USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 2
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The Industrial Period, beginning in 1897, is still with us and is yet in its infancy. Its fully developed proportions and its true perspective await the lapse of a considerable number of years. Thus far there is a subordination of agriculture to the new industrial interests. The mining of coal has received a new and great impetus, while the local agriculture is still in process of adjusting itself to the altered conditions. There is a yet more rapid growth of the towns and villages, a higher degree of material confort, a passing of the lingering traits of the pioneer days, and the appearing of new and in part temporary elements in the population. Specifically, the new era is distinguished by the ornate cottage, the automobile, the high school, the rural mail delivery, a general distribution of banks, an extension of railroad mileage, and the universal use of modern furniture and articles of utility and orna- ment. In the town, some of the landmarks are the concrete sidewalk and the department store.
Hamlin Garland has remarked that the railroad is arithmetic, the wagon road prose, and the trail a poem. The pack-saddle of the Pioneer Period, borne by horses moving in single file along the bridle- path, gave way to the huge conestoga wagon of the succeeding era. and this in turn was driven from the road by the locomotive engine of the Transition Period. But although the Indian trail became the pioneer bridle-path, and although the state-built toll road arrived in the Sub- Pioneer Period, there was nevertheless a slumbering of highway im- provement until the present century.
Since Preston lies on the great natural thoroughfare we have de- scribed, it is as it were a funnel very open at either end. Throughout the long period of settlement, it drew its pioneer population from well- nigh every element found on the seaboard, either resident or newly
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arrived. Throughout the already long period of settling down, there has continued to be an indrift from all these sources of supply. While the movement from the western end of the funnel has never quite kept down the gain through immigration and local increase, it has neverthe- less from the first been giving vent to a broad current of emigration. People of Preston birth or descent are to be found in Canada and in Florida and Texas. They have settled here and there all the way to the Pacific, and by occasionally going eastward, they have reversed the general direction of the stream.
It is by this time apparent that the progressive transformation of the Preston of 1766 into the Preston of 1913 is an epic in itself. Once poor. the county is now well to do. Once an agricultural region, with its farming carried on at a disadvantage, it is now also an industrial region and has a home market for its surplus of products. The modern age of top buggies and parlor organs is obscuring the day when this county was a land of log cabins and rude implements of home manufacture.
The pioneers who braved the dangers and privations of the wilderness to settle the Preston hills in the eighteenth century were men of nerve and persistence. They deserve ample credit for the work they set in motion.
History and biography have their lessons for us all. To be ignorant of them is a needless neglect. To ignore them is an exhibition of shallow conceit. Thucydides, the Greek historian, tells us that "both justice and decency require that we should bestow on our forefathers an honorable rememberance." Macaulay, the British essayist, presses the same thought further by declaring that "a people that take no pride in the noble achievements of their remote ancestors will never achieve any- thing to be remembered with pride by their remote descendants." Our own Daniel Webster reminds us that "respect for our ancestors elevates the character and improves the heart." It is also well to remember that no generation forgets about those which are to follow. The monuments it sets up for their instruction are not always of granite or marble. In 1765 the town meeting of Cambridge, Massachusetts resolved, "that this vote be recorded in the town-book that the children yet unborn might see the desire their ancestors had for their freedom and happiness."
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CHAPTER III
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PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
Position of County - Surface - Streams - Geology - Minerals - Soil - Climate - Vege- tation - Animal Life - Suitability of Preston to the Immigrant Stock.
1
In its general form Preston county is rectangular. Its greatest ex- tent from north to south is 36 miles, and its greatest extent from east to west is nearly 23 miles. The northern line of about 15 miles runs due east and west and separates the county from Pennsylvania. The eastern line of 36 miles runs due north and south and forms the western boundary of Maryland. The southern border is made up of three straight lines of varying length and direction. The western border takes advantage in part of some natural features. In the southwest a small creek divides Preston from Barbour. In the northwest a mountain range divides it from Monongalia. From the courthouse the airline radii to the four corners vary from 16 to 22 miles. The area, never yet precisely determined, is about 672 square miles, or nearly 430.000 acres.
The periphery, which is nearly 110 miles, touches no fewer than seven counties. On the north is Fayette. On the east is Garrett. On the south lies Tucker. Barbour is southwest, and more directly west are Taylor, Marion, and Monongalia.
The Cheat divides the county into two sections, the eastern being a little the larger in extent but smaller in population. Each of these is divided politically into four magisterial districts. In the East Side, as we pass from north to south, are Grant, Pleasant, Portland and Union. In the West Side are Valley, Kingwood, Lyon and Reno.
Preston lies mainly within the Appalachian Plateau, the Hill Region of West Virginia entering slightly in the southwest. The general slope is from cast to west, and there is also a slope from south to north, the southeast angle of the county resting on the Backbone Ridge of the Alleghan es. The Fairfax Stone, which marks this angle. stands at the altitude of 3216 feet.
The mountain ranges are three, all taking a somewhat northeasterly course, in conformity with the general trend of the Appalachian system. Brushy Ridge enters on the south line of Union and strikes the Mary- land line a few miles north of Terra Alta. It is the divide between the
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basins of the Cheat and the Youghiogheny, yet does not present a com- manding or very continuous aspect, and seldom rises more than 400 feet above the plateau on which it stands. Gregg's Knob, its culminating point, has a height of 3111 feet. From Aurora, Stemple Ridge is thrown off to the southwest, dividing the valley of Horseshoe Run from the Cheat. .
From the western end of the Preston-Tucker line, Laurel Hill stretches toward Tunnelton and Rowlesburg, and stands out as a well- defined mountain wall. In the vicinity of Rowlesburg its continuity is broken by the gorge of the Cheat. The section east of the river begins at the mouth of Salt Lick, and under the name of Briery Mountain runs to Cranesville, where for a short distance it becomes quite complex. Piney Knob, Nettle Ridge ,and other bold offsets lie to the east, and the main rampart is interrupted by a deep, narrow gorge in the upper course of Muddy Creek. This labyrinth might be termed the Cranesville Knot. Its highest point is Piney, or Pineswamp, Knob, which has an elevation of 3060 feet. From the Cranesville Knot Dog Ridge runs nearly due north, closely following the state line, and here becoming the watershed between the Cheat and the Youghiogheny. Yet viewed from a distance it is not very prominent in the landscape, especially at the northeast angle of the county. While Briery Mountain is broken by the deep valleys of Elsey's Run, Dority Run, Roaring Creek, and Muddy Creek, and is therefore not a true divide, it is nevertheless of imposing appearance. Some of its prominences are quite 3000 feet above sea level and 1700 feet above the Cheat.
From west of Rowlesburg Laurel Hill throws out a broad, flat-topped ridge. This crosses the railroad at Tunnelton and continues nearly due north to the great bend of the Cheat, terminating in a promontory at the mouth of Bull Run. About midway in its course it sends out two westerly spurs which inclose the valley of Kane's Creek. Mount Phoebe in the southern spur is 2416 feet high and a conspicuous landmark.
Chestnut Ridge enters from Pennsylvania as a distinct mountain wall 2500 feet high, yet is pierced by the canyons of Cheat river and Decker's creek. Its crest forms the west line of the county for about 20 miles. But from Gladesville to the Three Fork it scatters into a net- work of huge, steep, conical hills.
East of the Cheat and west of Briery Mountain are several isolated eminences, such as the small plateau of Beech Run Hill, and the Martin, Smith, De Berry and Collins Knobs. These are vestiges of a range now worn away until only these detached remnants remain.
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With respect to physical divisions, Preston divides into the High- land, the Middle Basin, and the Lowland. Yet these terms are to be taken in a comparative sense, the entire county being mountain built and of plateau altitude.
The Highland comprises the basin of the Youghiogheny and the upper valleys of those streams in Union and Portland which flow west- ward. In Union there is no well marked physical boundary toward the west, but in Portland Briery Mountain constitutes a buttress to the tableland. Though broken by the long hills comprising the Brushy Ridge and by the gorges making toward the Cheat, the Highland has a tolerably uniform surface and there are considerable tracts of fairly smooth ground. The average elevation is more than 2500 feet. At Aurora the altitude is 2640 feet, at Eglon 2617, at Corinth 2460, at Afton 2690, and at Cranesville 2600. Sell on Stemple Ridge marks 2725 feet, and Amboy near the head of Wolf Creek marks 2547. Terra Alta, on the saddle between the waters of Snowy Creek and Salt Lick, has a height of 2550 feet. Orr, near the head of Muddy Creek, has an elevation of 2348 feet and Dority, on Dority Run, of 2244 feet.
In the north of the county we find a basin reaching from Dog Ridge to Chestnut Ridge and seemingly to stretch indefinitely north and south. This Middle Basin is one of the canoe-shaped valleys characteristic of the Appalachians. The northern rim lies within Pennsylvania, while the southern rim approximates the northern border of Lyon district. In Grant and Pleasant the basin is most clearly defined. In the south its distinctive character is obscured by the intrusion of the westerly arm of Laurel Hill. The mean altitude is perhaps 1800 feet. At Glade Farms on the eastern rim the elevation is 2110 feet, and at Pisgah on a spur of Chestnut Ridge it is 2060 feet. At Lenox on a spur coming from Briery Mountain there is an elevation of 2123 feet. For the intermediate distance there are heights of 1798 feet at Brandonville, 1872 at Florence, 2096 at Cuzzart, 1740 at Morgan's Glade, 1714 at Hudson, and 1844 at Masontown. Along the Big Sandy the altitudes are 1529 feet at Clifton, 1548 at Bruceton, 1327 at Rockville, and 902 at the mouth of the stream. Howesville on the west branch of Laurel Hill has an elevation of 2222 feet and Manown of 2280, while Kingwood on its eastern slope has a height of 1864 feet.
Rowlesburg lies at the bottom of a very much smaller canoe-valley formed by the basins of Salt Lick and Buffalo Creek. These basins have a common axis, though pointing in opposite directions. The whole valley is narrow and the surface is exceedingly uneven.
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
The Lowland, which includes Lyon and a large part of Reno, is a portion of the great Hill Region of West Virginia. Its contour is very uneven, the valleys being deeply eroded. Although the hilltops touch the altitudes of the Middle Basin, the streams flow at a much lower level. Gladesville on the northern rim of the Lowland lies at a height of 1774 feet, while the elevation at Sinclair is 1489 feet, at Fellowsville 1386, at Newburg 1292, and at Independence only 1157.
To generalize on the contour of Preston it must be observed at the outset that there is great diversity of surface. There are long ridges, conical knobs, hogbacked uplands, smooth elevated basins, smooth de- pressed basins, open valleys, and deep, narrow gorges, while from every open point of observation is a mountain background. The conical knob is most conspicuous in the deeply dissected valleys of Lyon and Reno. Here the surface is studded with massive hills, each touching its neigh- bor save for an occasional ribbon-like fringe of creek bottom. Deep valleys and abrupt slopes are everywhere seen in Preston, yet limited tracts of fairly level ground also occur. These smooth areas are not governed by the matter of altitude, many of the hills and ridges being broad-topped. In Valley and Pleasant, and in portions of Grant and Portland are level tracts of swamp formation known as glades. These glade lands give a certain character to the localities in which they occur, yet the total area covered by them is very small.
The hydrography of Preston is dominated by the Cheat which after a course of 140 miles above the Preston-Tucker line, flows 40 miles within the county limits, and then continues nearly 20 miles farther to its confluence with the Monongahela at Point Marion. The breadth of the river inside of Preston is quite variable. In its more tranquil reaches there is a width of 300 feet. But where rapids occur there is a shrinkage to 100 feet and even less. Being eminently a mountain stream through- out and draining large tracts of timbered lands, the Cheat is less affected by drouth than are the West Virginia rivers of the Hill Region. Even at the height of the exceptionally dry term of 1895, the volume was equal to a foot of water flowing at a rate of three miles an hour through a canal 18 feet wide. On several occasions, particularly in 1887, the Cheat has risen to great heights and done considerable damage. In high flood the velocity reaches 15 to 18 miles an hour and 123 logs have been known to pass a given point in five minutes. In time of low water the river is fordable. Yet the bottom is rocky, very uneven, and abounds in treacherous holes hidden by the opacity of the dark-tinted water. With
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
a current less swift the Cheat could be navigated, but the cost of slack watering a river of such rapid fall is prohibitive.
The Cheat has worn a very deep chasm in its diagonal course across the basins of the Middle District. Below the mouth of Muddy Creek the gorge becomes very narrow, and the hills rise steeply to heights of 600 to 900 feet above the murmuring waters. It is only above the Muddy that bottoms of any importance are found. Even here they are not at all continuous. With the exception of the ovate Dunkard Bottom they cover very meager surfaces and appear mainly above Rowlesburg. The area of the Dunkard Bottom is not far from 1000 acres and it includes an island of about 60 acres. A few islands of much smaller size occur in other bottoms. At Rowlesburg the elevation of the river is 1375 feet and at Trowbridge it is 1245 feet. At the Beaver Hole, where the Cheat flows into Monongalia, the level has sunk to 873 feet.
Going north from the Tucker line the chief affluents of the Cheat on the west side are Buffalo Creek, Pringle's, Tray, Morgan's, Green's, and Laurel runs, and Bull Run. On the east side the feeders are larger and more constant. The principal ones here are Wolf Creek, Salt Lick. Trowbridge, Lower Buffalo, Elsey's and Dority runs, Roaring and Muddy creeks and the Big Sandy. The stream last named is the second largest in Preston. It rises in Pennsylvania and half its course of at least 30 miles lies in that state. Above Bruceton it is a placid water- course with banks sometimes low. But near Rockville it enters a deep canyon, falling 500 feet in five miles.
Not all of Preston is drained by the Cheat. The Youghiogeny rises near the southeast corner and several miles of its upper course are within the confines of Union. Its chief tributaries in Preston are Rhine Creek in Union and Snowy Creek in Portland. The west of Reno, the whole of Lyon, and parts of Kingwood and Valley are in the immediate basin of the Monongahela, and are drained by Sandy, Three Fork, and Decker's creeks. The Sandy and the Three Fork rise in Laurel Hill, but Decker's Creek rises west of Reedsville in Chestnut Ridge. It pursues a long horseshoe curve through the glades of Valley, where it is muddy and sluggish as well as tortuous. Below Masontown it enters a canyon in the same mountain in which it rises and only a few miles in a direct line from its source.
Horseshoe Run, a tributary of the Cheat, rises in Preston but flows into Tucker.
In common usage, the Youghiogheny is spelled Yough and pro-
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PRESTON COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
1
nounced Yock. The spelling of the unabbreviated word is preposterous. It is a clumsy attempt to represent the guttural sounds of the Indian pronunciation. The style "Yohogany" would have been more logical, as well as nearly the same as that of the "lost" county-Yohogania. The early attempts to spell the name were terrible. A map of 1747 calls it Yeoyogani. One of 1754 calls it Yaughyaughani, and one of 1774 names it Yawyawganey. Eckerlin spelled it Gawgawgamie, and the Virginia council capped the climax with Youghyaughye.
The names of the watercourses of Preston are not thoroughly in- dividualized. In several instances, entirely distinct streams share the same designation.
Springs are numerous and the running waters are ordinarily clear, except in the glades, where the humus of the alluvial soil imparts a low degree of turbidity. The waters of Muddy Creek are muddy only in name. The Cheat has a somewhat inky hue and this has always been the case. It apparently comes from the action of vegetable acids upon the soil of its mountain sources. Springs of sulphur and chalybeate waters occur here and there. None of them are thermal, although they have some medicinal value. The most important is the Irondale spring at Victoria, the waters of which are bottled for export.
So uneven is the surface of Preston and so folded are its rock forma- tions that it is not easy to conceive of its having once been a swampy level covered with a jungle of rank vegetation. Yet such is the clear evidence of geology. This science tells us our earth was once intensely hot throughout, and that in the interior it is not yet cool. It was there- fore a melted, fluid mass, and owing to its rotary movement the surface was smooth. In the process of cooling a time came when there was a thin crust, outside of which was one universal ocean, at least 8000 feet deep. But in cooling everything contracts except water. When an apple is roasted it becomes soft, yet remains plump. After it cools the pulp shrinks, and the tough skin becomes wrinkled. It was the same way with the earth. Wrinkles began to show themselves in the firm crust. The first one of all appeared in our North America, east of and parallel with the Blue Ridge. It was a strange looking mountain, for it was a smooth uplift of naked rock destitute of all vegetation. Yet it could not have been visible from a distance. The internal heat of the earth helped to give our planet a more than tropical climate. The enormous evaporation must have hidden the sun at all times with dense masses of cloud. The downpour of rain must have been prodigious and
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almost constant. The storms of almost innumerable centuries have worn this old mountain down to a base level. Nothing of it now remains ex- cept beds of hard, primordial rock, such as cause the rapids in the Potomac just above the city of Washington.
Life, both vegetable and animal, but in strange, primitive forms, appeared on the earth and assisted in the formation of new layers of rock. The sand washed from the slope of the primeval mountain became sandstone or shale, according to its texture, and if the particles were of some size a bed of conglomerate was formed. Chemical action, or the tiny shells of almost microscopic animals, gave rise to layers of marl. In these various forms of mud, plants and animals were swallowed up, and their petrified remains are known to us as fossils. Heat and the overlying pressure of newer deposits hardened the sand, clay, gravel and marl into beds of sandstone, shale, conglomerate, and limestone. The land area crept steadily outward, and in time the region included in West Virginia was a vast, oozy marsh covered with plants having little resemblance to those which now grow here. The swamps and the open water were tenanted by reptiles, fishes and crustaceans, but not by beasts or birds. During this period of time our coal deposits were taking form.
But the earth continued to cool and new wrinkles appeared. Among these were the ranges of the Appalachian system. They in their turn have been very greatly worn down. Instead of a few simple ranges of imposing height, they now present a most complicated network of ridges, canoe-shaped valleys and watergaps. The beds of coal, buried under accumulations of newer rock, were raised, bent and drained. The one-time marsh, damp, noisome, and insufferably hot, gave place to a prospect of hill and dale, stored with beds of fuel, lying in a salubrious air, and bathed in sunshine instead of a steaming fog.
We speak of the "everlasting hills," yet rivers may be even older than hills. When a river of the Alleghany country breaks out of one valley to flow into another, and perhaps a third, it does not by any means follow that the watergap through which it comes means the draining of a lake. It rather means that the rise of a new ridge was so slow that the older river was able, through the sawing action of its current. to keep its channel open. It is quite probable that the Great Kanawha, which all but traverses the entire breadth of the Appalachian country, once took its source near the center of North Carolina and in the primeval moun- tain we have spoken of. It is even possible that the upper Potomac is the altered form of a stream once flowing west instead of east.
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The geological structure of Preston being carboniferous, coal seams occur nearly everywhere, except in the summit of Chestnut Ridge and in the district east of the main axis of Laurel Hill. Yet even on the Highland is the isolated deposit around Corinth. The layers of lime- stone occurring in the coal measures are less easily worn away than are the more friable strata of shales and sandstone. These harder beds therefore account for the uneven terrace-like steps which may be traced on the hillsides at quite regular intervals. The principal vein of lime- stone, 100 to 150 feet thick, sometimes touches the surface. It contains caverns of considerable interest. The Cornwell cave in the canyon of the Cheat contains beautiful stalactites. In the limestone formation around Aurora are many sink-holes, indicating the presence of caverns, but these have been little explored.
The bending of a stiff mass of rock by its upheaval into a ridge and the jarring of earthquakes cause it to become full of cracks. Into these cracks rainwater finds its way, freezes, and breaks off masses large and small. The roots of trees exert a like effect. If there is limestone, the rainwater, charged with vegetable acids, dissolves the rock and thus widens the seams until large caverns are at length formed. When the roof can no longer support itself, it falls here and there, causing the funnel-shaped sink-hole. On the surface the various atmospheric agencies, aided by the roots of plants, have crumbled the once hard surface into a layer of soil intermingled with detached fragments of stone. The soil of the creek bottom is comparatively deep because it receives the wash of the upland. The soil of the level glade is black because of vegetable matter. The glade was once a little swamp which has become very nearly drained through natural causes.
The principal veins of coal, beginning with the lowest, are the Clarion, the Lower Kittanning, the Lower and the Upper Freeport, the Mahoning, the Mason, the Barton, the Crinoidal, and the Elk Lick. But the capsheaf of all is the Pittsburgh, which lies so high that it crops out only in Scotch Hill near Newburg, the Copeman Knob near Kingwood, and possibly a very few other elevations. The lower veins are of far more general occurrence, though not in uniform thickness. The Barton, or Four Foot, vein is a good steam coal, low in ash, and highly valued as a domestic fuel. The best known and most valuable deposit is the Upper Freeport, which has usually a net thickness of six feet, though near the top of Laurel Hill in Reno it is considerably more. Ordinarily this vein lies above the water level and can be mined without shafts.
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