Following the Spirit Levelers:
Where Did the Old Towns Go

..........Well youngans, I was headed for Bethany in Harrison County, Missouri. I had went up to the head of Tuckahoe the night before to say goodby to Uncle John and Aunt Mertie and I spent my last night in West Virginia with them. That was in May of 1901 not long after the beginning of a brand new century. Mertie was a great big old woman with arms about as big around as the top of my legs. She threw those big arms around me a gave me one of her big wet kisses as I went out the door just as daylight was filtering into Tuckahoe Hollow. As I went across the back porch, she held out a paper poke to me. "Bud, I've got something for you in case you get hungry on the train. I had about five miles to cover before I would reach the station down at Tuckahoe, so I stretched out these long legs and moved down the dirt track of a road at a pretty good clip. After I had gone around the first bend in the hollow, I checked to see what was in the poke. There were four of Mertie's big biscuts. Two had thick pieces of that good pork tenderloin and the other two were slathered with her cow butter.
.........I made to the Tuckahoe Depot in plenty of time to buy my ticket to Missouri. After buying the ticket west, I idled around the depot waiting for the west bound to come through Allegheny Tunnel.
..........Not far down the track, I could see mile marker 357. At the barbershop a few days before, I read where a couple of fellows by the names of Gannett and Baldwins were on something called a spirit leveling expedition across the state measuring the elevations at various points on the railroad. They had left an aluminum tablet at the station which read 2,036 feet. I had heard my daddy say that Tuckahoe was the highest town on the Main Line of the old C&O Railway in West Virginia. When I was young, I could get on the east bound train and go to Allegheny, Virginia or to Covington. Somewhere in the tunnel, you went from West Virginia into Virginia There was a famous short story writer, Miss Montague, who was born at Tuckahoe.
......I was waiting on the platform when the daily westbound came snorting out of Allegeny Tunnel. Now this wasn't the limited. This was the train that stopped at just about every stop on the line. I swung on board as a nineteen year-old-boy heading away from home on his first great adventure. I was planning to switch trains at Gauley Bridge and ride the Kanawha and Michigan down to Mason County where I wanted to visit my Grandpa and Grandma Stone on my way to Missouri.
......... Since I was the only one that got on board at Tuckahoe, I had hardly got sat down when the train gave a lurch and we were headed down the hollow to White Sulphur. Although I had made this short many times, this time seemed special because I wasn't getting off the train with some of the rich and famous who were going to the Greenbrier. At the station a log train from the Greenbrier and Iron Mountain Railroad was waiting to enter the C&O with its load of logs for the St. Lawrence Boom and Lumber Company at Ronceverte. I looked out over White Sulphur for the last time. As i recall that time, I don't believe that town is not there anymore. Well Bub, you say that the Town’s still there? Yes it is, but it is not the same bustling town that I knew when I was a kid. I sat down there on a bench the other day and it didn't seem to me like much was going on. I thought that it looked like a town that was trying to look like something and didn't know waht that something was.

..........The train pulled out of the station, and I sort of waved goodby to the town where I had spent most of ny nineteen years. A few miles down the line, we stopped a Dickson. Its chief claim to fame is that it was the site of a famous train wreck. It seems that there was a song written about it, but you need to ask Gene Flanagan about that down at the barbershop. Dickson was across from the lower end of where the airport is now, but there’s nothing but hillside and brush now and most folks have never heard of Dickson.
..........Down the track a short distance, you pass the Hart’s Run Station. There’s nothing left of the station and very little left of the town’s identity. Once a town in its own right, now I see that when anyone from Harts Run appears in the paper, they are listed as living in Caldwell, but that's because they have a Caldwell mailing address. I've tried to strighten these newspaper people out, but it's hard to tell city people anything.
...........Bustling Past Hart’s Run and riding down the grade into and through Sunrise Gap, we entered Howard Tunnel and emerged into the sunlight at Caldwell Station where the spirit leverlers had marked the elevation at 1764 feet. My train was shunted onto the siding to wait for the east bound limited. The statuib and the yard was a beehinve of activity! On the platform, rich folks are waiting on limited. Around the depot, freight wagon drivers were jockeying for position to unload their cargo while small time sawmill owners were waiting to load their lumber at the siding. When the railroad came through, people set up these little steam powered saw mills, and there were still a lot of these in operation when I came through that day. On the freight wagons there were woolens from the Second Creek Mill and all kinds of products from the foundry at Caldwell which produced everything from pots and pans to reaper parts. All of these things and much more were being shipped out from Caldwell to places all over the country and world. Well, yes, Caldwell is still here too, but it is only a shell of its former self. Our wait for the Limited was not long. We soon heard three long blasts from a steam whistle and the snorting sleek monster came around the bend and pulled up to the platform. Fairwells were made among the ladies and the gents and those headed for Richmond filed aboard and the sleek train pulled out with a blast from the whestle and disappeared into the tunnel.
..........With the Limited past, we rumbled on down the line and soon the Greenbrier River was rolling along at my right. Now kids, before the Greenbrier division was built and the logs were hauled down the valley on flatbed cars, the river would be choked here by logs that had been floated down river by hardy lumberhacks. Three blasts from the whistle announced our approach to Whitcomb Station. After the train has rumbled across the bridge and shrieked to a stop, a number of folks descended from the train to get onboard another train, that was waiting, for towns upriver on the Greenbrier Division which reaches all the way to Cass. I had always wanted to ride the train to Cass, but I never did. I had read in the newspaper that, at Whitcomb, the elevation had been marked at an even 1700 feet which was measured on top of the rail in front of the station. I looked, when I rode in the other day on the AMTRAC, and there's nothing left there but the bridge. Now, as I said, I was nineteen then, and, now, I'm a little past 102 and a half it seems like, in these past eithty-three years, that the whole cotton picken world is turned upside down.

..........As we approached East Ronceverte, I pushed my window down a little more and got ready to yell and wave out of the window. My cousin Jimmy Burdette worked at Brown’s Mill where they made wagon parts and harness, and I hoped that I would see him and yell goodby. But, as luck would have it, he was no where to be seen. Going into Ronceverte, I was a little down, because Ol Jim was as close to a brother as he could get. We spent a lot of times on the creek and in the woods together, and I had not been able to say goodby. Uncle Simon Peter King had offered me a job in Missouri and I had had to make my mind in a hurry. I never saw ol Jim again. Some years later I received a letter from his mom. He had drowned when the Model-t delivery truck he was driving washed downstream when he had tried to ford the Greenbrier when the water was too high.
Now, Roncerverte was a booming place what with the Saint Lawrence Boom and Lumber Company sawing and shipping the lion's share of the lumber in the Valley. They were the largest outfit by far. This was still the jumping off point for those seeking work in the woods. You had to be careful, because there were always those who preyed on other folks. Some would even kill you for your payday. There had been more than one unsuspecting young feller who had been left robbed and dead in a ditch. We lingered long enough in Ronceverte to take on more west bound passengers and some express items and headed on down the river. I perked up. This was new territory for me. Never in my ninteen years had I been past Ronceverte. ..........With the river now on my left, we swayed back and forth and soon we were stopping again to let an old lady off of the train who had gotten on at Ronververte. The sign on the station said, "Rockland." With the old lady and her shopping bag off of the train and out of the way, we continued and, as I looked ahead, I saw a big black hole in the hillside. I knew that that must be Second Creek Tunnel. Before we entered the tunnel, I saw that the Greenbrier made a sharp turn toward the south. For awhile we traveled in darkness, but then we burst out into brightness once more and soon pulled into a station where the sign said, "Fort Spring." From the car where I was riding, there descended a number of well-dressed folks. From what I had heard my daddy say, I knew that they were going to get on that waiting stage which would take them up the winding hill road and on to the spa at Salt Sulphur Springs. That road was one of the main roads when I was a kid.
..........After the spa guests disembarked, we rode into another tunnel and then on down the Greenbrier which had rejoined us when we had emerged from the tunnel except that I had neglected to mention that we had crossed it again and now it was back on my right. A few miles down the track, we passed by Frazer Station which was a few miles downstream from Snowflake. Then we passed Half Way Station which, not surprisingly, was half way between Fort Spring and Alderson. We were just approaching Alderson when the conductor came thorough and said that there was some kind of trouble between Alderson and Hinton and that we would be delayed for awhile in Alderson. He said that we could get off and strectch our legs and get something to eat if we wished, but, he said, "You folks be ready to get back onboard when you here the whistle. I disembarked and wandered over the to the Merchant Grocery Company Building where I found that the spirit levelers had embedded an aluminum plate stamped “1534.” I done some quick "head figuring" and calulated that I had rode the train about 31 miles and had dropped 531 feet in elevation. I settled down on a bench in front of grocery store and, while I mucnched on biscuit and pork tenderloin, watched dthe busy folks go by on the board sidewalks of the lively little town.

To Be continued