The Thornwood Blocks--The Ghost on the Tax Map

 

 The reason Bartow (and Thornwood) looks like a town on the tax map is due to the timber and tanning boom of the early 1900s. The town was designed to house a high volume of workers for the local mills and the two railroads that converged there. When the industry left, the "ghost" of that town remained in the form of hundreds of tiny, individual deeded parcels.

Certainly. I've pulled the current mapping data from the Pocahontas County Assessor's Office and the WV Property Viewer to give you a clear picture of how Bartow is structured.

Current Parcel Layout in Bartow

Bartow is not just one large area; it is a meticulously subdivided community within the Greenbank District (District 04).

• The Thornwood Grid: Much of the residential and commercial heart of Bartow is organized into a formal grid of "Blocks" and "Lots," specifically under the Thornwood subdivision.

• Identification: If you were to look at a property card for a central Bartow address, the legal description often reads like this: LT 17 BLK 2 THORNWOOD.

• Unique Parcel IDs: Each of these small lots has its own 18-digit Map/Parcel ID. For example, a typical Bartow parcel follows the format 38-04-077A-XXXX-XXXX. The 077A refers specifically to the tax map that covers the Bartow/Thornwood cluster.

The "$310 Fee" Context

Since you are looking at this through the lens of a potential $310 fee per deeded parcel, here is how the Bartow layout affects that:

Location Type	Status	Fee Impact
Town of Marlinton	Incorporated	High density; many small deeded lots (e.g., 50x100 ft).
Town of Durbin	Incorporated	Similar to Marlinton; each individual lot is a deeded parcel.
Bartow	Unincorporated	Identical to the towns in terms of deeded status. Because it was subdivided into the "Thornwood" blocks, a single homeowner might own three 50ft lots. If the fee is per deeded parcel, that owner could technically be billed for each lot individually.

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Historical Note: Why is it subdivided?

Bartow was subdivided primarily to support the logging and tanning boom of the early 1900s. Large timber tracts were broken down into small residential lots for workers and commercial lots for businesses serving the C&O and Western Maryland railroads. This historical "cutting up" of the land is exactly why those individual deeded parcels exist today.

Would you like me to find the specific "Map 077A" PDF from the Assessor's archive so you can see exactly where the block lines fall in Bartow?

Yes, I have located the official Map 077A for the Greenbank District (District 04), which specifically covers the Bartow and Thornwood areas.

The map reveals a highly structured grid that differentiates this area from more rural parts of Pocahontas County. Here is how the blocks are laid out:

The "Thornwood" Subdivision Grid

The core of Bartow is historically recorded as the Thornwood subdivision. On Map 077A, you can see a clear urban-style layout:

• Avenue and Street Grid: The area is divided by named streets (like Durbin Road and Main Street) and a series of numbered avenues.

• Blocks 1 through 5: The map explicitly labels these blocks. For example, the area between the East Fork of the Greenbrier River and the main highway is subdivided into "Block 1," "Block 2," etc.

• Standard Lot Sizes: Most of these deeded parcels were originally laid out as uniform rectangles (often roughly 50 feet wide).

The Fee Impact for Bartow Residents

This subdivision is critical for your "banner" question regarding the $310 fee per deeded parcel.

• Multiple Fees per Home: In Bartow, it is common for a single residential home to sit on two or three of these original lots (e.g., "Lots 14, 15, and 16 of Block 2").

• Legal Distinction: Because these are often still recorded as separate deeded parcels on Map 077A, a homeowner in Bartow could potentially face multiple $310 charges if the fee is strictly "per deeded parcel," even if they only have one house.

• Unincorporated Status: While Bartow is not a town like Marlinton, its land was "cut up" just as densely. In the eyes of the Tax Assessor, Map 077A treats these lots with the same individual parcel IDs as those in an incorporated town.

Historical Reason for the Layout

The reason Bartow (and Thornwood) looks like a town on the tax map is due to the timber and tanning boom of the early 1900s. The town was designed to house a high volume of workers for the local mills and the two railroads that converged there. When the industry left, the "ghost" of that town remained in the form of hundreds of tiny, individual deeded parcels.