 feet and mainly on the dry, thin soils east of the Greenbrier River a mixed oak forest had developed. Among the species in this forest were American chestnut, white oak, red oak, chestnut oak (rock oak), scarlet oak, various hickories, white ash, maple, yellow poplar, birch, and other hardwoods.
Deep, moist soils found in protected coves provided a home for valuable timber trees such as yellow poplar, black walnut, white and red oaks, and black cherry. The poplars could reach a height of 120 to 140 feet with diameters of seven to nine or more feet. Heights of eighty to ninety feet and diameters up to nine feet were possible for black walnut, with fifty to eighty feet heights and six feet diameter being common.
The inventory of other tree species in the valley included Virginia pine, dogwood, magnolia, black gum, cucumber tree, white ash, sassafras, locust, serviceberry, elm, hornbeam, mulberry, and the list can go on.
One result of the moving of lumbermen from other areas into the valley was the change in the names by which some trees were known to the people already living here. The tree known as the lynn (lin, linden) became basswood; the name spruce was given to the yew pine; “what was formerly called spruce is now hemlock, chestnut oak is rock oak. We have sold our timber under alien names, taken the money and never batted an eye.”18
Tree species found only in isolated areas included the balsam fir, in one location on the East Fork of the Greenbrier; swamp hickory, quaking aspen, mountain ash in the Cranberry Glades; red cedar; swamp white oak; —–
In recent studies, the United States Forest Service estimated that the most extensive plant community in the pre-settlement forest within the purchase boundary area of the Monongahela National Forest was the mixed mesophytic and cove forest, covering an estimated forty to 45 percent of the landscape. Oak forest and spruce forest are also thought to have been extensive, with oak forest growing over an estimated 21 percent of the land and spruce on an estimated ten to 25 percent. Hemlock forest may have been found on up to nine percent, while pine-oak forest is estimated to have covered four percent of the landscape. Northern hardwood forest is estimated from zero to eight percent. Riparian forest, which overlaps other forest plant communities, is estimated to have been eight percent of the land.
Not surprisingly, the Forest Service estimates that the pre-European settlement forest was dominated by old stands (120+ years old), with from 69 to 87 percent of the land covered with stands of this age. Young forest stands (zero to 39 years old) may have covered four to twelve percent of the land and mature stands (forty to 120 years old), seven to eighteen percent.19
Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy and Michael P. Strager’s study, 2012, estimated that “white oak covered 26 percent of the study area, sugar maple 19 percent, American chestnut 3 percent, and red spruce 2 percent.” “White oak was the most frequent witness tree, followed by sugar maple, American beech, and American chestnut, . . .”
witness trees cited in deeds from 1752 to 1899 on the MNF
For the first hundred years of European settlement the economy of the Greenbrier Valley was based on agriculture. Although there were a few larger farms that used slave labor, most property owners had only small tracts of land, operated by themselves and their families.
The only industrial development in the isolated Greenbrier Valley in the late 1700s and pre-Civil War 1800s was that needed by farmers, such as grist mills and blacksmith shops.
There was some demand for lumber, which increased as life became more settled and a degree of prosperity was achieved. The earliest settlers would have used their axes and adzes to rough out a few boards when their wives would finally tire of a dirt floor and demand a wood floor in their homes.
Next came the use of the whip saw (or pit saw) which required two men to put in a very hard day’s work to produce perhaps as much as a hundred linear feet of lumber. The log to be sawn was first squared off with a broad axe and then raised on a scaffold six or seven feet high. With one man standing on top of the log and the other beneath, they cut their way through the log. Another way to use the whip saw was to dig a pit, roll the squared log over the pit, and have one man work down in pit.
However, despite the low production rate, the whip saw allowed the man who desired to do so to turn out more lumber than he needed for himself and thus have some available for sale to the public at large.
Charles and Jacob Kinnison, the pioneer brothers of the Little Levels in Pocahontas County, were skillful workers in wood with the broad axe and whip saw. Some of the first carpenter work ever done in the county was by them and Richard Hill.20
Although whips saws are known to have been used in Pocahontas County as late as 1880, they were supplanted for the most part by the up and down or sash sawmill operated by water power. These mills were usually associated with grist mills, allowing the miller to offer two of the services most needed by pioneer communities.21
There is no way today of knowing who had the the first water powered sawmill in the valley or when it was built. What is known about the first sawmills in the Upper Greenbrier Valley is related in the next chapter.
However, the minor impact of the Native Americans and the larger impact of the European settlers in clearing land for farming and some lumber production had made only a very small inroad into the vast acreage of timber in the Upper Greenbrier Valley by the time of the Civil War. As civil war brought its horrors to the region (and it could be brother against brother in this area), most of the valley was still forested and semi-wilderness. However, once the guns of war were silenced and peace returned to the valley, this was soon to change. (One change for the citizens of Greenbrier and Pocahontas Counties as a result of the war was that they found themselves in a new state, West Virginia, which was formed in 1863.)
The upcoming almost total cutting of the magnificent forests of the valley resulted from a combination of factors – demand for lumber, available capital, technological improvements, and the necessary transportation.
DEMAND
The first factor – demand – came as a natural part of economic growth in the United States generated by population increase and the industrial revolution. This growth moved into high gear following the Civil War as the United States moved towards becoming the major industrial nation in the world. Increased immigration added to the population, providing both economic demand and the needed workers.
The Civil War had sped up the industrialization process in the country. The war also helped to provide the human resources needed by industry. Coming out of the war was the large group of disciplined men necessary for the change from home-based industry to a factory-based industrial system. Another group, the former officers, now skilled in leadership roles, turned their energies from war to industry.
Timber was one of the natural resources needed for this industrial growth. As demand for timber grew and pre-settlement forests in other parts of the eastern United States were cut over, attention turned towards the vast, virtually untouched forests of the eastern part of the new state of West Virginia. Some sources state that soldiers coming through the region with the Union armies during the Civil War “discovered” the timber and then remembered it when they became businessmen later in life. However, there was no lack of knowledge of the timber in this area prior to the Civil War, as evidenced by the 1836 Gazetteer quotation given before. A Confederate history of the early actions in the Civil War noted about western Virginia:
The unfortunate results of the campaign in Western Virginia abandoned to the enemy a country of more capacity and grandeur, perhaps, any other of equal limits on this continent; remarkable for the immensity of its forests, the extent of its mineral resources, and the vastness of its water power, and possessing untold wealth yet awaiting the coal-digger, the salt dealer and the manufacturer.22
Over two hundred years earlier, Edward Bland, a member of Abraham Wood’s exploring party in 1650, wrote about the timber found in present-day southwest Virginia:
. . . exceeding rich Land, that beare two Crops of Indian Corne a yeare and hath timber trees above five foot over, whose truncks are a hundred foot in cleare timber, which will make twenty Cuts of Broad timber a piece, and of these there is abundance.23
CAPITAL
The capital needed for the harvest of the timber in the mountains of West Virginia partly came from within the new state, but mainly from beyond its borders. As demand for natural resources increased after the Civil War, the wealth created for many northern businessmen by the war was available for their production. The change in the organization of companies from locally-based to a national base, provided for a more efficient use of their financial resources.
Also, the development of natural resources in other parts of West Virginia after the war, generated capital for West Virginia developers to use to invest in the acquisition of timber land in eastern West Virginia and to undertake the costly construction of railroads into the mountainous region.
TECHNOLOGY
As mentioned before, when the first Europeans were settling in the Greenbrier Valley in the mid-1700s, the only method of converting logs into any amount of lumber was the hand-powered whip saw, followed by the water-powered sash saw. Technological improvements necessary before serious commercial production of lumber on a large scale was possible were the use of steam power, the development of the circular saw, and finally the band saw.
The circular saw was invented in England in the late Eighteenth Century (but perhaps as early as the Seventeenth Century in Holland). However, the circular saws full potential in the production of lumber came only after it was combined with reliable steam engines, which occurred in early part of the Nineteenth Century. The development of the portable steam engine allowed for saw mills to be taken to the trees rather than logs having to be transported to a stationary mill.
The final major development in sawmill technology was the band saw. An endless belt of steel, with teeth on one or both edges, the band saw is attached to upper and lower wheels and is capable of being operated at great speed. The band saw was a European invention and one was brought to Philadelphia in 1864 from France. Another was in use at a sawmill in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1865. However, various technological problems had to be solved before it could become the dominant form of lumber production. These needed improvements were made in the late 1880s.24
By the time of the major development of the timber in the Upper Greenbrier Valley, sawmills equipped with bandsaws did the majority of lumber production. The first large mill, that of the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company at Ronceverte, used circular saws but it was later converted to a band sawmill.
TRANSPORTATION
Transportation is vital to the harvesting of timber, both in the movement of logs to mills and the shipping of the resulting lumber to market. A problem faced by the owners of the early whip saw and sash sawmills fairly soon after they began operation was getting logs to their mills, once the close by trees were cut. Whip saws could, of course, be taken to the timber, but the sash mill operator had no such option, being restricted to his source of water power. Both producers faced a problem with getting the lumber produced to their customers. Improvements in both areas were required before Greenbrier Valley trees could become an economically viable product.
Transportation to the Mill
Logs were handled by gravity, water, animal power, and mechanical power. Horses and oxen could move logs short distances and, when combined with gravity in log slides or simple tramroads, extend the haulage distances up to several miles. If a large enough stream was available, water transport could increase the distance logs could be moved to a mill, when the water flow was sufficient. As will be related, the first major production of lumber from the Upper Greenbrier Valley involved the use of the Greenbrier River to float white pine.
However, water transport was not effective with hardwood timber, only softwood. The only way to move a large quantity of logs from all species of trees more than a few miles and on a year-round basis was to make use of steam-powered railroads. Logs were being moved by rail as early as ——-. Unfortunately, locomotives in use on railroads in the late 1800s required track of such a quality in gradient, curvature, and base to be uneconomical to build for the short time use of a logging railroad.
The solution came in the 1870s when Ephraim Shay, a Michigan logger, invented the first practical locomotive that could operate on roughly built track with steep grades and sharp curves and still pull a reasonable load. In 1880 commercial production of the famous Shay engine was begun by the Lima Machine Works in Lima, Ohio. The Shay was soon joined in the woods by other locomotives of similar design, with the Climax and Heisler being the most common competitors.
Transportation to Market
An efficient way to transport lumber to market was also needed and topography made this a major problem in the Greenbrier Valley (as well as most of western Virginia). The Native American trails that were used by the early European trappers and settlers to access the valley were obviously not adequate to move a bulky product such as lumber to market. Sheep and cattle could walk to market, but boards could not.
In 1781 residents of Greenbrier County petitioned for a wagon road to aid in the importation of salt, one of the most vital commodities at this time, and exportation of hemp. In 1782 a road was opened between Warm Springs and Lewisburg. In 1786 a wagon road from Lewisburg to the lower falls of the Kanawha River was completed. The journey on to the Ohio River was then completed by bateaux ( — ) or small flat boats. A road to the Ohio was opened around 1800. This road became to be referred to as the Old State Road.
The next improvement was the James River and Kanawha Turnpike. In February 1820 the General Assembly passed an act providing for the connection of the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River using the James and Kanawha Rivers with a road connecting the two rivers. The act authorized the James River Company to construct a road from Dunlap Creek (Covington) to the Falls of Kanawha, and improve the river on to the Ohio for boats drawing three feet. The new road followed the “Old State Road,” which was first authorized in 1785 and completed to the Falls in 1790 and to the Ohio in 1800 By the mid-1820s this improved road was completed between Lewisburg and the Kanawha River.25
The Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike was authorized in 1824 and completed between its two namesake cities in 1847. It provided access to the upper part of the Greenbrier River watershed as it passed through Pocahontas County. The turnpike crossed Allegheny Mountain, descended to the East Fork of the Greenbrier, and passed through Travelers Repose and the future site of Durbin before starting up Cheat Mountain.26
More regional access prior to the Civil War was provided by the Lewisburg – Marlin’s Bottom Turnpike, Marlin’s Bottom – Huttonsville Turnpike, and the Warm Springs – Huntersville Turnpike. A covered bridge was built across the river at Marlin’s Bottom in 1854.
Prior to the dominance of railroads in transportation after the Civil War, canals were the first form of efficient transportation for large quantities of material and several plans were made to construct canals connecting western Virginia with the seaboard.
John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, was the leader of the an expedition in 1812 to explore a possible route for a canal that would link Richmond with the Ohio River. The twenty man group poled their batteau – batteaux – bateaux – up the James and Jackson Rivers to the present site of Covington. They then hauled it over the mountain to what is now Caldwell to begin the descent of the Greenbrier and New Rivers. It took Marshall and his crew eleven days to make the trip between Hinton and Kanawha Falls. Marshall was optimistic about the potential for a canal along the route taken by his expedition, but the financial needs of the War of 1812 took precedence over infrastructure development.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was the first to provide service to part of western Virginia. Work began in 1828 in Washington, D. C., and it was completed to Cumberland, Maryland, in 1850. (The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had reached Cumberland eight years earlier, ending work on extending the canal to original destination, the Ohio River.)
The James River Company was organized in 1785 to improve navigation on the James River. In 1820 it became part of the plan to connect the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River mentioned above. The company was reorganized as the James River and Kanawha Company in 1832. A canal was in operation between Richmond and Lynchburg by 1840 and was extended on to Buchanan in Botetourt County in 1851. Plans were made for the canal to cross the Allegheny Mountain as part of an all-water route to the Ohio River, by way of the Greenbrier and New Rivers. Crossing the mountain would have been a major project for a canal and plans included a tunnel for part of the route. A report in 1826 called for short tunnel below the summit.
The Civil War delayed all plans for the construction of the canal beyond Buchanan but they were revived following the war. In 1869 Edward Lorraine, Chief Engineer for the James River and Kanawha Company, proposed a tunnel nine miles long through Allegheny Mountain. From Covington the canal would follow Dunlaps Creek, enter the the tunnel west of Crows and come out on the Greenbrier near the mouth of Howards Creek. Use of the tunnel would save the use of the forty-four locks called for in previous plans and save boatmen about seven and a half hours in making the trip. To provide water for the canal, Lorraine’s plan proposed a large lake on Anthonys Creek. The dam would have been located below Alvon and would have backed up water above present-day Neola.27
The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers approved Lorraine’s proposed route and tunnel in a survey done in 1870. Following additional studies, the Corps recommended some changes to the plan, including shortening the length of the tunnel to seven and three-quarters miles. It was estimated that the cost of the canal through the mountain would be fifty to sixty million dollars.28
However, the extension of the canal beyond Buchanan never came about. The cost of actually constructing and operating a canal across the mountains to the Kanawha Valley was undoubtedly a major factor in the plan never coming to reality. Also, after the war the rapid development of a competing form of transportation, the railroad, was the final blow to the plans to extend the canal across Allegheny Mountain.
However, as late as 1872, an opinion was expressed that the canal was a economic necessity as the shortest distance between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi Valley, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, St. Paul, and even Chicago. “It is a work of transcendent importance and must be built.” wrote M. F. Maury in July of that year. However, as he was writing this opinion, the connection of the Ohio River and the seaboard by rail was almost complete.29
(The idea of an all-water route between the James and Ohio Rivers did not die with the building of railroads. In 1969 the Corps of Engineers prepared a map of the Midland Canal connecting the two rivers. The plan called for building locks and dams on the James, enlarging the locks on the Kanawha, and constructing a 96-mile tunnel between the two, from Natural Bridge to Deepwater.)30
Plans for a railroad connecting the Kanawha Valley region with the eastern part of Virginia predate the Civil War.
The history of railroad service to the Greenbrier Valley can be traced back to the Louisa Railroad, which was chartered in 1836. The goal of this line was only to provide transportation services for its namesake county. In 1850 its name was changed to the Virginia Central Railroad and with the new name came the vision to build the line on west. By the late 1850s the railroad had been constructed across the Blue Ridge and it connected Richmond with Clifton Forge. In 1853 the Covington and Ohio Railroad was chartered, but the Civil War prevented construction of a railroad further west.
Following the war the Virginia Central and the Covington and Ohio were merged into one company, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and work was soon underway at both ends of the route between Covington and the Ohio River. Service to White Sulphur Springs began in July 1869 and the line was completed to the Ohio River in 1873.
With the construction of the the C&O across West Virginia, all the necessary components were in place and the cutting of the Greenbrier Valley’s timber on a major scale was soon underway.
Although certainly not an universal opinion, many area residents were looking forward to the cutting of the valley’s timber and development of the region’s other resources. In addition to timber, the geologic formations under the trees in part of the valley contain iron ore and there are coal seams beneath the timber in other sections. The limestone exposed in much of the valley was another resource and growth of the existing agricultural industry was seen as a natural result of the development of these other resources. There was also evidence of oil and gas reserves and these became of interest in the early Twentieth Century. Many people had high hopes for the region’s future once railroads were built into the mountains and resource development was underway.
One writer, in an 1897 article in the The Pocahontas Times, “Prosperity in Pocahontas,” looked beyond the removal of the timber from the mountains of Pocahontas County, believing the result would be lasting prosperity of the county from agriculture.
There are vast stretches of country that are comparatively level which would produce abundantly, but the wonder of wonders are the rich mountains covered with black soil, in western Pocahontas. Denude these mountains of their timber, and a bluegrass sod forms which equals for grazing purposes any bluegrass raised in America.
When the timber of our mountains has been harvested, yielding great gains to those who put it on the market, the lumberman will give way to the stockman and farmer, and instead of great wastes of brush growing up where the large timber stood there will be farms, farm-houses, fences, and cattle . . .
The author believed there was room in the county for a farming population of 50,000 people. The farmers would come and bring lasting prosperity. “Our true benefactors is the man who will make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.”31
The author believed there was room in the county for a farming population of 50,000 people. The farmers would come and bring lasting prosperity. “Our true benefactors is the man who will make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.”31
1. Test Test Test
1 “A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina” by Thomas Hutchins, 1778, a copy is in West Virginia History, July 1949; PT, 9/9/19432 History of Pocahontas County, 1981, p 163 4 5 Quote from Price, “Influence of Forestry Upon the Lumber Industry,” reprinted in The Pocahontas Times, 4/18/19076 PT, 6/8/19447 PT, 1/31/1896, 7/5/1906, 8/31/1911, 8/30/1917, the 1906 and 1911 quotes came from articles written by Andrew Price8 PCDB 33, p 277, 10/22/19029 Paul McNeel died on 12/18/1872; PCDB 14, p 270, 3/26/1879, grantors were Penick, of Rockbridge County, Virginia, George S. McNeel, A. M. Edgar, C. E. Beard, Mathew Edmiston, A. M. V. Arbogast, James D. Kerr, Michael Beard, Josiah Beard, Henry A. Yeager, Brown M. Yeager, Paul M. Yeager, Alvin Clark, Henry Clark, and Richard McNeel, all of Pocahontas County, Abram J. Edmiston and Richard M. Edmiston, of Vernon County, Missouri, and Andrew Edmiston, of Butler County, Kansas, George was a son of Paul McNeel and Richard a brother; DB 15, p 214, 8/24/1882, $6763.96 paid, $6763.76 due on 8/24/1883 and 8/24/188410 PCDB 17, p 119, 11/10/1884, DB 20, p 140, 10/24/1889, signing the deed to Camden were Mollahan as trustee and for himself, James H. Huling, J. E. Dana, and Hovey11 PCDB 20, p 204, 11/24/1885, p 147, 10/23/1889; these tracts and other land acquired by Camden were transferred to the Cherry River Boom and Lumber Company and timbered by that company12 PT, 8/31/191113 PT, 12/22/1904; PCDB 12, p 281, 4/7/1877, DB 15, p 171, 7/4/1882, DB 20, p 86, 6/27/188914 PCCC, Virginia C. Burner vs. Harpers Ferry Timber Company, depositions of Uriah Bird, B. M. Yeager and S. L. Brown, 5/31/191215 Rice,The Allegheny Frontier, p 1216 Spurr, Forest Ecology, p 29017 Martin, Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia, p 41818 PT, 8/31/191119 Information for this section came from Brooks, Forestry and Wood Industries, pp 238, 367-422; Sutton, Eastern Forests; Clarkson in History of Pocahontas County, WV 1981, pp 9-10; United States Forest Service Plan for the Monongahela National Forest, 2006; the “purchase boundary” area of national forests is the area where the federal government is allowed to purchase land for any given national forest, in the case of the MNF, the purchase boundary includes —— acres, compared to the present —- acre size of the forest in 20–.20 Price, Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County, p 15421 Forestry and Wood Industries, pp 240-24122 Pollard, The First Year of the War, p 20223 Quoted in Caruso, The Appalachian Frontier, p 1424 Bryant, Lumber, Its Manufacture and Distribution, p 8225 Caruso, The Allegheny Frontier, p 332-333, act approved on 2/17/182026 Ibid., p 31827 Trout, The New River Atlas, pp 114-11528 Ibid.29 Letter, M. F. Maury to Col. R. L. Maury, 7/6/1872, in Maury and Fontaine, Resources of West Virginia, pp 344-34530 Trout, The New River Atlas, p 117 31 ” Prosperity in Pocahontas,” PT, 11/5/1897
Logging The Greenbrier Valley 