A Brief History of the New River Gorge
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| There is evidence that prehistoric man visited the New River Gorge as far back as 15,000 years ago. There is no evidence, however, that significant groups of Native Americans ever lived in the Gorge. Several tribal groups used this entire area of the Appalachians as a hunting ground, but none felt strong enough to claim and defend it as tribal territory. |
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Tribes living in the north, notably the six tribes of the Iroquois League, hunted the area extensively, as did the Cherokee and other members of the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the south. The Shawnees, from the Ohio territory, hunted here extensively and, as competing tribes were suppressed by the early white colonists, the Shawnee became the dominant Native Americans in the area.
Contact between these groups, White and Indian alike, frequently resulted in conflict and retaliatory warfare. In particular, the Shawnee bitterly disputed the early white settlers who were taking up permanent residence in what the indians regarded as their traditional hunting grounds.
Until the 18th century, there was very little permanent settlement by whites, only sporadic visits by small groups of explorers and surveyors. The New River valley held particular interest to these intrepid types as they thought it might be the eagerly-sought "northwest passage" to the Pacific. This is understandable since the New was a large river and it ran generally from south to north, unlike all the other eastern rivers they'd seen which ran generally southeasterly from the Appalachians to the Atlantic coast. Lacking maps of the interior of North America, the earliest settlers assumed that the rich fur trapping lands of the Pacific Northwest lay just beyond the Appalachians.
The earliest maps drawn by these first explorers labeled the newly discovered waterway "A Newe River." It was never formally named, so later settlers simply referred to it as the "New River." This turned out to be somewhat ironic when it was later determined that the "new" river was actually one of the world's oldest.
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In the late 1700's, a group of prominent Virginians, including George Washington and John Marshall, tried to incorporate the New into a major transportation artery to the Northwest Territory (Ohio and Indiana). They proposed connecting the headwaters of the New and the James river by means of a barge canal. If completed, this project would have created a water route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequent explorations, however, revealed the New to be far too rugged to ever be tamed for navigation...and the project was abandoned. It was not until the coming of the railroad, late in the 19th century, that the area would be opened up to commercial exploitation and large-scale settlement.
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By far the biggest event in the early history of the gorge was the completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad in 1873. The line brought access to the rich resources of the gorge...notably coal and timber. Beginning in 1876, mining and logging towns began to spring up throughout the gorge. By the turn of the century, there were some 20 mining towns lining the 14-mile length of the gorge between Thurmond and Fayette Station. |
| During the coal boom, from the 1880's to the 1930's, as many as 25,000 people lived here. The larger towns, such as Sewell and Thurmond, had populations of over 1,000, though most of the towns were smaller. Each town was supported by one or more mines and was built and owned by the company that operated the mines |
Being isolated, the towns had to be self-sufficient. The company that owned the town provided its residents with everything they needed to live...and charged them for it. This was the era of the infamous "company store." Since the towns were isolated and connected only by the railroad (the first automobile road wasn't built into the gorge until 1917), residents were forced to buy everything they needed at the company store...often, but not always, at outrageous prices.
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Contrary to popular belief, miners were paid in cash as well as "script," the tender provided by the company and spendable only in the company store. Script was loaned to miners as a cash advance between paydays (which were usually every two weeks). Advances of script were then deducted from the miner's next paycheck. It was not uncommon for the poorly-paid miners to borrow more script than their next paycheck would cover. These unfortunates quickly got so far behind that it was all but impossible for them to ever catch up. They were said to "owe their soul to the company store."
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Life in the mines was rough. Conditions and mine safety varied considerably among companies. Some places were the "hell holes" of legend while others were quite progressive (for the times) and spent the money to provide a relatively safe working environment. In the early decades of the 20th century, low pay and poor working conditions led to the growth of the union movement. Company resistance to the effort to organize the miners often took rather brutal forms. The infamous "detectives," hired as private security police by the operators, were often little more than armed thugs, hired to put down attempts at organization. Conflicts were numerous...and often bloody. Labor strife continued through the 1930's, with the depression adding fuel to the fires of unrest. With the Roosevelt administration's sympathy for the labor movement and the national mobilization for World War II, the strife lessened and the union movement became grudgingly accepted. Ironically, with a lessening demand for coal added to the increased cost of a unionized labor force, the deep-mine operations became much less profitable and began to close.
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As the mines closed, so did the towns they supported. One by one, as the mines played out, the towns shriveled and died. Most of the residents moved off in search of gainful employment and nature began to reclaim the land. Now, a half-century later, little remains of these once bustling towns. Occasionally, their ghostly remains can still be glimpsed from the river, a reminder of a lost era of American history.
Following the demise of the mining towns, not much happened in the gorge until the beginning of the whitewater rafting industry in the early 1970's. From its humble beginning with war-surplus boats and intrepid paddlers, rafting has grown to the multi-million dollar recreation business that we see today. In 1978, Congress authorized the creation of the New River Gorge National River Park...beginning the modern era of recreation in the gorge. Instead of steam trains and smoking coke ovens, the gorge is now a place of natural beauty and recreation...quite a change.
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