WPA Privies

 

 

The Salt Shaker Press 

 

Vol. XIV, No. 42 | Pocahontas County, West Virginia | Special Historical Feature 

 

UNCLE SAM’S CONCRETE VAULTS: HOW THE WPA PRIVY BANISHED THE "SUMMER COMPLAINT" FROM POCAHONTAS HOLLOWS 

 

From Marlinton to the Green Bank Grade, a New Deal Army of Carpenters and Masons Built a Silent Revolution in Mountain Public Health 

 

By Salt Shaker Press Historical Bureau Pocahontas County Bureau MARLINTON, W.VA. — To the uninitiated traveling down the Greenbrier Valley in the dark years of the mid-1930s, the sight was nothing short of puzzling. Sprouting along the hillsides, behind one-room schoolhouses, and adjacent to timber homesteads from Durbin down to Hillsboro were identical, neatly painted wooden outbuildings, each topped with a single galvanized ventilation stack. The mountain folks called them "Roosevelt Privies"—or sometimes, with characteristic dry Appalachian humor, "Eleanors." But behind the tongue-in-cheek nicknames lay one of the most critical public health interventions in the history of Pocahontas County. 

 

A Legacy of Mountain Contagion 

 

For generations across the Allegheny Plateau, winter was feared for its choking croup and diphtheria, but summer brought a different kind of terror to rural mothers. "Summer complaint," dysentery, and typhoid fever routinely swept through mountain hollows as snowmelts gave way to warm weather. The root cause was neither mysterious nor complex. Pioneer-era outdoor latrines were little more than rough-sawn shacks perched over shallow dirt pits. Spring rain runoff washed untreated pathogens directly into open creeks and shallow farmstead wells. At district schoolhouses, where dozens of children shared a single water bucket and tin dipper, a single leaking privy could—and often did—infect an entire community within a fortnight. Public Health Archive Note (1934 County Health Officer Report): "Prior to standardized vault installation, nearly sixty percent of rural school water supplies tested in the county showed seasonal bacterial contamination. The open pit privy, combined with the housefly, remains our chief vector for typhoid transmission." 

 

Enter the Relief Crews 

 

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) rolled into Pocahontas County in 1935, local work relief crews were quickly organized under federal health directives. While larger WPA units were assigned to grade roads and construct public stonework, three-man crews were dispatched deep into the county’s rural districts with pre-cast concrete slabs, lumber, and venting hardware. The engineering was simple, rigorous, and revolutionary. Out went the unsealed earth pit; in went a poured, watertight concrete vault that isolated human waste from the surrounding groundwater table. A fitted concrete floor slab provided an easily scrubbed surface, while a spring-hinged wooden seat sealed tightly when not in use. Crucially, a vertical, screen-topped ventilation chimney drew odors upward while preventing flies from entering the pit and carrying contamination back to kitchen tables. 

 

 Anatomy of the WPA "Fly-Tight" Sanitary Privy Substructure: Monolithic poured concrete vault & reinforced floor slab (watertight & rodent-proof). Superstructure: 4' x 5' framed wooden shelter built with tongue-and-groove native pine siding. Ventilation: 4-inch vertical stack with fine copper wire screening to eliminate fly breeding. Cost to Owner: Labor provided free by federal relief; materials supplied for $5.00 to $18.00 (or subsidized). 

 

Transforming the Schoolyards 

 

Nowhere was the impact felt more immediately than in the county's public schools. Trustees across the Green Bank, Frank, and Huntersville school districts coordinated with county health officials to replace rotting twin outhouses with standard WPA units. Teachers, who had long fought losing battles against disease outbreaks using sulfur candles and carbolic acid scrubs, finally gained a permanent defense. Coupled with the state's ban on the common drinking cup and mandatory smallpox vaccination checks, the arrival of the sanitary privy coincided with a dramatic drop in recorded cases of juvenile intestinal illness across the region. 

 

A Lasting Appalachian Monument 

 

By the time federal work relief programs phased out during the second World War, hundreds of "Roosevelt Privies" had been erected across Pocahontas County. As rural electrification and septic lines eventually climbed the ridges in the 1950s and 60s, many of these concrete-bottomed structures were decommissioned, but their durable foundations remained. Today, surviving structures stand at historic school sites and state park borders—quiet monuments to an era when basic engineering, federal cooperation, and community resolve came together to protect the lives of West Virginia’s mountain children. Published by The Salt Shaker Press • Documenting the History, Law, and Public Policy of Pocahontas County, W.Va.