USA > West Virginia > Preston County > A History of Preston County, West Virginia, V.1 > Part 21
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Laurel Hill presented a barrier which might have been crossed with less expense if attacked by a different route. The point chosen made necessary the Kingwood tunnel of 4138 feet in length. This excavation was begun July 17, 1854 and finished July 30, 1857. It was then the longest tunnel in America and one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the time. The extreme depth of the floor of the tunnel from the top of the ridge is about 230 feet. From the summit three shafts were sunk, their openings being 15 feet by 20. Modern explosives and modern drilling and excavating machinery being unknown, it was a slow process to work through the formation of compact slate. While one bucket was descending a shaft, another was coming up. The amount of material removed was 200,000 cubic yards, nearly one-half being drawn up through the shafts. This mass would build a pyramid over 220 feet square and 220 feet high. The tunnel was at first timbered, but later it was arched on account of the insecurity of the roof.
While the great tunnel was under construction, a temporary track was built over the nill, and cars were drawn up one by one over the remarkable grade of 500 feet to the mile. It took ten minutes to draw up the one car, weighing with its load thirteen tons.
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Two miles west was the Murray or Austin tunnel of 250 feet, and in the eleven-mile grade east of Rowlesburg were the Rodamer and McGuire tunnels of 400 feet and 500 feet, respectively.
The length of the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio road, prior ¡to some recent alterations, is 32.07 miles in this county, and it is a constant succession of varied and picturesque scenery. Approaching from the east one first passes over the expansive glade whose grassy sward conceals the black diamonds of the Corinth coal field. Soon the rails are following the crooked course of the clear and turbulent Snowy Creek. A narrow depression among the hills links the head of a tributary of this stream to the head of Salt Lick. Here, where stands the town of Terra Alta, the railroad avails itself of the convenient cleft. There now comes the eleven-mile grade down the deep, winding valley of Salt Lick, hillsides high and abrupt towering in every direction. The descent is from 2550 feet at Terra Alta to 1392 feet at the bridge over the Cheat.
Beyond the river is a grade of equal pitch, but extending only four miles. It skirts the brow of a mountain wall, crossing by notable feats of engineering the yawning gorges which deeply furrow the almost overhanging hillsides. The descent toward the river is very precipitous. Buckhorn wall is the most conspicuous of these viaducts. The view into the Narrows of the Cheat is very interesting, and is much remarked upon by travelers. At Eighty Cut the summit level is reached, and two miles beyond, in an artificial hollow in the side of Laurel Hill, lies the sable-hued mouth of the Kingwood tunnel. Yet it is a fourth of a mile to the eastward that the downward grade begins. This continues through the tunnel and onward into the deep Raccoon valley, tinted by the smoke of engines and coke ovens and rimmed with steep, conical hills, around one of which, the Brain Knob, the railroad describes a semicircle. At Newburg, a little way beyond, is the foot of the six-mile grade. Thence along the broader valley of the lower Raccoon and the larger Three Fork, but still threading its way between mountainous elevations, the track continues, and at length passes into the county of Taylor.
The primary aim of the railroad management was to reach the 'navigable waters of the Ohio, and to draw tribute from the fertile prairies beyond. Yet by placing the county on a trunk line route, the railroad has been a very great factor in the economic development of Preston. Even as a section of a bridge over a broad mountain obstacle,
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it is a very appreciable element in the support of this region, inasmuch as the heavy grades east of Newburg and on either side of Rowlesburg make necessary a number of helper engines and a special force of employees. Newburg is largely a railroad town, and in a somewhat less degree the same is true of Rowlesburg.
When the railroad was located through Preston, it traversed a belt that was almost a wilderness. It touched no village, the nearest approach to one being the hamlet of Independence. Its mission was now to absorb the through business of the Northwestern Pike, and with the one exception of the county seat to attract to its route all the larger places that were to assume form durng the next half century. On the Snowy Creek glade sprang up the mining village of Corinth. The inconspicuous rural postoffice of Salt Lick Falls became Cranberry Summit and developed into the busy mercantile town of Terra Alta. The secluded dwelling on the tongue of bottom land at the mouth of Salt Lick became the nucleus of the railroad and lumbering community of Rowlesburg. The Cassidy's Summit of the engineers acquired mining and commercial importance as the town of Tunnelton. The solitary house at Simpson's Water Station was the nestegg of the railroad town of Newburg.
The first visits of the panting iron horse, moving on wheels instead of hoofs, were a source of great interest and curiosity to the dwellers along its course.
During the construction of the railroad, and particularly the tunnel, many Irish were employed, and a number of these became permanent citizens. They were most numerous at Tunnelton, and on Tunnel Hill was the temporary yet populous village of Greiggsville. It was during this time that the Irish from Cork and Connaught decided that the Irish from Fardown should no longer work on the road. A horde of the former faction, estimated at 500 men, set forth from Fairmont. At Newburg, the Fardown Irish employed there took to the woods to seek rest and quiet under the trees, and the invaders moved on toward the tunnel. Colonel J. A. F. Martin, the acting sheriff, appeared with a force of 130 men and arrested several of the disturbers. There was no resistance, and the "Irish war" came to an immediate termination.
The charter of the Baltimore and Ohio road required the double- tracking of the line within a specified time. In 1872, the company began the fulfillment of this condition. The work was not completed for about three years. The workmen received $1.15 a day. This was an advance
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over conditions in the 30's, when the laborers on the Northwestern Pike were given 50 cents a day and their board.
The presence of a trunk line suggested to the leading men of the county the desirability of branch lines as feeders thereto. The first of these projects was the "Morgantown and Independence Railroad." It was chartered in 1852 with an authorized joint-stock capital of $200,000. The movement was premature. The time for the enterprise was not yet, and there was a failure to arouse sufficient interest.
Harrison Hagans strove for a railroad from the direction of Pennsyl- vania, and surveys were made. Success perhaps might have been his had he been allotted more years of life. The section that was to lie within West Virginia was chartered as the "West Virginia Central Railroad," and in October, 1860, a subscription to its capital stock was carried in a county election by a vote of 1186 against 126. The road was to leave the Baltimore and Ohio at the mouth of the Three Fork and pass through Kingwood and Brandonville on its way to the Pennsylvania line northeast of the last-named place. The length . of the route was 50 miles. Whether the projected road should be narrow gage or broad gage was a topic much discussed.
In 1870, the plan was renewed under the name of the "Iron Valley and Pennsylvania Line Railroad." The charter called for an extension of the spur already built to Hardman's furnace, but the proposed road still failed to materialize.
The next project was to bring railroad facilities to the county seat. and after six years of effort the first train of the "Tunnelton, Kingwood, and Fairchance Railroad" entered Kingwood, January 2, 1887. This line was built as a narrow gage, and the cost, met by an issue of bonds on the part of Kingwood District, was $70,000. It was never carried any further toward the contemplated terminus in Pennsylvania. In 1895, the road was sold to George C. Sturgis and J. Ami Martin for $30,000. The new management renamed it the "West Virginia Northern" and converted it into a standard gage. It was their original purpose to extend the line to Morgantown, but thy soon sold it to Pennsylvania parties, who opened coal mines at Howesville, Irona, and Atlantic. and built a branch to the last named point.
In 1881 the "Morgantown and Independence" project was again brought forward. A railroad spur about two miles long had already been built from Hardman's Switch below Independence to the furnace at Irondale. The new plan was to extend this spur to Morgantown,
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which plan was without railroad facilities. Some grading was done at that end of the line. The name of "Blackbottle" fastened itself too, firmly to the new project to be shaken off. Colonel De Nemegyei, proprietor of the furnace at Irondale, was one of the directors, and at the meetings of the board tradition avers that he would place at the center of the table around which they sat a large, long-necked bottle of dark color and suspicious contents. The colonel at length went out of the directorate, and the bottle no longer presided over the deliber- ations. It was the director-in-chief, and in the absence of its liquid inspiration the enterprise could not hope to succeed. Failure overtook the construction company at the Morgantown end, and 600 workmen remembered the circumstance to the extent of $18,000.
In 1898, Sturgis and Martin took hold of the defunct enterprise, and rebuilt the weather-beaten grade on lower Decker's Creek. Their first purpose was to build a road from Morgantown to connect with their West Virginia Northern. They sold the latter, however, and confined their operations to the former, which under the name of the "Morgantown and Kingwood Railroad" was built into Preston as far as Masontown. It was at length purchased by the late Stephen B. Elkins, who rebuilt it according to the most approved methods of railway construction, and extended it to Rowlesburg at an expense of about $2,500,000. Three-fourths of this finely constructed road of almost 50 miles lies in this county. It has very greatly promoted the development of the central portion, and particularly Valley district, which in the decade of 1900-1910 increased in population 83 per cent Masontown and Reedsville, quiet little country villages in 1898, had so grown that the former compared with Rowlesburg or Kingwood, and the later with Austin or Independence, as those places appeared in the census of 1890. The new road has also exerted a marked influence on the growth of Kingwood. Rowlesburg. and Albright.
Besides double-tracking its main line in Preston, the Baltimore and Ohio Company has done away with its wooden trestles and made its fills so broad and massive that they look as enduring as the very cliffs they wind among. Since our Industrial Period began it has built two spur lines to reach some recently developed coal banks. One of these runs directly along the Raccoon for about four miles above Newburg. The other runs about half that distance up the Three Fork.
During the last three years the company has been at great expense within the limits of Preston to handle more swiftly its greatly increased
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volume of traffic. A third track has been added for a considerable share of the distance, including the eleven miles of grade between Rowlesburg and Terra Alta. The Austin, Rodamer, and McGuire tunnels have been converted into open cuts, and some curves have been lessened.
The Kingwood Tunnel with its single track proving entirely inadequate to the demands upon it, a new tunnel has been put through the mountain alongside the old at a cost of $1,500,000. Work was begun August 26, 1910, and the completion took place May 28, 1912. The new tunnel is somewhat lower than the first and is 4211 feet long. The height is 2472 feet and the width 31 feet, thus enabling it to accommodate two tracks. The sides are of concrete and the roof is of vitrified brick. The ventilation is thorough. The floor of the old tunnel is about to be lowered several feet to permit the passage of the huge locomotives now in use. To make room for the additional tracks required, it became necessary to open a wide lane through the business quarter of Tunnelton, and to remove or demolish a considerable number of buildings. This work and likewise the paving of the readjusted streets has been at the expense of the company.
The helper engines no longer begin pushing the east-bound trains at Newburg. This service now begins at Hardman's Switch, some three miles to the westward.
The present railroad mileage in Preston is 93.47, and the assessed valuation is $5,802,182.
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CHAPTER XXIV
THE TOWN OF KINGWOOD.
Beginnings of the Town - Legislative Designation - County Buildings in 1818 - The Town in 1832 - Subsequent History.
In 1797 there were perhaps 1200 people in the Preston area. This was a thin sprinkling for a surface of 430,000 acres. The Americans of that day were more content to dwell in isolated homes than they are now, although the prototype of the modern town boomer was then alive and stirring. He had no brass band with which to work upon the feelings of a crowd, yet he could appeal to them through the stomach. Burchinal Town was started with a barbecue, and so, very possibly, was Kingwood.
The site of Kingwood was once a forest owned partly by John Miller and partly by Hugh Morgan. It was traversed by the "Old State Road," leading from Winchester to Morgantown and Clarksburg. Around and upon the present courthouse square was a grove of large, fine trees known as the "King Wood." and presenting to the wayfarer a favorable spot for his camp. Scarcely more than a hundred yards to the north was a spring, and down the short hillside in the direction of the river was still another. The county seat, which was also the nearest town of any pretense, was twenty-two miles away, and as the valleys of the Monongahela and the Cheat are sundered by a mountain ridge, which was then uninhabited, it produced an isolation of the settlements along the eastern of the two rivers.
The important thoroughfare, the remoteness of an established town, the pleasant spot, the water and shade for man and beast, and the enterprise of two landowners, are the leading factors which gave rise to the town of Kingwood. The very suitable and euphonious name was suggested by the noble grove on the camping ground. It it to be regretted that at least one of the trees was not suffered to remain. The writer remembers on the street of an old town in Massachusetts, a giant elm which at the founding of the place a little more than two and a half centuries ago, was permitted to stand as a relic of the primeval forest.
At what date Miller and Morgan joined forces in laying off the
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town site is not precisely known. The plotting was done in "quarter and half-quarter lots." In March, 1798, Miller sold to Aaron Royse for $20 lots 12 and 13, lying on the south side of the main street. Taking into account the climate of this locality, we may quite safely conclude that the surveying was done not later than in the fall of 1797. It is probable that it took place before the burning of the Monongalia courthouse in 1796. In 1805 three lots were purchased by John S. Roberts, a merchant.
, Tradition states that the first house was built by Hugh Morgan near the spring on the place now owned by Dr. Varner. When it was built is not known. It is stated by Wiley that in 1807 Conrad Sheets built a cabin on the hillside above the Varner spring and near the McGrew residence. But Sheets had already been in the vicinity at least ten years, and there is no record of his purchasing any lot until 1813, when he paid $50 for lot 27, containing one acre and seventeen poles. He died and was buried on his town holding, but had previously owned a farm on Morgan's Run much earlier than the date mentioned. Morgan moved to Ohio about 1815, and seems to have been accompanied by Jacob Funk, a son-in-law, who was also a resident. Across the road, and on the lot where a livery stable burned a few years since, lived a man named Steele. About 1810 if not earlier, Miller built for John S. Roberts a store that stood very near the site of the Jenkins Hotel. Roberts had already been keeping a stock of goods in the Miller farmhouse, a mile east of the embryo town. He was soon doing enough business to employ two clerks.
It will be observed that all these houses lay in the hollow east of the camping ground, the convenience of spring water seeming to determine the choice of location. It will also be found that during the first dozen years no more than five or six houses appear to have sprung up. But January 23, 1811, the little hamlet received a decisive boost in an Act of Assembly reading in part as follows:
Sect. 2. That the lots and streets as already laid off at a place called King- wood in the county of Monongalia be established a town by the name of Kingwood, and that John S. Roberts, Jacob Funk, William Price, James Brown, and Hugh Morgan, gentlemen, be and they are hereby appointed trustees thereof.
Sect. 4. The trustees of the said town, or a majority of them. are em- powered to make such rules and orders for the regular building of houses therein as to them shall seem best, to settle and determine all disputes concerning the bounds of the lots, and to pass such bye-laws as may be necessary for the internal government of the said trustees respectively. PROVIDED, such bye-laws shall not.
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be contrary to the laws of this state, or of the United States. So soon as the owner or purchaser of any lot in the said town shall erect a dwelling house there- on, equal to twelve feet square, with a brick or stone chimney, such owner or purchaser shall enjoy the same privileges that the freeholders and inhabitants of other towns not incorporated hold and enjoy. Vacancies by death or otherwise of any one or more of the said trustees shall be supplied by the remaining tithables, and the person or persons so elected shall have the same powers as if they had been named in this act.
Sections one and three refer, respectively, to Millsville in Londoun county and Newbern in Montgomery, all three towns having been included in the same bill.
Kingwood now became a polling place and it acquired a postoffice. Thus it took rank as the recognized village center of the Preston area.
Funk built a tannery, and in 1813 sold it to William Sigler. A hatter named Fulton moved into the Steele house. It is alleged that he was a brother to the Robert Fulton of steamboat fame. William Price moved up from the Fairfax ferry, built the house lately occupied by Mrs. Kemble, and opened it as a tavern. It is now the oldest house in Kingwood. The trees to furnish the logs were felled on the courthouse square. Sarah Price, a daughter of the tavern keeper, made for the young man who cleared the house-lot a suit of clothes from cloth she wove herself.
To the cluster of log houses and a frame store a few more dwellings had been added, when in 1818, Kingwood became the seat of govern- ment for the new county of Preston. The store building used by Roberts was turned into a courthouse. It was styled the "Old Red Courthouse" from its being painted with the hematite ooze found in a spring of iron water not far away. Within the building, which was 26 by 35 feet in size, was partitioned off a jury room just large enough to hold the twelve men. Another corner was used as an office by the clerk of the county and circuit courts. Elsewhere were the bench and bar. The jail was of hewed logs and near by it was a whipping post.
Such were the county buildings of Preston until 1824. A court- house of stone and a jail were then built on the present courthouse square. A mile east of town, on the old road to the mill of David Trowbridge, was a schoolhouse used also as a church. There was none in the town itself.
By an Act of Assembly passed January 12, 1826, the limits of the town were extended so as to include an addition laid out by William Price, William Sigler, and Charles Payne.
--
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Let us now come forward to the year 1832, and see to what propor- tions the town has grown during the third of a century since it was surveyed.
We come up the old road from Albright, then known. as Snider's Ferry. The highway does not take its present course after leaving Green's Run, but turns to the right and mounts a level ridge, passing near the homes of David Trowbridge and James Brown and not far from the Green cabin of tragic memory. Beyond, and when abreast of the Jordan residence, we pass a comfortable log church with glass windows. A little further, and we come into the road that climbs the river-hill from the Fairfax ferry. Somewhat farther yet we arrive at a fork, the older road pursuing a direct line to the courthouse, while the other passes the log house of Major Charles Byrne, where J. W. Parks was lately residing. It does not pursue its present curve around the hollow, but keeps a direct course to the present schoolhouse, crossing the ravine on a log bridge.
We return to the old road, cross the same ravine lower down, and come to an intersecting street which on the left turns up an ascent to the new road, or the present High street. On the right it leaves the village to continue as a country road to Green's Run. In the nearer angle on this lower side is the frame house, yet standing and weather- beaten, which then was occupied by Elijah Shaffer, a farmer and blacksmith. On the opposite side of the street, and well back in its lot, is the log house of Thomas McGee, a merchant. Farther west on the same side of the street is the old red courthouse, now a temporary school building, and in about three years to be torn down to make room for what is at present known as the Jenkins Hotel. The latter does not stand on precisely the same spot, nor does it altogether consist of the old courthouse.
Westward still is a new dwelling occupied by Andrew Love, a tailor. It is now the Cresap house. Beyond, and on the farther side of a cross street, is a log tavern occupied about this time by Caleb Fuller. Above and on the main street is the new frame house of John S. Murdock, a blacksmith. Beyond, on the lot of George A. Williams, was then a one-storied building about fifteen by eighteen feet, and empty save as a granary for oats that sell at eighteen cent> a bushel. A few more steps and we come to the street corner. Here is the merchant stand of Samuel Byrne, who about this time lost it by fire. He was succeeded by Elisha M. Hagans, whose building is yet occupied as a store by George A. Herring.
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Crossing Price street to where the soldier's monument now stands, we find a stone tavern built about 1824, or according to another account in 1818 or 1819. The tavern keeper is Wick Johnson, who will be followed by many others during the lifetime of the building. In 1848 it took the name of Union Hotel. After standing vacant a while, it burned in 1883. The pump by the sidewalk was once the hotel pump. Passing the hotel we are in front of the stone courthouse. Just beyond and nearly where the Band of Kingwood used to have its quarters is a two-storied log house with the broad side toward the street. This is the new tavern stand of William Price.
Going back to Shaffer's, and taking the other side of Main street, we find in the corner opposite him the frame house of William Sigler who purchased this preperty from Jacob Funk. At Sigler's tannery are two other dwellings, one occupied by Moses Royse, and the other by Dadisman, a tanner. Going up the hill toward the courthouse, we find that the cabin of Conrad Sheets has disappeared. Sheets is not living, and through an inadvertence a stable was in after years built over his grave. On the level ground, little east from Dr. Pratt's cottage, we find the house of Israel Baldwin, a land agent. His office was where the stone bank now stands. Across a road leading north- ward is a two storied log house, since disguised by weatherboarding. This is the hostelry of Solomon Paul Herndon. A short distance down the road leading into the country and in the edge of a swampy spot is the well-known Herndon spring. Still following the street, we find nearly opposite Price the home of William Carroll, a merchant. A very little distance further is a log house, used as a temporary shelter by people journeying through. A few steps farther on still, and close to the site of the present Journal office, is the dwelling of Thomas Squires, a blacksmith.
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