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Research the history of the leather tanning industry in Pocahontas County, West Virginia
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Pocahontas County Tannery History Research
The Red Water and the Hemlock: An Exhaustive Industrial History of the Leather Tanning Industry in Pocahontas County, West Virginia
1. Introduction: The Convergence of Capital and Ecology
The industrial history of the Appalachian Mountains is frequently reduced to a singular narrative of coal extraction. However, in the high valleys of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, a different resource dictated the rhythm of economic life for nearly a century: the chemical abundance of the primeval forest and the durability of animal hide. The leather tanning industry, specifically the production of heavy sole leather, served as the primary engine of industrialization for the Greenbrier Valley from the turn of the 20th century until the twilight of the millennium. This report provides a comprehensive, expert-level analysis of this industry, tracing its trajectory from the resource-rich extraction of the early 1900s to the globalized deindustrialization of the 1990s.
The tanning industry in Pocahontas County was not a localized anomaly but a critical node in a global supply chain. It represented the "factory system" applied to biology, transforming the perishable skins of Western cattle into the durable soles that shod the American infantry in two World Wars and the civilian population during the height of the industrial age. The presence of massive industrial facilities—most notably the Pocahontas Tanning Company (later Howes Leather) in Frank and the Union Tannery (later International Shoe) in Marlinton—reshaped the demography, hydrology, and sociology of the region.
This analysis posits that the history of tanning in Pocahontas County is defined by three distinct eras: the Era of Extraction (1900–1930), characterized by the liquidation of the hemlock forests and the establishment of company towns; the Era of Integration (1930–1970), marked by the vertical alignment with national footwear giants and the peak of production during wartime; and the Era of Attrition (1970–1994), defined by environmental regulation, synthetic substitution, and the eventual collapse of domestic leather manufacturing.
1.1 The Geopolitical Context: The Flight from "The Swamp"
To understand why massive industrial tanneries appeared in the remote headwaters of the Greenbrier River, one must look to the depletion of resources in the northeastern United States. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the American tanning industry was centered in the "Swamp" district of Manhattan and later the Catskill Mountains of New York. The industry was predicated on the availability of vegetable tannins, specifically from the bark of the Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and the Oak (Quercus).
By the 1880s, the hemlock forests of the Catskills and Pennsylvania had been decimated by the insatiable demand for bark. Tanning is an industry where the raw materials—hides and bark—are heavy and expensive to transport. However, the ratio of bark required to tan a hide made it economically imperative to locate the tannery near the forest rather than the slaughterhouse. As the northern forests failed, capital migrated south along the spine of the Appalachians, seeking the "virgin" timberlands of West Virginia. Pocahontas County, with its high-elevation red spruce and hemlock forests, offered the perfect confluence of necessary resources: essentially limitless tannin, abundant fresh water from the Greenbrier River, and, after 1900, rail access via the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Railway.
2. The Resource Base: Dendrology, Hydrology, and Logistics
The industrial ecology of the Pocahontas tanneries was built upon the extraction of specific biological agents. The scale of this extraction was immense, requiring a logistical network that penetrated the deepest hollows of the Cheat Mountains.
2.1 The Hemlock and the Oak: The Chemistry of Tanning
The primary chemical agent utilized in the Pocahontas tanneries was tannic acid, a polyphenolic compound that binds to the collagen proteins in animal skin, preventing putrefaction and rendering the material pliable and water-resistant.
2.1.1 The Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)
The dominant source of tannin in the northern part of the county (Durbin/Frank area) was the Eastern Hemlock. These trees, often centuries old, dominated the cool, moist slopes of the Cheat Mountain range. Hemlock bark produces a tannin that yields a heavy, red-colored leather, known for its solidity and resistance to water—qualities essential for the "heavy sole leather" that became the region's trademark.
2.1.2 The Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus)
In the lower elevations and drier ridges near Marlinton, the Chestnut Oak provided a secondary source of tannin. Oak tannin imparts a lighter color and a different flexibility to the leather. The "Union" leather produced in many West Virginia tanneries was often a result of blending these two extracts to balance the weight of hemlock with the bloom of oak.
2.2 The Bark Peeling Season: A Cyclical Industry
The extraction of bark was governed by the physiological cycles of the trees, creating a distinct seasonal labor market. The "bark peeling season" was strictly limited to the late spring and early summer, typically running from May to August. During this period, the sap rose in the cambium layer, allowing the bark to be pried loose from the wood with relative ease.
Laborers, often distinct from the winter logging crews, would fell the giant hemlocks and use a specialized tool known as a "spud" to strip the bark in four-foot lengths. These strips were then stacked in the woods to dry. The tragedy of this era was the colossal waste involved. In the early years, before the integration of pulp mills like the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (Westvaco) at Cass, millions of board feet of peeled hemlock logs were left to rot on the forest floor, serving only as fuel for catastrophic wildfires. The tanners wanted only the skin of the tree; the wood was merely a byproduct.
The seasonality of bark peeling meant that the tanneries had to stockpile a year's worth of bark during the summer months. This required massive storage yards and created a significant fire hazard, a risk that was realized in the destruction of the Marlinton tannery in 1927.
2.3 The Hydrology of the Greenbrier
Water is the universal solvent of the tannery. It is used to rehydrate salted hides, to leach tannins from the ground bark, and to wash the harsh alkalis and acids from the finished leather. The siting of the major tanneries—Frank on the East Fork of the Greenbrier and Marlinton on the main stem—was not accidental.
The river provided the millions of gallons of process water required daily. More critically, in an era before environmental regulation, it provided the mechanism for waste disposal. The tannery effluent, laden with organic solids, lime, and unspent tannins, was discharged directly into the stream, creating the infamous "red water" that characterized the Greenbrier for much of the 20th century. This hydrological relationship was parasitic: the tanneries drew clean water from the mountains and returned a chemical soup that degraded the downstream ecosystem, a dynamic discussed in detail in Section 6.
3. The Industrial Titans: Frank and Marlinton
While numerous small, family-run tanneries existed in West Virginia prior to 1880, the arrival of the railroad facilitated the consolidation of the industry into large, capital-intensive complexes. In Pocahontas County, two facilities dominated the landscape.
3.1 The Frank Tannery: The "Pot of Gold"
Located near the town of Durbin, the Frank Tannery (also known as the Pocahontas Tanning Company and later Howes Leather) was the crown jewel of the industry. At its zenith, it claimed the title of the largest sole leather tannery in the world.
3.1.1 Corporate Lineage and The Howes Brothers
The facility began operations around 1902–1904, established by a partnership that included the Howes Brothers of Boston and John G. Hoffman of Wheeling. The Howes Brothers were titans of the leather trade, headquartered in Boston, which was then the footwear manufacturing capital of the United States. They operated a network of tanneries across the Appalachian belt (including sites in Pennsylvania and Michigan) to feed the shoe factories of New England.
The Frank operation was a massive complex. By 1940, it employed over 450 workers. The site included the tannery buildings, a dedicated power plant, maintenance shops, and the company town of Frank itself. The large administrative office building, constructed in 1942, stood as a symbol of the tannery's importance, likely funded by the lucrative military contracts of World War II.
3.1.2 Production Metrics and Processes
The scale of production at Frank was staggering. Former employee John Simmons noted that the standard daily input was 1,140 whole steer hides. These hides were sourced globally but primarily from the industrial slaughterhouses of the Midwest, such as the Independent Beef Producers (IBP) co-op in Nebraska.
The production process at Frank was a blend of brute force and chemical engineering:
Hide Receiving: Hides arrived via rail (and later truck), salted and palletized to prevent rot.
Beamhouse: Hides were soaked to remove salt, then treated with lime to dissolve the hair follicles. Workers used fleshing machines to scrape away fat and tissue.
The Leach House: Bark (and later imported extracts) was ground to dust and boiled in massive vats to create the "liquor."
The Tan Yard: Hides were suspended in "rockers" (agitated vats) and then laid away in deep pits for months to allow the tannin to penetrate the thick collagen fibers.
Finishing: The tanned leather, now stiff and heavy, was oiled, rolled under high pressure, and polished to create the "bends" used for shoe soles.
3.2 The Marlinton Tannery: The Captive Supplier
Situated in the county seat, the Marlinton Tannery followed a similar technological path but within a different corporate structure.
3.2.1 From Union to International
Established in 1903 as the Union Tannery, a subsidiary of the United States Leather Company (often disparaged as the "Leather Trust"), this facility was part of an early attempt to monopolize the US leather market. The tannery suffered a catastrophic fire in September 1927 but was rebuilt, only to close during the Great Depression in 1930.
The facility's second life began in November 1940, when it was purchased by the International Shoe Company. Based in St. Louis, International Shoe was a vertical integrator. By owning the tannery, they insulated themselves from price fluctuations in the leather market. The Marlinton plant functioned as a "captive" supplier, sending its entire output of sole leather to International Shoe's factories.
3.2.2 The Hanover Transition
In 1966, the Hanover Shoe Company established operations in Marlinton, occupying parts of the tannery complex for a cut-sole facility. This marked a transition in the industry's value chain. As the primary tanning of hides became less profitable due to environmental costs and competition, the facility pivoted toward the mechanical processing of leather (cutting and shaping soles) rather than chemical production. The tanning operations ceased entirely in 1970, leaving Hanover to continue the cut-sole operations for a few more years.
3.3 Comparative Analysis of Operations
4. Technological Evolution: From Bark to Chrome
The popular image of the tannery is one of medieval stasis, but the Pocahontas facilities were sites of significant technological adaptation, particularly in response to the changing demands of the 20th century.
4.1 The Chemistry of the "Liquor"
In the early days, the "liquor" used in the vats was brewed exclusively from local bark. As the local forests were depleted, the tanneries had to adapt. By the mid-20th century, the Frank tannery was importing chestnut extract from France and Quebracho extract from South America. These concentrated extracts allowed for a more controlled tanning process and reduced the reliance on the dwindling local hemlock supply. This shift transformed the tannery from a raw material processor into a chemical mixing plant, blending global ingredients to achieve specific leather characteristics.
4.2 The Vietnam War and Chrome Re-Tanning
The most significant technological leap occurred at the Frank Tannery during the Vietnam War. Traditional vegetable-tanned leather, while durable, is susceptible to mold and rot in tropical environments—a fatal flaw for jungle boots. Furthermore, it degrades in high heat.
To meet military specifications, Howes Leather developed a chrome re-tanning process. This hybrid method involved taking vegetable-tanned leather and subjecting it to a secondary tan using chromium salts (specifically trivalent chromium). The result was a leather that retained the firmness of the vegetable tan (essential for protecting the foot from punji stakes and rough terrain) but gained the heat and mold resistance of chrome leather. This innovation secured lucrative government contracts that sustained the Frank operation long after the civilian market for leather soles had begun to collapse.
4.3 Utilities and Infrastructure
The tanneries were so energy-intensive that they functioned as regional utilities. The Frank Tannery operated a coal-fired power plant that generated electricity not only for its own heavy machinery but for the town of Durbin as well. The discovery of "electric leak detectors" in Durbin suggests a sophisticated, if proprietary, management of this grid. This dependence on the tannery for basic light and power further cemented the "company town" dynamic, making the community entirely reliant on the industrial rhythms of the plant.
5. Society and Labor: The Architecture of the Company Town
The leather industry in Pocahontas County did not just build factories; it built civilizations in miniature. The towns of Frank and, to a lesser extent, the industrial sections of Marlinton and Durbin, were structured around the hierarchy of the tannery.
5.1 The Immigrant Workforce: The "Italian Shanties"
While the popular narrative of Appalachia focuses on the Scots-Irish mountaineer, the industrialization of Pocahontas County relied heavily on immigrant labor. In the early 1900s, labor agents recruited workers from Ellis Island and the industrial cities of the north to build the railroads and work the vats.
Census records from 1900 show a significant influx of Italian laborers into the Greenbrier District. These workers, often hailing from regions like Calabria and Sicily , faced significant social isolation and prejudice. Archives indicate the existence of segregated housing, referred to as "Italian shanties," particularly in the logging camps on Cheat Mountain.
The integration of these workers was fraught with tension. Historical accounts mention "rowdy loggers" and warnings for locals to stay indoors on paydays, reflecting the friction between the established agricultural community and the transient industrial workforce. However, many of these immigrants stayed, and families with names like Mingarelle became fixtures of the local labor movement. The Italian presence brought new cultural dynamics, including Catholicism, to a predominantly Protestant region, and their labor was essential in the physical construction of the industry.
5.2 The Scrip System and Economic Bondage
Like the coalfields to the south, the tannery towns operated on a scrip system. Scrip was a private currency, issued by the company, which could only be redeemed at the company store.
The Mechanism: Workers could "draw" scrip against their future wages. This allowed them to buy food and supplies before payday, but it often led to a cycle of debt where the paycheck was consumed by the store ledger before it was even issued.
5.3 Daily Life and Social Stratification
Life in Frank was regimented by the factory whistle. The town was laid out hierarchically: the superintendent lived in a large, detached house (often on a hill), while the workers lived in rows of identical company-built cottages. Despite the harsh conditions, oral histories reveal a strong sense of community. Former workers like David Burner described the atmosphere: "It was hard work, but I enjoyed it... You didn't make any money, everyone got along". The tannery provided stability in a region where few other options existed. It sponsored baseball teams, provided housing, and created a social fabric that bound the community together, even as the chemicals they worked with ate at their skin and lungs.
6. The Environmental Legacy: The Red Water
The industrial success of the Pocahontas tanneries was purchased at a steep ecological price. The environmental history of the region is defined by the conflict between industrial effluent and the biological integrity of the Greenbrier River.
6.1 The "Red Water" Phenomenon
The most visible signature of the tannery was the "Red Water." The vegetable tanning process generates massive volumes of wastewater rich in unspent tannins, dissolved proteins (fleshings), lime, and hair. When discharged into the Greenbrier River, this effluent turned the water a dark, reddish-brown color that was visible for miles downstream.
Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD): The organic load of the effluent was enormous. As bacteria in the river broke down the fleshings and tannins, they consumed the dissolved oxygen in the water. This created hypoxic zones where fish could not survive, leading to frequent "fish kills" that enraged local fishermen and conservationists.
Chemical Toxicity: In the later years, with the introduction of chrome re-tanning at Frank, the effluent profile became more toxic. Trivalent chromium, while less toxic than hexavalent chromium, is a heavy metal that accumulates in sediment and aquatic life.
6.2 Early Legal Battles and Conservation
The conflict between the tanners and the environment was not a late-20th-century invention. As early as 1899, the Pocahontas Tanning Company was involved in a pollution trial regarding the "Dewing land," which resulted in a hung jury. This demonstrates that the local population was aware of and resistant to the pollution from the very inception of the industry. However, for much of the 20th century, the economic power of the tanneries silenced opposition. It was only with the establishment of the West Virginia Game and Fish Commission and later the federal EPA that systematic reporting of fish kills and pollution began. The "red water" became a symbol of the tension between jobs and the environment, a dynamic that persists in West Virginia to this day.
6.3 Remediation and Brownfields
Following the closure of the Frank tannery in 1994, the site was designated a brownfield. The legacy of a century of chemical dumping required extensive remediation.
Groundwater Contamination: Monitoring wells were installed to track the plumes of pollutants moving through the water table.
7. The Era of Attrition: Decline and Closure (1970–1994)
The collapse of the Pocahontas tanning industry was not caused by a lack of resources, but by a fundamental shift in the global economy and material science.
7.1 The Rise of Synthetics
The first blow was technological. In the post-WWII era, the development of synthetic rubber and polymers (like Neolite) revolutionized the footwear industry. Rubber soles were cheaper, lighter, and waterproof. The market for heavy leather soles—the premium product of Frank and Marlinton—began to shrink. By the 1960s, leather soles were becoming a luxury item rather than a standard utility.
7.2 Globalization and Trade
The second blow was geopolitical. By the 1970s, the US shoe manufacturing industry was migrating rapidly to Asia and South America. As the shoe factories closed, the tanneries lost their customers. Furthermore, foreign tanneries, operating with lower labor costs and lax environmental regulations, flooded the market with cheap leather. In 1969, executives at Howes Leather (referencing their Michigan plant, but applicable to Frank) blamed "U.S. foreign trade policies" and the importation of cheap Italian shoes for the industry's demise. They noted that an imported shoe cost 87 cents, while a US-made shoe cost $2.75. The economics were insurmountable.
7.3 The End of the Line
The Marlinton tannery, lacking the specialized military contracts of Frank, closed in 1970. The Frank tannery held on for another two decades, buoyed by its chrome re-tanning capabilities and government contracts. However, by the 1990s, even this niche was eroding. On June 12, 1994, the Howes Leather Company in Frank ceased operations. It was one of the last operating sole leather tanneries in the United States. Its closure marked the end of industrial-scale tanning in West Virginia.
8. Conclusion: The Indelible Footprint
The history of the leather tanning industry in Pocahontas County is a narrative of transformation. It transformed the landscape, turning virgin hemlock forests into cut-over scrub and a clear mountain river into a chemical conduit. It transformed the population, bringing Italian immigrants and industrial discipline to a rural agrarian society.
Today, the physical structures are largely gone. The Marlinton tannery site has been repurposed; the Frank tannery is a remediated field, its massive office building demolished despite community efforts to save it. Yet, the legacy remains. It is found in the genealogy of the families who stayed, in the environmental monitoring reports of the DEP, and in the oral histories of the men who remembered the smell of the bark and the heat of the vats.
The "Pot of Gold" at the end of the rainbow in Frank turned out to be transient, but the era of the tanneries remains the defining industrial chapter of Pocahontas County, a testament to the time when the mountains of West Virginia shod the world.
Appendix: Statistical and Comparative Data
Table 1: Comparative Timeline of Tannery Operations
Table 2: Chemical Agents and Environmental Impact
The Stores: In Frank, the J.R. Propst Grocery Store (and potentially the Pocahontas Supply Company, though this was more closely linked to the Cass lumber operations) served as the commercial hub. In Durbin, the Durbin Mercantile Company and Wilmoth & Kerr provided goods, sometimes accepting scrip at a discount.
The Impact: The scrip system effectively trapped workers in the town. Without US currency, they could not travel or save. It was a mechanism of labor retention through economic coercion. Artifacts such as "10 cent" tokens from coal companies in the region illustrate the tangibility of this private economy. The system persisted until federal and state laws, combined with the rise of the automobile, rendered it obsolete in the 1950s.
The DEP Role: The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) oversaw a voluntary remediation program. The goal was to stabilize the site for industrial use, but the contamination levels precluded residential development. The demolition of the buildings was partly driven by the need to remove asbestos and other hazardous materials embedded in the structures themselves.
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