USA > West Virginia > Randolph County > The history of Randolph County, West Virginia. From its earliest settlement to the present, embracing records of all the leading families, reminiscences and traditions > Part 35
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MOUNTAINS AND VALLEYS OF RANDOLPH.
THE COAL FIELDS OF RANDOLPH.
There are two coal areas in Randolph County, the first of compara- tively little importance in its present state of development, along the sum- mit of the Alleghany Mountains above Red Creek; the other is the Roaring Creek Field. The Red Creek coal belongs to the Potomac Basin, which extends from Cumberland, by way of Elk Garden and Davis, to the Ran- dolph line. The Roaring Creek coal lies in a different basin. It is the southern end of the veins which underlie Monongalia, Marion, Harrison, and Barbour Counties. The Roaring Creek Fields lie in Randolph and Bar- bour, between Rich Mountain and King's Mountain. The basin in which this coal lies is cut through by the Tygart's Valley River between Elkins and Philippi. The amount of coal that may be mined in the district has been estimated at 80,000,000 tons. It is found in different veins, and occu- pies a syncline or trough, one rim of which is the top of Rich Mountain, the other rim the top of King's Mountain. The Roaring Creek Railroad has tapped the field and extensive mines have been opened.
From the. top of Rich Mountain, the edge of the Roaring Creek Field, to the head of Red Creek, the edge of the Potomac Field, the distance in an air line is nearly twenty-five miles, and between the two fields coal has not been found. The question may be asked: If there is coal on both sides, why is there none between? The answer is, that coal probably once cov- ered the whole area between the Roaring Creek Basin and the Potomac Basin. But the action of rain, frost and flowing water has stripped off the coal and washed it away. Why this has been the case can be clearly seen by a study of the geography of the country between Rich Mountain and Red Creek. The Potomac coal lies in a trough or basin between Backbone Mountain and the Alleghany. At Red Creek and Dry Fork that basin is broken up by mountains which rise across its end, namely East Rich Moun- tain, Shaver's Mountain, and Cheat Mountain. The Potomac coal probably extended westward and joined the Roaring Creek Fields; but when the above named mountains were thrust up, breaking to pieces the southwest- ern end of the Potomac Basin, the denunding process rapidly wore away the coal and adjacent rocks from all the mountain ridges, and the streams cut out the bottoms of the ravines, and the coal disappeared. But the present Potomac Basin and the Roaring Creek Basin were not broken up. The beds of coal, and the neighboring strata were folded gently, forming wide, shallow troughs, and in these troughs, or synclines, the coal was pro- tected from rapid wearing, and has been preserved. There can be little doubt that the whole of Randolph was once covered with coal. The only considerable patch remaining is at Roaring Creek. The rest has been washed away. It is not impossible that some small remnant of coal may exist among the mountains between Cheat Mountain and the Alleghany. Perhaps for every ton of coal remaining in Randolph at present, one hun- dred tons have been washed away in past ages.
REMNANTS OF AN OLD RIVER TERRACE.
At different places along Tygart's Valley, on both sides, may be seen remnants of an old terrace which once formed the bottom of the valley. These strips of level land, like benches, usually lie fifty or sixty feet above the present bed of the river. One of the best preserved lies just south of the mouth of Files Creek, and extend a mile or more up the creek on the
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south side. The residence of Daniel R. Baker is situated on this terrace. The river, in its process of cutting deeper, remained stationary a long time at that level; long enough to cut far back in the ledges of rock forming the eastern boundary of the valley. At that time the bottom land of Files Creek was level with the river valley; for the same terrace extends a mile up the creek, forming a bench, a hundred yards wide or more, which at first is fifty feet above the creek, but a mile up stream has approached the present creek valley, and is lost in the bottom lands.
THE HUTTONSVILLE GRAVEL DEPOSITS.
The value of underground drainage, and its effect upon the overlying soil may be studied to advantage in the bottom lands about Huttonsville, and in a comparison of these lands with the lands lower down the valley. From Valley. Bend to Leading Creek the soil rests, for the most part, upon solid rock or shale, which holds water, prevents the soil from draining, and the land is inclined to be damp and heavy. About Huttonsville there is a layer of gravel and water-worn bowlders between the soil and the underlying solid rock. This gravel drains the excess of water from the soil above, causing it to be warmer, dryer and less compact than if it had no such drainage, and consequently it is better suited for grain and most other crops. Surface swamps and ponds in that vicinity may be drained, not by ditches as in the lower valley, but by wells which are sunk to the gravel beds. Water from the surface pours into the wells and passes off through the gravel. The cause for gravel beds in that part of the valley and not in the lower portion is to be sought in the geography and geology of the
region. From the source of the river down to that locality the river has a swift current, but within a few miles of Huttonsville the valley loses much of its grade and the water flows less rapidly. Consequently, the current which carried gravel to that point is lost in the flat country, and the gravel and boulders were deposited there, and never reached the lower end of the valley. An examination of the streams which empty into the river in that vicinity, particularly Riffle's Run, Becca's Creek and Stewart's Run, war- rants the conclusion that many of the bowlders and much of the gravel which form the sub-stratum for the fine soil, did not come down the river from its headwaters, but were washed down the lateral streams from Cheat Mountain, and in a lesser degree from Rich Mountain, on the opposite side of the valley. These gravel beds, especially if one can judge by what appears in the present river channels, are largely made up of fragments from the Pocono Sandstone, the Canaan Formation and the Pottsville Con- glomerate, all of which are derived from ledges near the summits of Cheat and Rich Mountains. They have been washing down and accumulating for untold centuries. The softer rocks, lying below the formations just named, such as the Hampshire and Jennings shales and thin sandstones (the Jen- nings forms the present rocky bottom of the valley and the Hampshire the faces of the mountains) have been ground to atoms, and comparatively little of that soft material now exists in the bottom of the valley as gravel. Most of it has been washed away, and has gone, as silt and fine sand and mud, down the Monongahela River. Some of it remains as soil. Intelli- gent farmers in that locality have observed that the land near the mouths of creeks, flowing down from the limestone formations, is more fertile than other lands not so situated. The credit for this fertility is given exclusively to the lime brought down by the waters; but the lime is not the sole reason,
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and probably not the chief reason, why the land is more productive. These streams have strong currents; they have deposited broad deltas of gravel and coarse materials where they debouch into the valley; and it is as much due to the underground drainage and to the coarser sand mixed with the soil as it is to the lime that the land is better than other lands not so situated.
THE HUTTONSVILLE TERRACES.
Situated on the southeastern side of the river, opposite Huttonsville, and also above and below, is a series of terraces about sixty feet above the bed of the river, and occupying four square miles or more. This was once the flood-plain of the river. Water-worn bowlders strewn about the surface, as well as burried beneath the soil, bear proof of the fact that strong currents once swept over this upland. It is apparently of the same age as the terrace south of Files Creek, at Beverly. The whole floor of the valley was once level with those terraces, but it has been washed out. The largest remaining fragment of the flood-plain lies between Riffle's Run and Becca's Creek. ' Its soil is of fine quality, and much of its area is still in primeval forest. An examination of the bowlders shows that they were mostly derived from the Pocono, the Canaan and the Pottsville rocks, near the summit of Cheat Mountain, or Rich Mountain on the opposite side of the valley. The bowlders of that particular locality were likely brought down from Cheat Mountain by Riffle's Run and Becca's Creek. Those streams are still bringing the hard bowlders down and throwing them into the valley, while the softer rocks are ground to sand and mud and washed away.
LIMESTONE CAVES.
There are a number of interesting underground caverns in Randolph County, and a search would no doubt reveal many more. Few of them have been explored to their limits, and some have never been entered beyond a few yards. The Greenbrier Limestone, which averages about 350 feet in thickness, crops out high against the faces of the mountains from Red Creek to the Webster County line, and all of the caves are in this lime- stone. They have been formed in most cases, perhaps in every case, by flowing water. There is nothing mysterious about their manner of forma- tion. Some are in their prime now; some are old and falling in; some are just in their infancy. They are hollowed out by the following process: All thick strata of rock are more or less faulted or cracked under the strains to which they are subjected by folding, depression, upheaval, change of tem- perature, different degrees of moisture, and from other causes. The water which falls upon the surface of the ground as rain, sinks into these minute crevices and follows them, in obedience to the law of gravitation, as far as possible, and then comes to the surface as a spring. If the rock is sand- stone, water has little effect upon it, in dissolving it and carrying it away, and the small crevices are not much enlarged by the streamlets of water that trickle through them. But with limestone the case is different. It dissolves or melts in water, and the little stream that starts in a crevice issues from a spring somewhere, and it is no longer the soft rainwater that soaked into the cracks on the hills above: but it comes out "hard " water. It is " hard " because it is full of limestone which it has dissolved. A cup of coffee will dissolve two spoonfuls of sugar, and the coffee becomes sweet.
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A cup of pure water will dissolve, in a similar way, a small quantity of limestone, and it can be tasted-it is hard-it is loaded with lime as the coffee with sugar.
If this suggestion has not already rendered clear why caves are formed, a few words will suffice to do so. The water trickling through the crevice dissolves the limestone which it touches and carries it away, and the crevice grows larger. Its increased size admits the passage of the water with less resistance than the smaller crevices in the vicinity; and the result is that in course of time multitudes of little crevices will seek and find openings into the larger one; and the water will become stronger and carry away more lime. An underground channel, which was at first only a few feet or yards long may join to another, and that to another, until the united length is hundreds of yards, or perhaps thousands. Thus a large body of water will flow in a subterranean passage, and in course of time-thousands of years- it makes it a cave. For it is almost sure to grow larger as long as water flows through it.
Such a cave is destroyed by means as simple as it is made. Rock may fall in from above and block it up, as in the Mingo Cave. Another enlarg- ing cave in the vicinity may encroach upon the water supply and cut it off. Then the cavern will cease enlarging and will slowly fill with crumbling debris. Or a cave may become too large; may hollow out the rock under so large an area that the whole top will fall in and fill the cavern. The result is a "sink." Some of them are small, covering but a few rods, while others are very large, such as are seen in Pocahontas, the "Little Levels " and in Greenbrier, the "Big Levels," or the very noted "Sinks of Gandy," in Randolph. Occasionally under such a "sink" a small cave is still found. ' It is only an unfilled remnant of the once very large cave. There is a dis- tinction between a "sink " and a "sink-hole," although both are formed on the same principle. A "sink-hole" is an opening like a well (larger or smaller) leading down a considerable distance and usually opening into a cave. A ."sink" is a general settling down of the whole surface with no cave, or only a small one, beneath. Both "sinks" and "sink-holes" usually abound in a region where there are caves.
THE ELK RIVER CAVE.
Theory and all known facts lead to the conclusion that a cave of enor- mous dimensions exists in Randolph County, under or near the course of the Elk River, between the Pocahontas County line and the mouth of Valley Fork, six miles below. But no one has ever yet found an entrance into the cave, and its existence cannot be possitively affirmed. The facts which are explained on the theory of a vast cave are these: Elk River, except in time of freshet, flows into a crevice at the foot of a mountain, or when very low, disappears among the bowlders of its channel, in Poca- hontas, near the Randolph line; and six miles below, the water rushes to the surface. Its underground course is through limestone, and it must flow through galleries of large size. In 1896, near the point where the water sinks, a portion of the river bottom dropped down, leaving an open- ing about fifteen feet square into which the whole river plunged and disappeared. No bottom was visible, and no one attempted to enter or examine. The next flood filled the opening with bowlders. Between the points where the river sinks and where it rises to the surface, a distance of six miles, there are no streams emptying into its channel on the surface,
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except in freshet; but they all sink, and the most of them pour into "sink- holes," and unless this water reaches the subterranean channel of the river, its destination is unknown. The area of the region whose streams flow into "sink-holes" is from fifteen to twenty square miles; and the supposed underground course of Elk River passes beneath the region. The conclu- sion is that all those streams that sink reach the waters of Elk somewhere under the ground; and those meeting places of the waters, and the gal- leries through which they pour must form a series of caverns and chasms of great dimensions. Few attempts have been made to penetrate through the "sink-holes" to the caves, but that some practicable opening exists somewhere in the region is reasonable.
THE CRAWFORD CAVE.
On the Kent Crawford farm, against the side of Elk Mountain, is a cavern which has been frequently visited, and has been explored, perhaps 2000 feet, although no measurement of distance has been made. Distance in a cave is deceptive, and is usually less than one-fourth as great as the man who does not measure is apt to conclude. The Crawford cave is easy of entrance, free from danger, abounds in pleasing rooms and galleries, one of which has white walls, and it has been a favorite one with sightseers who do not care to endure the hardships or undergo the dangers necessary in exploring the abysmal "sink-holes" in the region of Elk River. For that reason it is the best known of all the caverns of Randolph. It is some- times called the Wymer cave.
THE WARD CAVE.
This cavern, tolerbly well explored to the distance of 1000 feet or more, lies under Cheat Mountain, about six miles from Beverly on the waters of Files Creek. Like the Crawford cave, the water flows out of it instead of in, and it is thus distinguished from a "sink-hole." The ingress is not diffi- cult, but careless explorers have become bewildered in the galleries and have extricated themselves only after hours of alarm. The explorer of a cavern should mark his way with chalk or a soapstone pencil, making on the walls and rocks as he enters numerous arrows pointing always toward the mouth of the cave. In returning he has only to follow the flight of arrows.
THE FALLING SPRING CAVERN.
This interesting series of pits, galleries and rooms is a combination of a cave and "sinkhole." Falling Spring Run heads against Mingo Knob and Elk Mountain, and after flowing one and a half miles, and receiving numer- ous tributaries which make it a stream of considerable size, it approaches within a quarter of a mile of Elk River where it plunges into a yawning gulf, 200 feet in circumference and forty feet deep, and the water is seen no more. It enters a gallery from the bottom of the pit, and is supposed to reach the subterranean channel of Elk River; but exploration has not yet established this as a fact. No one had ever entered the cavern beyond 200 feet until 1898, when an examination was made, in the interest of this book, by Charles J. and Claude W. Maxwell. The work was done in an effort to find a passage into the Elk River Cave, into which this one was supposed to lead. The passage was found easy of descent, except in a few places where precipices and narrow, muddy galleries were encountered, until a depth beyond 1000 feet was reached. The general course of the cavern pitches under the mountain and downward at a rate of about 20 feet in 100.
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At places the descent is perpendicular in narrow openings of the limestone. Again the passage is horizontal with a rock-roof thirty and probably forty feet high, narrowing until it is so low that one must drag his body at full length through mud and water; and again enlarging. For the first 1000 feet large quantities of drift-wood are found, logs from 20 to 40 feet long being occasionally seen. Frequently timbers are seen wedged fast in cracks of the roofs of rooms, twenty or thirty feet above the floor. They were driven into these positions by the terrific force of floods poured into the cave from the mountain stream in time of deluge. The picture which the imagination calls up, of the fury of the waters surging and whirling through and among the vaults, galleries, precipices and gurgling throats of the cavern's subterranean reaches, in time of flood, wrapped in black- ness so impenetrable that Egypt's darkness was as sunshine, is one which can be appreciated only by those who have penetrated to the nameless
depths and have seen the ruin and havoc wrought.
Rocks that weigh
thousands of pounds have been dashed and hurled from side to side, from depth to depth, until their rounded angles, and their positions, wedged high in crevices, show the measureless power that drove them. Logs have been pounded and splintered. Large rooms, one in particular, show where the subterranean whirlpools did their work. The limestone walls are scoured as if a glacier had polished them.
Beyond the depth of 1100 feet little drift is seen. The passages become so low that nothing large can enter. What goes there must be crushed. The mills of the gods must grind exceedingly small. But the floods go on raging and swirling through the chasms to reach the vast and unseen caverns which must lie below. Exploration beyond that point is difficult and dangerous because of the smallness of the openings and quantity of water. Yet, in time of drought a passage might be found to the Elk River cave. No one should venture in, except on a clear day when there is no danger of rain. A dashing storm might pour a flood in and the explorer in the cave would have no chance of escape. There is no pinnacle nor shelf on which he could climb to escape the water. It fills the cave to the re- motest crevice. But, an important discovery no doubt awaits the man who shall be able to follow the cave to the end.
THE MINGO CAVE.
Near the source of Mingo Run, a tributary of Tygart's Valley River, and situated about three miles from Elk River, is Mingo Cave, a cavern not remarkable so much for extent as for its ghostly scenery and the perils which endanger the explorer. It is a "sink-hole," and in 1898 was entered to a depth of 560 feet, nearly perpendicular. The persons who explored Falling Spring Cave also explored this one, with the hope that a passage would be found leading from its lowest depth under the mountain (Mingo Knob) to the Elk River Cave. That hope was not realized, but much of ill- terest was encountered during the descent. It had never been entered be- fore except to the depth of a few rods. One who will exercise constant care may go down more than 500 feet without great danger; but the lack of cau- tion may prove fatal at almost any step. The mouth of the cavern is four or five feet across, and for the first 35 feet the descent is perpendicular, and the persons going down must climb ropes, or poles set in for ladders. The rocks are loose, and there is danger that they will fall upon those who are descending. This cave is evidently the partly filled remnant of a larger
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one. It was one which became so large that the roof fell in; and now the original limestone walls are seldom seen, and the original floor perhaps nowhere remains visible. The whole limestone stratum seems to have been hollowed out, and the overlying sandstone has fallen in, and we can now form but an inadequate estimate of the size and form of the original cavern.
After passing the narrow neck, like a chimney, through which the descent into the cave is made, the interior enlarges, and after climbing down 100 feet or more over very rough and slippery rocks, a great cavern opens out, forming a room 132 feet wide, 192 feet long, with a ceiling in places 20 or 30 feet high. The room is gloomy, but not beautiful. Hundreds of tons of broken sandstone have fallen from above and lie piled almost to the roof in places. On one side the original limestone is met, deeply cut by a crevice of which no bottom could be seen by tying a lantern to a long rope and letting it down full length. The floor of the room pitches rapidly down, and the roof bends in the same direction; and the room terminates in a wide, but rather low passage leading down into impenetrable darkness. Here lies danger. After descending over slippery and sliding rocks through a steep passage, about 100 feet, the brink of a precipice is reached athwart the way into whose yawning depth no lantern will throw light. A blunder or a misstep there is fatal. With ropes 100 feet long and at great peril the precipice might be descended, but it is not necessary. Pushing to the left, close under the low roof, a way may be found for descending which is reasonably safe, but by no means easy, and another and larger room is reached. The precipice is one wall of this room. It is irregular in shape, but if its sides galleries and vestibules were filled it would probably seat 10,000 persons, and its ceiling in one place is about 100 feet high. Like the other room it is disfigured and partly filled with broken sandstone. Ob- scure, difficult and dangerous crevices and openings lead beyond and below this room, the last descent of 90 feet being perpendicular, and through throats so small in places that a man can scarcely squeeze his body through them. Finally the opening becomes so small that further descent is im- possible.
The cave was not thoroughly explored. The chasm mentioned in the floor of the first large room, to which no bottom could be seen, may lead to larger galleries below. With ropes long enough, the descent into it should not be difficult; and the most promising field of discovery lies there. The party that explored the cave had no ropes long enough to reach down, and therefore could not enter. There are many caves in that part of Randolph County which have never been explored. Farmers have been hauling logs for generations to fill "sink-holes" which may open into large caves below.
A LEDGE OF FLINT.
Near the "Brady Gate," at the head of Elkwater, is a ledge of flint, from which, no doubt, the Indians obtained the material for their arrow- heads. Flint is very scarce in West Virginia, only a few ledges being known, the chief one being on the Kanawha River. Indians frequently traveled long distances to obtain this material, sometimes carrying it from Ohio, as is supposed from the character of the specimens found about old Indian town-sites in the valley of the Monongahela and its tributaries. Flint is a deposit in crevices of rock and has a resemblance (in form) to veins of coal. It is quartz, in charcter; but it splits like slate, and in this respect differs from ordinary quartz, which breaks with a ragged fracture. 19
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