Other History

 

 

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The Teepee Cone (often remembered as a whimsical roadside ice cream stand and regional landmark) sits along U.S. Route 219 on Elk Mountain, just north of Marlinton in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

Historical Overview & Evolution

• Mid-Century Roadside Attraction: During the height of mid-century Americana and the early era of automobile tourism, the distinctive conical structure operated as a popular local ice cream stand and gathering spot for residents, travelers, and local youth.
  
  
• Photographic Evidence: Archival snapshots—such as a well-known 1954 photograph featuring local residents standing before the structure—capture its original heyday as a commercial refreshment stop.
  
  
• Conversion to Play Structure: By the 1950s and subsequent decades, commercial operations ceased, and the distinctive conical building transitioned into a private playhouse for children.
  
  

Current Status

• Preservation & Curiosity: While no longer functioning as an active business, the structure has been maintained in good repair over the years.
  
  
• Roadside Landmark: Today, it remains a beloved Pocahontas County roadside curiosity, frequently drawing travelers along U.S. 219 who pause to inspect the historic novelty and take photographs during their journeys through the Allegheny Mountains.
  
  

Would you like to explore other historical roadside architecture or archival landmarks across Pocahontas County and the Greenbrier Valley?

Let's dive into the archival records, historical editions of The Pocahontas Times (particularly under legendary editor Calvin Price), and local settlement narratives for Hillsboro, one of the most historically rich communities in Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties.

Situated along the historic path of the Seneca Trail (U.S. 219) in the Droop Mountain and Tony's Creek region, Hillsboro carries deep roots from the 18th-century Scotch-Irish migrations up the Greenbrier Valley.

1. Literary & Cultural Heritage

• Birthplace of Pearl S. Buck: Hillsboro is famously the birthplace of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck (born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker in 1892). Her father, Absalom Sydenstricker, served as a Presbyterian missionary, and the historic family farmhouse (Historic Hillsboro / The Pearl S. Buck Birthplace) stands as a major regional landmark preserving late 19th-century Appalachian farm life.
  
  
• The Circulating Library & Early Newspapers: Early 20th-century editions of regional papers frequently highlighted Hillsboro as a bustling agricultural and intellectual hub, hosting local debating societies, community fairs, and agricultural grange meetings.
  
  

2. Civil War & Strategic Terrain

• Droop Mountain Battlefield: Perched above the community, Droop Mountain was the site of West Virginia's most significant Civil War engagement on November 6, 1863. Union forces under General William W. Averell successfully dislodged Confederate troops commanded by General John Echols, securing Federal control over the vital saltpetre, lead, and railway supply lines in the mountains.
  
  
• Encampments and Supply Routes: The surrounding valleys and ridges served as critical cavalry routes and livestock grazing paths for drovers moving cattle down toward the Kanawha and Greenbrier markets.
  
  

3. Vernacular Architecture & Old Commerce

• Crossroads Mercantile Heritage: Historical photographs and deed records trace a network of old blacksmith shops, harness makers, and general merchandise stores that anchored the Hillsboro community before the consolidation of local schools and the shift in post-war highway transport.
  
  
• The Old Churches and Cemeteries: Burial grounds such as the Hillsboro Cemetery contain fieldstones and early carved markers chronicling the founding families—such as the Beard, Moore, and Price lineages—who cleared the wilderness along Droop and Tony's Creek.
  
  

Would you like to examine specific archival records, land grants, or historical newspaper accounts related to Hillsboro, or would you prefer to explore the archives of another community like Cass, Durbin, or Marlinton?

 

Let's turn our attention northward along the Greenbrier River to Cass, one of the most uniquely preserved company towns in the central Appalachian region. Built from scratch in 1901 by the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (later Westvaco), Cass stands as an extraordinary monument to the golden age of industrial logging and steam-driven mountain railroading.

1. The Industrial Birth and Boom Years (1901–1920s)

• Company Town Blueprint: Archival records and historical photographs from the early 1900s document how Cass was engineered entirely around timber extraction. The town featured uniform rows of board-and-batten company houses, a sprawling tannery, a massive lumber mill, and the company store—the nerve center where workers redeemed scrip for provisions.
  
  
• The Logging Railroads: To haul virgin red spruce and hemlock out of the rugged Allegheny highlands (including the steep slopes of Bald Knob and Cheat Mountain), engineers designed punishing switchback grades. This led to the deployment of legendary geared locomotives—including the world-famous Shay locomotives—capable of conquering vertical grades that would stall conventional engines.
  
  

2. Calvin Price's Dispatches in The Pocahontas Times

• Front-Row Seat to Mountain Operations: Legendary Pocahontas Times editor Calvin Price filled his columns with colorful, highly descriptive accounts of daily life in Cass. His dispatches recorded everything from major mill expansions and technological shifts to human-interest stories about loggers, track gangs, and train wrecks in the deep wilderness.
  
  
• The "Bloody 99" and Mountain Legends: The archives capture the raw, dangerous realities of high-altitude logging. Price's reporting and local lore preserved tales of legendary engineers, runaway log cars, and the gritty camaraderie of isolated lumber camps like Wildell, Cheat Junction, and Spruce.
  
  

3. Transition, Preservation, and the Scenic Railroad

• Decline of the Great Timber: By the mid-20th century, the accessible old-growth timber was largely exhausted, leading to the gradual winding down of primary industrial operations.
  
  
• Resurrection as a Heritage Railway: Through concerted preservation efforts, the historic logging railroad was saved from abandonment, transforming into the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park. Today, authentic Shay locomotives still haul visitors up to Bald Knob—West Virginia’s third-highest peak—preserving the sights, sounds, and sulfurous smoke of the steam logging era.
  
  

Would you like to examine specific archival newspaper clippings regarding the early days of Cass, delve into the engineering feats of the Shay locomotives, or explore another historic community like Durbin or Marlinton?

The history of Cass, West Virginia, and its legendary Shay locomotives is documented in the detailed reporting of early 20th-century journalists—most notably Calvin Price in The Pocahontas Times—and the remarkable mechanical engineering required to conquer the vertical wilderness of Cheat Mountain.

Archival Chronicles: The Early Days of Cass

When the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company incorporated the town of Cass in 1901, regional newspapers captured a frontier boomtown rising overnight out of dense hemlock and red spruce forests.

• The Arrival of the Rails (1901–1902): Early dispatches in The Pocahontas Times followed the grueling construction of the Greenbrier and Eastern Railroad (later the Cass, Durbin & Pocahontas / C&G), as track crews blasted rock and laid ties up the steep banks of Shavers Fork and Leatherbark Creek. Every piece of heavy machinery, structural timber, and household supply had to be freighted in before the massive sawmill at Cass fired up its blades.
  
  
• The Company Town Economy: Archival advertisements and local notes highlighted the immense scale of the Cass company store—hailed as one of the largest general mercantile operations in the state—where loggers, mill hands, and their families traded company scrip for dry goods, heavy work boots, and provisions.
  
  
• Life in the Mountain Camps: Calvin Price’s columns frequently featured dispatches from the outlying logging camps deep in the forest (such as Spruce, Wildell, and Old Spruce). These remote outposts operated as self-contained micro-communities connected to Cass only by the screeching whistle of log trains and telegraph lines, weathering harsh winters, flash floods, and isolation.
  
  

Engineering Feats of the Shay Locomotive

Standard rod-connected steam locomotives, designed for the relatively flat and gentle grades of mainline railroads, were completely useless on the sheer precipices of Cheat Mountain. Standard engines would slip, lose traction, or burn out their cylinders on grades exceeding 2% to 3%. Cass required an entirely different breed of machine: the Shay geared locomotive.

• The Offset Boiler & Side-Mounted Cylinders: Patented by Ephraim Shay in the late 19th century and built primarily by the Lima Locomotive Works in Ohio, the Shay replaced traditional side-rods with a multi-cylinder vertical engine mounted on the right side of the boiler. To balance the massive weight of the engine, the boiler itself was shifted several inches to the left.
  
  
• All-Wheel Drive via Flexible Drivetrain: Power from the crankshaft was transferred through a long, rotating drive shaft running down the right side of the tender and locomotive. Universal joints and sliding prismatic splines transmitted this torque through bevel gears directly to every single wheel on both the engine and its tender.
  
  
• Conquering Up to 9% Grades: Because the weight of the entire machine and its fuel load contributed to tractive effort, and because the gearing multiplied torque at the expense of top speed, Shay locomotives could crawl up staggering grades—some exceeding 9% at Cass—pushing or pulling heavy loads of heavy green timber where conventional locomotives would come to an absolute standstill.
  
  

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For decades, legendary editor Calvin Price steered The Pocahontas Times not merely as a newspaper of record, but as a weekly chronicle of Appalachian folklore, frontier history, tall tales, and mountain characters. Operating from his office in Marlinton, Price had a deep reverence for the pioneers, hunters, rivermen, and loggers who settled the rugged headwaters of the Greenbrier, Gauley, and Tygart Valley rivers.

1. Tales of the Mountain Hunters and Panthers

Calvin Price regularly preserved the oral histories of Pocahontas County's early hunters—men who tracked game across the high Allegheny ridges before roads or telephone lines existed.

• The Last Panthers: The Pocahontas Times frequently carried accounts of encounters with eastern cougars (locally called panthers) along the Cranberry and Williams river breaks. Price documented hair-raising stories of frontier hunters treeing large cats in blinding snowstorms and accounts of livestock lost to predators during harsh winters.
  
  
• Legendary Marksmen: Price delighted in recounting the exploits of local sharpshooters and woodsmen, detailing their tracking methods, the manufacture of home-cast lead bullets, and legendary hunts that became part of regional folklore.
  
  

2. River Lore and Timber Rafting Stories

Before the railroads opened the deep interior, the spring timber "drive" was the lifeblood of the Greenbrier Valley economy, and Price's columns captured its peril and poetry.

• Rafting the Greenbrier: Spring high waters turned the rocky Greenbrier River into a raging highway for massive timber rafts steered by daring rivermen. Price recorded accounts of pilots navigating the treacherous rapids—such as those around the Droop Mountain narrows and lower gorges—where a miscalculated eddy could break up a raft and send men into freezing waters.
  
  
• River Ghosts and Superstitions: The columns also preserved local ghost stories and superstitions associated with remote river bends, old Indian burial mounds, and lonely mountain hollows where travelers claimed to have heard inexplicable sounds or seen spectral lights.
  
  

3. Satire, Local Characters, and "The Gin"

Price balanced historical gravity with a dry, self-deprecating Appalachian wit and a keen eye for eccentric local figures.

• Colorful Local Monikers: His columns were populated by characters known by colorful nicknames—hunters, herbalists, moonshiners, and fiddlers whose everyday escapades Price treated with mock-epic seriousness.
  
  
• Folk Remedies and Weather Lore: Price often documented traditional mountain weather prognostications—such as observing the thickness of corn husks, the behavior of bees, or woolly worm caterpillars—alongside home remedies passed down through generations of Scotch-Irish settlers.
  
  

Long before loggers and steam locomotives opened the high Allegheny wilderness, Pocahontas County was a deeply contested and strategically vital corridor shaped by ancient pathways, frontier warfare, and the tenacity of early Scotch-Irish and English settlers.

Archival accounts—including regional histories compiled by local chroniclers like Calvin Price and historical surveys of the Greenbrier Valley—trace a rich tapestry of indigenous routes and perilous 18th-century settlement.

1. Historic Indian Trails and Arteries

The topography of Pocahontas County—defined by towering parallel ridges (such as Back Allegheny, Cheat, and Droop Mountains) separated by narrow river valleys—forced human travel into well-defined natural corridors.

• The Seneca Trail (Indian Trail / Trail to the Great Pee Dee): One of the most important aboriginal thoroughfares in the Alleghenies, this north-south route traversed the Greenbrier Valley, following roughly what is now U.S. Route 219. Native hunting and war parties used it to connect the Potomac and James river watersheds to the Ohio Valley.
  
  
• Cross-Mountain Paths: Trails branching off the main valley corridor allowed travelers to cross high mountain gaps to reach the Tygart Valley, Cheat River, and Kanawha basins. These paths were later adopted by pioneer drovers, surveyors, and militiamen.
  
  

2. The First White Settlements (1740s–1750s)

European settlement pushed westward into the remote headwaters of the Greenbrier River amidst intense territorial friction.

• The Muddy Creek and Spring Creek Settlements: Among the earliest documented pioneers were families like the Prices, Rennicks, and Wallaces who ventured into the southern Greenbrier and lower Pocahontas regions in the late 1740s and early 1750s. They cleared fertile bottomlands, established small corn patches, and grazed livestock.
  
  
• The French and Indian War Upheaval (1755–1763): Frontier life was brutally disrupted following Braddock's defeat in 1755. Allied native war parties, seeking to push back encroaching European settlements, launched raids across the Allegheny frontier. The Muddy Creek Massacre in 1763 decimated several early pioneer families, temporarily halting settlement and forcing surviving families to huddle behind hastily constructed defensive blockhouses.
  
  

3. Frontier Fort Sites and Refuges

To survive the constant threat of border warfare during the French and Indian War and Dunmore's War, settlers built a network of small stockades and fortified cabins throughout the river valleys.

• Fort Dinwiddie & Regional Outposts: While major regional strongholds like Fort Dinwiddie lay slightly to the east in Bath County, local families relied on neighborhood stockades—often consisting of stout log palisades enclosing a natural spring and a cabin.
  
  
• The Role of Forts as Social and Defensive Hubs: These fortified posts served dual purposes. During peaceful intervals, they functioned as gathering points for grinding grain and trading; during alarms, they provided critical sanctuary where dozens of settlers could withstand siege until militia reinforcements arrived from the Shenandoah Valley.
  
  

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The documentation of early land patents and foundational pioneer genealogies in Pocahontas County reveals how the high Allegheny wilderness was claimed, surveyed, and settled during the mid-to-late 18th century. Long before formal county organization, land speculators, royal governors, and hardy pioneers locked in the geographic framework that defines the region today.

1. The Mechanics of Early Land Patents

Land acquisition in what is now Pocahontas County followed a distinct legal evolution under the British Crown before the American Revolution, transitioning through royal grants, treasury warrants, and colonial surveys.

• Greenbrier Company Grants (1740s–1750s): The Greenbrier Company, a land speculation venture featuring prominent Virginians, received large grants to survey and settle lands west of the Great North Mountain. Speculators and settlers alike sought out fertile alluvial bottomlands along the Greenbrier River and its major tributaries (such as Thorny Creek, Knapp's Creek, and Stamping Creek).
  
  
• Headrights and Treasury Warrants: Settlers often acquired land by proving "headrights" or purchasing treasury warrants, which allowed them to stake out specific acreage—frequently 100 to 400 acres per patent—provided they cleared a portion of the land, built a cabin, and planted crops to satisfy settlement requirements.
  
  
• Overlapping Claims and Disputes: Because surveying deep in the Allegheny mountains was perilous and imprecise, early patent maps were fraught with overlapping boundaries. Natural landmarks—such as "the big sycamore on the river bend" or "the ridge dividing Knap's Creek from the Greenbrier"—served as initial survey monuments before formal metes-and-bounds descriptions were recorded in Augusta County court records (from which early Pocahontas territory was carved).
  
  

2. Foundational Pioneer Families and Lineages

The surnames stamped onto the earliest land patents in Pocahontas County became the bedrock of the region's genealogy, establishing family farms and communities that endured for generations.

• The Price Family: John Price and his relatives were among the earliest pioneers to venture into the Greenbrier Valley, establishing homesteads and navigating the dangerous frontier conflicts of the French and Indian War. Their descendants remained deeply woven into the civic, agricultural, and journalistic fabric of the county.
  
  
• The Moore and Beard Families: Settling along the fertile bottomlands and creeks, families like the Moores and Beards cleared dense forests, built early gristmills, and formed tight-knit agrarian clusters that could muster local militias when defense was required.
  
  
• The Warfield, Burner, and Sharp Lineages: Other foundational names appeared in early survey books and parish registers, representing Scotch-Irish and English settlers moving down the Shenandoah Valley and pushing westward up the river gaps. These families intermarried, creating an interconnected kinship network across the isolated hollows and river bends.
  
  

3. Genealogical Resources and Archival Traces

Tracing these early lineages requires consulting a mix of primary land instruments and local historical compilations:

• Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants: Digitized colonial-era land grants provide the exact plat maps and surveyor notes for original acquisitions in Augusta, Botetourt, and Greenbrier counties prior to the creation of Pocahontas County in 1821.
  
  
• Early Deed Books and Will Books: Surviving county records document land transfers, dowry relinquishments, and estate divisions that map out generational property inheritance among pioneer descendants.
  
  
• Local Historiography: Compilations such as Price's History of Pocahontas County (authored by William T. Price) serve as invaluable genealogical treasures, blending oral histories, family trees, and direct transcriptions of early tax lists and muster rolls.
  
  

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During the American Revolution, the isolated settlements along the Greenbrier River and its tributaries formed a vital, heavily fortified western bulwark for Virginia. Isolated from the major eastern theaters of war, settlers in the Greenbrier watershed—spanning what are now Pocahontas, Greenbrier, and Bath counties—faced a relentless two-front challenge: supplying men to Washington’s Continental Army in the east while simultaneously defending their own homes, stockades, and cornfields from British-backed Native American raids originating from the Ohio Country.

1. The Frontier Defense Strategy: Forts and Ranger Patrols

Because traditional mass military engagements were impossible in the dense mountain wilderness, frontier defense relied on a defensive network of local stockades manned by citizen-militiamen and full-time state rangers.

• The Stockade Network: Settlers built and maintained a series of fortified blockhouses along the Greenbrier watershed, including Fort Donnally (near present-day Lewisburg), Fort Dinwiddie, and various local neighborhood refuges. These outposts served as rallying points when scouts detected war parties crossing the Ohio River and moving up the Kanawha or Greenbrier valleys.
  
  
• Ranger Companies and Scouting Outposts: The Virginia General Assembly authorized companies of active rangers to patrol the mountain gaps and ancient Indian trails (such as the Seneca Trail). These scouts patrolled deep into the forest, tracking signs and warning outlying homesteads before raids could strike unannounced.
  
  

2. Key Military Officers and Leadership

Commanding the militia along the Greenbrier frontier required experienced Indian fighters, surveyors, and leaders who understood the brutal realities of partisan forest warfare.

• Colonel Andrew Lewis and the General Command: Operating out of the broader southwestern Virginia military district, figures like Andrew Lewis coordinated regional troop levies, supplying ammunition and strategic direction to frontier posts.
  
  
• Captain John Donnally and Local Commanders: Local militia captains—such as John Donnally—bore the immediate responsibility of holding the frontier. These officers not only drilled their neighbors in marksmanship and forest tactics but also personally commanded garrisons during critical sieges.
  
  
• Militia Companies from the Greenbrier Settlements: Muster rolls from the era recorded companies drawn directly from the upper Greenbrier, Knapp's Creek, and surrounding valleys, listing pioneer surnames who answered every call-up despite the constant vulnerability of their own farms.
  
  

3. Major Campaigns and Engagements

While most Revolutionary action in the region consisted of skirmishes and defensive stands, several major events shaped the course of the war in the mountains.

• The Siege of Fort Donnally (May 1778): One of the most famous engagements in Greenbrier history occurred when a large force of Native warriors and Loyalists attacked Fort Donnally. Defended by a small garrison under Captain John Donnally and reinforced by a company under Captain Philip Hammond (who had sprinted through the night to warn the fort), the defenders held out against heavy fire until militia reinforcements arrived from Lewisburg, breaking the siege and saving the settlement from destruction.
  
  
• Offensive Expeditions into the Ohio Country: Greenbrier militiamen did not merely stay on the defensive. Under commanders like General George Rogers Clark and regional colonels, local volunteers frequently joined cross-border punitive expeditions into the Northwest Territory to destroy hostile villages and disrupt British supply lines feeding the frontier raids.