Register for a Free Trip
West Virginia Stories
Thurmond, West Virginia
|
Captain Thurmond, Late in Life
|
After the Civil War, a former Confederate Ranger Captain named William Dabney Thurmond was commissioned to survey a site on the north bank of the New River, through which ran the recently completed Chesapeake & Ohio railroad. With funds being scarce, he agreed to accept 73 acres of land along the railroad as payment. As a lifelong resident of the area, Capt. Thurmond knew that, across the river, lay the Arbuckle and Dunloup Creek valleys, one of the few gateways that would connect to the new railway. Any goods to be shipped out on the C & O would have to pass through his property. Moreover, the steam trains of the day would need coaling and watering sites in the immediate vicinity and the C & O had just built a new train station at Thurmond's site in 1884. Therefore, Capt. Thurmond decided to build a town to take advantage of this developing opportunity.
|
As Capt. Thurmond was overseeing the birth of his namesake town, another entrepreneur was developing his own holdings on the opposite side of the New River. Thomas McKell, a man of means from Ohio, was preparing to tap the rich Sewall seam of smokeless coal in the area of Glen Jean, about six miles from Thurmond. The first shipment of coal from McKell's rich Dun-Loup fields arrived in Thurmond via McKell's new railroad spur on November 7, 1893. Within a very short time, more mines had opened along McKell's rail line and it had become one of the most profitable sections of railroad in the country. The coal boom had arrived in West Virginia. With at least 27 different mining operations shipping coal through Thurmond, the town began to take on a character that was very different from its founder's vision.
|
William Dabney Thurmond was a straightlaced, pious Baptist...intolerant of human frailty. He was determined that his town be a model of moral purity. Unfortunately for the high-minded Thurmond, the prosperity of the coalfields brought with it very vices that the good Captain eschewed with such determination. While thriving on the respectable proceeds of the great coal boom, Thurmond became known more for the riotous and licentious living that went on across the river...in the town of Southside. Because men seeking the earthly pleasures of Southside actually got off the train at Thurmond (and walked across the bridge over the New River, it was Thurmond, not its high-living neighbor, that acquired the nickname: "The Dodge City of the East."
Southside (also known as Southside Junction, or Ballyhack) was incorporated into the nearby town of Glen Jean...run by Captain Thurmond's hated rival, Thomas McKell, a man who saw no moral inhibitions to profiting from the moral weaknesses of the men in the coalfields. McKell allowed bars, gambling and prostitution to flourish in Southside (as well as the rest of his empire) and the place quickly became known as the place to go for fun and good times in the New River valley. Until his dying day, the puritanical Captain Thurmond was tormented by his clean-living town being associated with the debauchery going on across the river.
|
|
A quote attributed to "Speck" Davis, a bartender at the notorious Black Hawk Saloon in Southside sums up life on the other side of the tracks from Thurmond, "A man didn't dare walk along the railroad tracks after dark in those days. ...it was nothing in those days to walk along (Dun) Loop Creek branch line and see three of four dead men lying beside the tracks." Add to this assessment the story of the mayor of Glen Jean, Leo Shaffer, whose authority extended from Glen Jean down to and including the left bank of the New river opposite Thurmond.
|
Thomas Gaylord McKell
|
The illustrious Mayor Shaffer also served as the town coroner and, in this capacity, was called to investigate a body that was found along the river. The deceased proved to be a man of foreign birth and was found to be carrying $25 in cash along with a pistol...the latter being not at all uncommon at the time. Mayor Shaffer posthumously fined the man $25 for carrying a gun...and then collected the fine from the deceased's pocket. He then confiscated the gun and departed for Glen Jean to notify the county authorities of their duty to bury the man...which they did, at taxpayers' expense, by digging a hole alongside the river and unceremoniously dumping the poor soul in.
For Captain Thurmond, insult was added to perceived injury when McKell opened the Dunglen Hotel in Southside in 1901. This magnificent three-story building boasted over 100 rooms and quickly overwhelmed the modest Hotel Thurmond, built by the Captain several years previously. With the area's most upscale accommodations, plenty of free-flowing booze, non-stop card playing, and the easy accessibility to sporting ladies, the Dunglen quickly became the business and social center of the New River coalfields. Gambling at the Dunglen was not for the underfunded or weak of spirit. One anonymous player later recalled: "Prominent men came from everywhere to gamble. I have seen as much as $50,000 on the table at one time. It was nothing to see $5,000 change hands in a single game of poker. I saw a fellow win $6,000 at roulette in one night." All this was at a time when the average worker earned less than $500 a year!
|
|
|
The Dunglen
Despite the motive and the witnesses, a local jury acquitted her. However, less than a month later, Ms. Widener was brought up on charges of possession of untaxed liquor (it was during Prohibition) and Judge G. W. McClintic took that opportunity to throw the book at the woman, remarking during sentencing that he could not see how an honest jury could have aquitted her of burning the Dunglen.
The Guiness Book of World Records still records the Dunglen as the site of the world's longest-running continuous poker game, over fourteen years, which ended when the Dunglen burned to the ground on July 22,1930. Two men were later charged with arson in connection with the fire. Both of the accused copped a plea and said that they were paid by Ms. Widener to torch her competitor's establishment. |
Captain Thurmond's death in 1910 at age 89 coincided with the town's peak of prosperity. Events were about to unfold that set Thurmond into a gradual, but inevitable decline. As the original mines in the New River Gorge began to play out, coal production began to shift away from the gorge itself toward the plateau and tributaries to the west. New railroads were opened and the C & O lost its monopoly on rail service. In 1909, the Virginian Railroad opened a connection with Fayetteville and, a year later, the Kanawha, Glen Jean & Eastern (built by McKell's son William) connected the rich DunLoup fields to the new line. With this, Thurmond's position as the hub of shipping activity in the area began to erode.
Although the Captain would have applauded it, the coming of Prohibition to West Virginia in 1914 removed a large part of the town's allure. But the final blow was the coming of the automobile and the decent roads it demanded. Thurmond got its first road to the outside world in 1917 when a twisting road was built down Dunloup creek and connected Thurmond and Glen Jean. Mine operators were now able to truck coal to railheads other than the C & O at Thurmond. Although the town remained strong for several decades, the seeds of its eventual demise were sown. A further blow was the disastrous fire in 1922 that destroyed most of the businesses on the southside.
|
|
The decline accelerated with the Depression in the 1930's. The decade began with the burning of the Dunglen, which finished off Southside. The National Bank of Thurmond failed in 1931. The town's major industry, the Armour meat-packing plant, closed the following year. Thurmond's remaining bank left town in 1935. By the end of the decade, the C & O railroad was the town's only remaining business.
|
 The railroad kept Thurmond alive until the coming of diesel power eliminated the need for a coaling and watering station in the gorge. By 1960, the C & O was fully diesel-powered and Thurmond was done for.
Thurmond got a brief reprieve in the late 1960's when young Jon Dragan arrived to begin taking passengers down the New Rivers infamous rapids in rubber rafts. Dragan based his new company on the grounds of the old Dunglen Hotel and, for several years, the old town was home to adventurers out to ride the river. The reprieve was short-lived, however, as Jon Dragan's raft company moved to more convenient headquarters on Rt. 19.
In 1986, Thurmond became the setting for a feature movie based on the Coalfield Wars of the 1920's. The movie, and it's a good one, was called "Matewan." Matewan is a real town in western West Virginia that was the scene of the "Battle of Matewan" in 1920. Since that town has avoided the fate of Thurmond and survived into the present, Thurmond was chosen as a setting since it had changed little since the 1920's. Several of the town's structures that were seen in the movie can still be seen today.
With the creation of the New River Gorge National River Park in the late 1970's, Thurmond has become the focus of a modest historical preservation effort. The old depot was rehabilitated and now serves as a Park Service Visitor Center and museum. Although fire, age and neglect have destroyed most of the structures, Thurmond can still be recognized as the bustling railroad town it once was. Visitors to the New River Gorge can best appreciate the area's fascinating history by paying a visit to the town that started it all and still best reflects its character...the town of Thurmond, West Virginia.
|
|
|
|
