West Virginia: A History

Chapter 1: Prehistoric Times

1 Prehistoric Times A Land of Grandeur. In 1784, nearly two hundred years before a popular song referred to West Virginia as "almost Heaven," Thomas Jefferson wrote that the contrast between the "placid and delightful" Shenandoah Valleyand the "wild and tremendous" mountains st Harpers Ferry, the Potomac gatewayto the state, was worth a journey across the Atlantic Ocean.' Jefferson might have found equally awesome beauty in Hawks Nest, a crag towering 585 feet above the turbulent New River, spectacular waterfalls in the Kanawha, Little Kanawha , and Blackwater rivers, the serenity of the Canaan Valley, and numerous other natural formations in West Virginia. Geological Determinants. The striking physiography of West Virginia has sprung from geological activity. For some four hundred million years, the state lay in a long trough, or geosyncline, that extended from New Brunswick to Alabama, where the Appalachian Highlands are today. The trough was actually an arm of the ocean, which left vast deposits of salt, either as brine or rock salt, in the western parts of West Virginia and limestone, from fossils of marine animals, in the eastern sections. To the east of the trough rose a continent known as Old Appalachia. From it and other highlands, material washed down into the geosyncline, pressing it downward and forcing the surrounding rock upward. This action weakened the geosyncline and gave rise to a disturbance known as the Appalachian Revolution , in which rock strata were repeatedly folded and uplifted. Prior to the final upheaval much of West Virginia was swampland with luscious vegetation, which decomposed and formed vast beds of coal. About seventy million years ago the state and surrounding areas were part of a peneplain, worn almost flat by erosion. Uplift, nevertheless, continued, and at the beginning of the Ice Age, about one million years ago, streams and erosion had sculptured the landscape of West Virginia essentially as it is today. Continued action, however, has since deepened the valleys and sharpened the contours of the land. During the Ice Age, which ended only about ten thousand years ago, great polar ice sheets crept southward into the present Ohio Valley. The glaciers did 'Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia,ed. WilliamPeden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 19. 2 West Mrginia: A History not reach West Virginia, but they drasticallychanged its drainage system. Lake Erie did not exist before the Ice Age, and streams from the Allegheny Plateau flowed in a northwesterly direction into the Erie Basin and then intothe ancient SaintLawrenceRiver. The ice blocked the MonongahelaRiver, which followed roughly itspresent coursetowardPittsburghbeforeturningintothe ErieBasin at Beaver Falls, and impoundedits waters in the MonongahelaValley to a depthof about eleven hundred feet. The lake thus formed extended southward to the Little Kanawha Valley and overflowed through a channel approximatingmodem Fishing Creek. Waters of the lake receded with the formation of the Ohio River, which carved its valley as a marginal glacial stream. TheTeaysRiver, the principalprehistoricstreamof southernWest Virginia, followed the course of the Kanawha, its successor, westward to Scary, about fifteenmiles below Charleston, and turned into the present Teays Valley toward Huntington.'Thisancientriverbed is only about onehundred feetabovethe level of the Kanawha. The New River, atributaryof the Kanawha,defied the forces of uplift in the Appalachians and continued its westward course from North Carolinaand Virginia even afterother streamsof the Atlanticslopedirectedtheir flow toward the ocean.2 Extent and General Location. With an area of 24,282 square miles, West Virginiaranks forty-firstamongthe states. Its greatest distance fromeast to west is 260 miles and that from north to southis 327 miles. West Virginiahas a mean elevationof over 1,500feet, the highest of any stateeastof the MississippiRiver, but elevations vary from only 247 feet at Harpers Ferry to 4,860 feet at Spruce Knob in Pendleton County. West Virginia lies within two major physiographic regions of the eastern United States. 'They are the Valley and Ridge Province and the Allegheny Plateau,both part of the AppalachianHighlands.The two most strikingfeatures of the Valley and Ridge section are the Blue Ridge, to the east of the state, and the AppalachianValley, known locally as the Valley of Virginia, or the Shenandoah Valley. About two hundred miles long, the Valley of %rginia tapers in width from about sixty-five miles on the Maryland border to fifty miles on the North Carolina line. It includes all of Jefferson County and part of Berkeley County, West Virginia, but in some respects most of the upper Potomac River basin is a giant a r mof the Valley. Noted...