Greenbrier County, West Virginia - 160th Anniversary Booklet - Part 28 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. *********************************************************************** Historical Booklet - Greenbrier County 160th Anniversary - 1778-1938 Published 1938 Transcribed by Lori Samples THE BROKEN TRAILS Throughout the centuries, poets have sung of the romance of the open road. Greenbrier County has 130 miles of primary routes in addition to many other good roads, but things were quite different in the long ago days when the early settlers ventured west of the Alleghenies. These pioneers had only Indian trails. Near Marlinton today one may walk along such a well-defined woodland trail. But one broad trail did lead from the waters of the headwaters of the James River westward. Bison first traveled the track which later became known as the Buffalo trail. Indians used it, undoubtedly, in their travels through this section on war expeditions and hunting parties. No one knows what white man first walked this trail. It may have been an unknown hunter who traveled far territories. Possibly it was Sewell, who first used it, when he left Jacob Marlin on the hunt for breathing room - forty miles westward. At any rate, John and Andrew Lewis found this Buffalo Trail. Others followed. In 1774, Mathew Arbuckle, famous hunter and scout, led General Andrew Lewis and his army to Point Pleasant, blazing the way. After that, "the Lewis Trail" was traveled by pack horses, traders, hunters and soldiers. Elder John Alderson and Andrew Lewis found this Buffalo Trail. Others followed. In 1774, Mathew Arbuckle, famous hunter and scout, led General Andrew Lewis and his army to Point Pleasant, blazing the way. After that, "The Lewis Trail" was traveled by pack horses, traders, hunters and soldiers. Elder John Alderson drove the first wagon over the Alleghenies before 1781. It took him 18 months to get from Botetourt to the site of his church in Alderson. In 1781, after peace with the British was made, people in Greenbrier tried to get the General Assembly to arrange for the building of a road from Warm Springs. Unsuccessful at first, a visit to the county by Col. Thomas Adams resulted in full power being allowed to the court "to levy money for the purpose aforesaid, and by this means a wagon road was opened from the Court House to the Warm Springs...which made the way for the same to Sweet Springs." In the "Memorandum" entered in the first deed book of Greenbrier County by Col. John Stuart, on July 15, 1798, there is the following item covering road building in the county: "The paper money emitted for maintaining our war against the British became totally depreciated and there was not a sufficient quantity of the specie in circulation to enable the people to pay the revenue tax assessed upon the citizens of this county; wherefore, we fellin arrears to the public for four years. But the assembly again taking our remote situation under consideration generously granted the sum of five thousand pounds of our said arrers to be applied to the purpose of opening a road from Lewisburg to the Kanawha River. The people grateful for such indulgence, willingly embraced the opportunity of such an offer, and every person liable for arrears of tax, agreed to perform labor equivalent on the road. and the people being formed into districts, with each a superintendent, the road was completed in the space of two months, in the year 1786, and thus was a communication by wagons to the navigable waters of the Kanawha first effected - and which will probably be found the "nighest" and best conveyance from the eastern to the western country that will ever be known." These early road builders put to shame our modern high-pressure construction units! However, truth to tell, their work was scarcely as lasting. The new Lewis Trail went to the mouth of Kelly's Creek, to the "Boat Yards." Later, the State Road was built down the river. By 1804 it was possible to ride all the way to Kentucky in conveyances graphically called "shake-guts." Dirt roads didn't stand up long under heavy travel. Soon it was necessary to do something about the road to the west, and the James River and Kanawha Turnpike Company was formed in Richmond. By 1824 a good highway reached to Kanawha Falls. By 1827, there was weekly stage service between Charleston and Lewisburg. soon weekly stages ran into Kentucky, steamboat passengers continued their journeys east by the new road, three trips a week were scheduled, and soon "cannon ball" coaches, with six strong horses, made daily trips. The pony express rider had carried mail since about 1801. In 1831, the stage lines started giving mail service, and a picturesque figure faded out of the picture. Carriages of the wealthy, peddlars, drovers with cattle, shady characters in search of quick money, freight wagons (Conestogas), all these filled the road, day and night. Trains and steamboat travel ate into the popularity of the road. The Civil War turned it into a pathway of strife. The railroad was completed to the Ohio in 1873. It was not until 1926 that the new Midland Trail was officially opened to the public. Today it is a main thoroughfare stretching from Virginia on the east to Ohio on the west.. The Seneca Trail runs from the north to the south boundary of the state, through the trough-like valleys on the eastern border - Cheat, Greenbrier, and Bluestone. It takes its name from the warpath of the Seneca Indians as formed after the treaty of Albany, 1722, had confirmed the act of the Virginia House of Burgesses making the Allegheny Mountains the division line between lands given over to the Indians and lands that could be settled by the white people. The Seneca's established a well traveled road. Most powerful of the six nations, they traveled the trail from the St. Lawrence to the northern part of Georgia, and as it followed their eastern border in West Virginia they were at all times informed of the acts of the bold white settlers in breaking the agreement to remain on the east side of the divide. The old warpath follows the general line of the new highway. Sometimes it is on one side, sometimes on the other. In many places the two roads are identical. The white long hunters - those who came across the mountains to stay and hunt for months, making it their business, as distinguished from those who ventured into the forbidden lands for just a week or so - found plenty of game in the country now traversed by the Seneca and Midland Trails. NEXT: AFTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY YEARS