USA > Virginia > Rockbridge County > Rockbridge County > A history of Rockbridge County, Virginia > Part 19
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The stock was sold in shares of $50, two shares entitling the holder to a residence lot, and seven giving him a business lot. Some of the industrial enter-
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A HISTORY OF ROCK BRILL COL NTV, VIRGINIA
prises that came brought skilled workmen from Pennsylvania, but otherwise the people are almost wholly Virginian. Much of the early influx was from Amherst on the other side of the Blue Ridge. During the early years in the history of the town, a rough, disorderly element, partly white and partly colored, was too con- spicuous.
In 1891 Buena Vista was incorporated as a city and thus became politically independent of Rockbridge county. It is alleged, and it would seem with reason, that the count of the inhabitants was padded AAt all events, the town has never yet had the 5,000 people that the statute law asks as a requisite to incorporation.
Buena Vista has had its ups and downs. Nearly one-half the buildings in the place appeared in 1890. Next season a reaction came, and for six years the town was at a standstill. Since that period of ebb there has been a slow but rather steady progress. The present population is about 3.500, and only about 150 persons are colored.
The leading industries of Buena Vista employ about 550 workmen. They comprise the Columbia Paper Company, the Alleghany From Company, the Buena Vista Tannery, and the Buena Vista Extract Company, all but the last named being owned in Pennsylvania. Smaller industries are a firebrick company, a stationery company, a silk mill, a saddle factory, a canning company, a building supply company, planing and lumber mills, and a brick plant that uses slag. The silk mill is owned in the North. Several of the carly industries succumbed One of these was a glass company, which sold out to the Armour Fertilizer Company Another was a concern for the manufacture of wire fencing.
As in other boom towns of the period in question, one of the very first things set on foot In the promoters was a hotel on a scale entirely unwarranted by the probable support it would have. The Buena Vista Hotel was built at a cost of $85,000, yet was placed on an elevation at the very edge of the town, and thus could not attract commercial travelers. It did not burn down under the suspicions circumstances that were true of several other boom hotels of the Valley. It was at length sold for $10,000, and was converted into a very prosperous seminary. The churches of the little city are Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, and Episcopal, and two of differing branches of the Church of the Brethren. There are three hotels, a bank, about fifteen mercantile houses, and a local newspaper, the Buena Vista Weekly Times. The public schools are independent of those of the county. The chief commercial outlet is the Norfolk and Western Railroad, but the town is also served by the Lexington Branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio.
The town derives its name from the Buena Vista furnace which was operated by the Jordans in the near vicinity, and which, as its name suggests, antedated the town some forty years. Buena Vista is the industrial metropolis of Rock-
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BUENA VISTA AND GLASGOW
bridge, and is sustained by the metallic ores and the timber resources of the vicinity. Additional forest products are drawn from as far as North Carolina. The town has a pleasant situation, and makes a much better appearance than many of the new towns of its class.
Glasgow has naturally a more favorable situation than Buena Vista. It lies on a still more magnificent bottom girt with beautiful mountain scenery, and the James was formerly navigated to Richmond below and Buchanan above. It has the further advantage of being not only on the same branch of the Norfolk and Western, but also on the freight-carrying line of the Chesapeake and Ohio that extends from Clifton Forge to Richmond. But its attempt to become an in- dustrial town has beeen less fortunate. Its own boom was not launched early and had to contend with the many other booms of 1890. In that year a develop- ment company was organized with General Fitzhugh Lee as president, Major M. M. Martin as vice-president, and R. H. Catlett as secretary-treasurer. These gentlemen, with William A. Anderson, of Lexington, and Joseph Davis, of Lynn, Massachusetts, constituted the board of directors. The purchases of land aggre- gated several thousand acres, and included the Salling and Glasgow homesteads. The large area was laid off into villa sites and town lots, and several enterprises were induced to come. A power and light plant was built, but was never operated, and was at length dismantled. A costly hotel was built, but never opened, and has lately been torn down. Much money was lost and much of the town survey has returned to agricultural use. Aside from a corn mill at the Locher flag station, the only present industrial concerns in the vicinity are two. One is the Glasgow Clay Products Company at Locher, one mile west of the town. This new corporation is the successor of the James River Cement Works, operated by the Lochers for sixty years. The new concern manufactures brick, tiling, and other clay and shale products, and they are of superior quality. The raw material for the new plant comes from the same deposits used by the cement works. The plant of the Virginia Western Power Company is just below the confluence of the two rivers at Balcony Falls. It is new and up-to-date, and its 150 miles of transmission wire reaches as far as Hinton, West Virginia. As in the case of boom towns started on a very ambitions scale, the buildings at Glas- gow are considerably scattered. The population is probably under 500. The churches are Presbyterian and Episcopal, in addition to two Baptist churches of the colored people.
Willow Grove was the name of the first postoffice at Balcony Falls. It was kept in the fine brick mansion built by Peter A. Salling and used as a hotel as well as a private residence. It is now the property of George P. Locher.
XIX
VILLAGES, HAMLETS, AND SUMMER RESORTS
BROWNSBURG AND FAIRFIELD COUNTRY HAMLETS RAILROAD \'ILIN ES-G SHES-RAPHINE- WILSON'S STRING-ROCKBRIDGE BATHS-ROMA ABRIGA ALUM-NATURAL BRIDGE
An aggregation of homes can scarcely be termed a village unless it in- cludes a schoolhouse, one or more churches, two or more business houses, a resi- dent minister or physician, a repair shop, and in this modern age, a garage. When it falls much below this standard, it is a hamlet and not a village.
In speaking of towns and villages, the local history often attempts to make itself also a business directory. But any directory almost at once begins to grow out of date, and after a very few years it reads like ancient history. It is for this reason that we shall attempt no more than a general description of the small cen- ters of population in Rockbridge.
A petition of 1793 asks the legal establishment of the town laid out on the lands of Robert Wardlaw and Samuel McChesney. Five years later another petition mentions the town as Brownsburg, and asks an extension of time for the improvement of lots. In 1835. Martin's Gazetteer speaks of the village as contaming twenty dwellings, three stores, two shoe factories, three wheelwrights. two smith shops, two tailors, a tavern, a tanyard. a saddler, a cabinet-maker. a carpenter, a hatter, a gristmill, and a mercantile flour mill. Ten years later Howe speaks of it as having about thirty houses. That Brownsburg has scarceh increased in size, even in seventy years, is obviously because a village which in our present time is not a county seat and is not on a railroad, is very much circumscribed as a commercial and manufacturing center It does well if it can hold its own in population. It may be a very comfortable place to live in from the viewpoint of the o'd resident, yet the dwellings are likely to assume a look of age, and the society is probably staid and conservative. In our day. However, such a village will probably have a bank and a garage, as well as at last one or two quite modern cottages, these contrasting somewhat oddly with the plain, old-fashioned dwellings Brownsburg lies in the well populated valley which above is sisled Moffatt's Creek and below is called Hays' Creek It is consequently the trade center of a considerable district In a former day it was noted for its high grade private schools. The academy building yet stands on a rie of ground and recalls the fact that the village and neighborhood have figured to a regrettable extent in the matter of homicide It was in the old schoolhouse Il at Doctor % ] Walker killed Henry Miller. November 8, 1880, at the close of the examination of the former before a justice Walker was speedily killed by
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VILLAGES, HAMLETS, AND SUMMER RESORTS
Miller's sons. During the confusion, Mrs. Walker received a fatal bullet said to have been meant for the husband, and one of the sons of Miller was severely wounded. The most conspicuous of the other occasions was when two young men were shot dead by a youth they were teasing.
Fairfield, like Brownsburg, lies on a well traveled automobile highway. It is of similar size, age, and general appearance, yet stands on somewhat higher ground. Its one street is the turnpike along which it stretches a considerable distance. In 1835 Martin says it had twenty dwellings, one union church, two taverns, one store, one tannery, two doctors, and 130 people. Howe mentions twenty-five homes in 1845, and it will thus appear that the village has long been stationary. Following the National Highway toward Lexington, we soon pass Cedar Grove, the mansion-home of the McDowells. A little beyond is their brick-walled family burial ground, perhaps the oldest place of interment in the county, but now very much neglected. Still farther on is a brick house dating from the Revolutionary period, and once the locally famous hostelry known as the Red House. It was in this territory that the first homes were reared in Rockbridge.
Six miles north of Fairfield, where the turnpike enters Augusta, is the hamlet of Midway, formerly known as Stecle's Tavern. David Steele had a disfiguring gash on his face, and in his skull was a silver plate, both injuries being due to sword-cuts in the Revolution. In the winter season his guests sat around a blazing fire in the barroom. In the summer they sat on plain benches on the verandah. To the Virginian of his time, the bench in front of a tavern was a necessity. At the dinner table there was plenty of hot coffee, biscuit, and fried chicken. Near Midway, but on the road to Raphine, is pointed out the birth- place of Cyrus H. McCormick, and near by is the stone shop in which his trial machine was built.
West of North River is an absence of true villages. Collierstown is an extended section of well-peopled creck valley. Fancy Hill, though much asso- ciated with the names of private academies, is but a hamlet. Mechanicsville, two miles west of Buena Vista, is even less a hamlet than it used to be, and the same is true of Buffalo Forge. Springfield, very near the Botetourt line, was laid out into forty lots as far back as 1797.
Riverside, Midvale, and Vesuvius are small points on South River and the Norfolk and Western railroad, and lic five, ten, and seventeen miles, respect- ively, north of Buena Vista. Buffalo Forge Station is another little railroad place at the mouth of Buffalo.
The one town in the northwest of Rockbridge is Goshen, at the confluence of Mill Creek with the Great Calfpasture, and within sight of the upper entrance to Goshen Pass. As a point on the main line of the Chesapeake and Ohio
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A HISTORY OF ROCKBRIK.E COUNTY, VIRGINIA
railroad, thirty-three miles from Staunton and twenty-four from Chfton Forge. Goshen essayed a boom during the epidemic of 1890. The principal reminder of the visitation is Alleghany Inn, built in the Queen Anne style and perched on a hilltop. The little town lies in the valley below, astride the course of Mill Creek. In 1873 there was a proposal, never tried out, to make it the seat of government of a new county. Notwithstanding the iron deposits and the smelting interest in the vicinity, Goshen lost a third of its population between 1900 and 1910, and now has under 200 inhabitants. A mile southward and not in view from the station is the Victoria furnace, and just beyond is a cluster of small, red tenement houses.
The fourth town in Rockbridge is Raphine, which dates from the coming of the Valley Railroad in 1883. It was named by James E. A. Gibbs and laid out on his lands, although he did not expect more than a hamlet to grow up. The first passenger car to make a stop was attached to a work train, and left September 18th of that year to take his daughter on the beginning of her trip to Arkansas. The first store came the same year. An elevator was opened in 1886 and a bank in 1906. Presbyterian and Methodist chapels were built in 1889 and about 1890. The boom fever paid a visit to Raphine and held out the prospect of a shoe factory, as well as making the place a health resort because of its lithia waters. The town now has about 350 people. The high school has six rooms, five teachers, and more than 100 pupils. The commercial interests of the place include a bank, four stores, a fine garage, and an automobile agency, a wagonmaker, a blacksmith, and a firm handling grain, hay, and fertilizer.
A little more than a mile south of the town is a low stone house situated near a bold spring and built as a fortified house in the Indian times. It is still occupied as a dwelling house, but the windows have been widened. Many years ago mys- terious occurrences held sway her for three months. It is related that the poker and fire shovel waltzed across the room, a trunk flew out from under a bed, hot stones fell upon and smashed dinner plates on the table, and hot pancakes fell in the meadow as manna did for the Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai. A woman who was the mother of a child was the reputed witch. The only actual sufferer was a colored girl on whose person welts appeared as if from blows, and who screamed from what she believed to be pin-thrusts. The spell was broken when the girl was sent South. Such tales are seemingly absurd, yet in this instance are believed to rest on a basis of fact. The manifestations appear to be due to what is called poltergeist by the Germans.
The summer resorts of Rockbridge have enjoyed much renown. A contri- butor to the Gazette in 1874 writes in a very interesting manner of old times at Wilson's Spring at the lower entrance to Goshen Pass. The strong sulphur water ilsuc from a rocky islet in the midst of North River, and consequently the
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VILLAGES, HAMLETS, AND SUMMER RESORTS
spring is temporarily overwhelmed in time of flood. By virtue of a land deed these waters have been made accessible to the public for all time. The first land patent was in the name of William Porter in 1755. The next owners were the Stricklers, whose name attached itself for a while to the spring and the pass through the mountain.
The writer we have referred to says that "most of our springs began business as deer licks. By accident or otherwise, a curative value was found, and then some one built a hut." Other people built huts, and in July and August there was a lively concourse of the rural yeomanry. Visitors put up their horses at Wilson's stable, fed the animals themselves, washed their hands and faces at the spring branch, and perhaps slept in the barn. They ate their lunches while sitting on benches on the front porch, and tossed their corncobs into the front yard. When harvest was over, visitors would come in a covered wagon drawn by four horses, and containing a bed or two, provisions, and sundry parapher- nalia. All the family went, except that one or two of its members took turn in staying at home to attend to the farm chores and bring supplies to camp. The cooking in camp was done under an arbor covered with pine brush. Some slept in the wagon, some in the arbors. The visitors did little at dressing up. The old ladies assembled in some cabin and talked. The old men met in squads under the large oaks. The grown girls made parties, swung, went after huckleberries, and cast eyes at the young men. Children played in the sand or waded in the river.
The picnicking thus described as being true of eighty years ago continues in principle, even if not identical in manner. Wilson's Spring is still a popular re- sort for the people of the county. Guests from a distance board at the farm- house. The much greater number of county people occupy a considerable cluster of very unpretentious cottages built by themselves. But on certain days many hundreds of people visit the spot, coming in the morning and returning at the close of the day.
Little more than a mile down North River is the hamlet of Rockbridge Baths, eleven miles from Lexington. It has grown up around a small hotel on a level lawn very near the stream. The magnesia waters are thermal, have a temperature of seventy-two degrees, and act favorably on the digestive organs. They are also useful in cutaneous affections. In the spring is a growth of algae that reproduces itself when cut back. A mass of this applied wet to a sore has a tendency to heal it. This resort was opened by the Jordans. The guests are city people of a class not much attracted to the sulphur spring above. The vicinage is not very broken, and is typically rural in appearance. It is pleasant and at- tractive.
Nine miles above Goshen, well toward the source of Bratton's Run, and in the narrow valley between Mill and North mountains, is Rockbridge Alum. Five springs, varying somewhat in their mineral strength, issue from the base of a
100
A HISTORY OF ROCKIRLIMIT COUNTY, VIRGINIA
slate bluff. The waters contain iodine, magnesia, sulphuric acid, and the sul- phates of iron and alumina. The waters are purgative and diuretic, and they relieve congestion and inflammation. They are also tonic, and they improve the aj petite. Their action on the skin is secondary, and like the waters at Rock- bridge Baths they are very serviceable in cutaneous affections, including indolent sores. Formerly something was done in bottling the waters and in separating the mineral ingredients by evaporation. In addition to the five alum springs there is one of chalybeate water.
The realty including these springs was first owned by John Dunlap and a Campbell, cach man holding a half-interest. It was opened as a resort about 1834 The property is said to have been considered at one time as the most valuable single piece of real estate in the South, and was sold in 1853 for $150.000. The spot used to be frequented by throngs of people from all the former slave states. as many as 400 guests being registered in a single day. The various buildings of the hotel property form a quite extensive array, but are of a type that is now antiquated. The lawn, which lies in the creek valley, is fairly level. For several miles around there is almost no settlement. The scene is very nearly as primeval today as it was in the time of the pathfinder. A more healthful and restful spot can scarcely be found in America.
A much less important resort is Cold Sulphur Spring, about two miles south- west of Goshen John Dunlap was also the owner of this spring, and he permitted visitors to camp around it without charge. All the buildings were burned some years ago.
The Punstaine was a resort on the old Major William Dunlap farm near Goshen. It was afterward owned by the Bells. A part of the old building is yet standing in the Bell orchard.
No later than the summer of 1887 there were 1,700 summer visitors in this county. But the present reign of the automobile has robbed the resorts of Rock- bridge of much of their oldtime popularity. The mineral springs are compara- tively remote from railway, are not reached by macadamized thoroughfares, and during the recent years their patronage has very much fallen off.
Natural Bridge is without mineral waters, but maintains itself by reason of the great natural curiosity within the bounds of the hotel property. It is also on the main automobile route through the Valley of Virginia, and is but two miles from Natural Bridge Station on the Norfolk and Western and Chesapeake and Chio radroads A macadamized highway connects the hotel with the station. The hotel itself is a quite pretentious structure, and is pleasantly shaded by trees. There is a swimming-pool at the head of the hollow, down which a footpath leads to the brink of Cedar Creek. At the railroad station the tracks of the Norfolk and Western and the Chesapeake and Chio cross, and somewhat of a village has been called into existence.
XX
HIGHWAYS, WATERWAYS, AND RAILWAYS
ABORIGINAL PATHS-PIONEER ROADS-ROAD IMPROVEMENT-TURNPIKES-CANALS-RAILROADS
The Rockbridge of 1737 was largely open country carpeted with grass. The area in prairie was a grazing ground for the herds of buffalo and deer. The for- mer animal always went about in herds. When the grass was nibbled too close in one spot the herd moved to another place, taking a very straight course, and the well-defined path was used season after season.
At first blush it would look as though the buffalo was the first road-builder in Rockbridge. But the Indian was here before the buffalo. That shaggy beast was not a denizen of the forest. His original habitat was the vast grassy plain that sweeps eastward from the base of the Rocky Mountains. But until he possessed the mustang, which came to him by way of the Spaniard, the Indian found the Great Plains a very unsuitable land to occupy. The few red men who lived here dwelt only along the larger watercourses. To attract the buffalo east- ward, and thus have a more abundant supply of food, the forest tribes of the Mississippi Basin created artificial prairies. The original small opening grew steadily larger in consequence of burning the grass at the end of each hunting season. In this way the buffalo was lured farther and farther eastward until he reached the Valley of Virginia. The moundbuilding tribes of the Ohio valley fell away from their agricultural habits and depended in an increased degree upon the bow and arrow. The Indian of the historic period was a wholesale burner of the woods, and Hugh Maxwell, a forestry expert, declares that in a few more centuries Virginia would have become either a meadow or a desert.
The Indian often used the buffalo trail, but his network of footpaths in the wilderness autedated the work of the buffalo. His own trail followed valleys and crossed ridges. If at all possible, a creek was crossed where the fording was easy. The larger paths were called war trails, and they were like trunk lines of railroad. They were worn rather deeply into the earth, and were often wide enough to admit a wagon. As a matter of course the path of the aborigine was adopted by the white pioncer. The latter saw no reason to cut out a new road where there was already a serviceable oue. It is therefore easy to understand why the "Indian Road" of the carly settlers soon became known as the "Pennsyl- vania Road," and why with some modification of route it developed into the Valley Turnpike and its connecting links to the southward. The section of this thorough- fare passing through Rockbridge was accepted as a public road by the court of Orange in the spring of 1745.
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HISTORY OF ROCKBRINI COUNTY, VIRGINIA
The Indians had other paths in this territory, one of which came from the Ohio and crossed North Mountain into the valley of Kerr's Creek. A section of still another path may be seen on Jump Mountain opposite Wilson's Spring. In occasional instances the present county roads undoubtedly follow some of the minor trails of the red man. The fact that it was nearly fifteen years after the beginning of settlement before a second public road was authorized, would seem to indicate that the settlers were quite well accommodated with the paths they found awaiting them.
In October, 1751, nine settlers on the lower Cowpasture petitioned for a road over North Mountain to the Borden grant. Next year there was a petition for a road "from Kennedy's mill to John Houston's, and from Houston's to the great road from Timber Grove to Woods Gap." The twenty names appended are chiefly or wholly those of settlers in the north of the Borden land. About this time, twenty-one men living toward the west of the present county ask for a road from Joseph Long's mill to James Young's mill, and to William Hall's on North River, and into the great road on James Thompson's plantation. They explain that it was their course "to meeting, mill, and market." In 1753 a road was ordered from Campbell's schoolhouse to the Renick road. The twenty-five tithables mentioned therewith were in the lower part of the present county, or within the present Botetourt line.
The first road precincts were necessarily few and large, and all that the small working force could accomplish was to open a rough and ready path capable of admitting a wagon. When Botetourt began local government in 1770, there were only thirty-nine road precincts in the long distance from Kerr's Creek to the Tennessee line. But in 1859 the road precincts within Rockbridge were 102.
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