Charleston Gazette
23 November 2008
By Rick Steelhammer, Staff writer
"Coal, Steamboats, Timber and Trains: The Industrial History of St. Albans, West Virginia, and the Coal River Valley 1850-1925"
By Bill Dean. 250 pages.
Pictorial Histories Publishing Co. Inc., Charleston.
Decades before locks and dams were built on the Ohio or Kanawha rivers, steamboats and barges were using an eight-lock navigation system on the Coal River to carry cannel coal from mines in Boone County to the Coal's confluence with the Kanawha.
In 1860, when nearly 600,000 bushels of coal were barged down the 35-mile stretch of the Coal between Peytona and St. Albans, the only other operational lock and dam system to be found west of the Alleghenies was in Pennsylvania, along the lower reaches of the Monongahela River. A small navigation system built on the Guyandotte River during that period quickly proved to be a failure.
"It operated from 1859 to 1881, with a break for the Civil War," said Bill Dean of St. Albans, a West Virginia University Institute of Technology history professor, who details the Coal River navigation system in his new book "Coal, Steamboats, Timber and Trains: The Industrial History of St. Albans, West Virginia, and the Coal River Valley 1850-1925."
In addition to linking Peytona to St. Albans, the navigation system included one lock on the Little Coal River, opening another five river miles to steamboats and barges.
"In the 1840s, before the lock and dam system was built, people built rafts with poplar wood at Peytona to float cannel coal down the Coal River to the Kanawha and beyond," said Dean. "When they got to their destination, they took the barges apart and sold the wood as construction material."
Since such rafts could only navigate the Coal River during periods of high water, "it wasn't the most efficient way for the coal operators to move their coal," Dean said.
So local residents began thinking about how to build a system that would accommodate large barges propelled by steam-powered riverboats.
The Coal River Navigation Company was formed to raise the $257,000 needed to build and operate the system. Among its early leaders was William Rosencrans, a former West Point engineering professor who went on to serve as a Union Army general during the Civil War. The man Rosencrans recommended as his replacement as president of the new company was his good friend, Charleston lawyer Thomas Broun, who would soon become a Confederate major and sell Robert E. Lee his famous steed Traveler.
According to Dean's history, the steamboat Clifton and its tow of 10 empty flatboats made the first journey up the Coal River to Peytona in March of 1859, gaining 97 feet in altitude on the 35-mile trip. Not long after that, the new lock and dam system was operating 24 hours a day, with night-going steamboats making use of headlamps fashioned from reflector panels and burning pine knots.
While concrete and steel are the primary components in 21st century inland navigation systems, the Coal River system made use of dams and lock chambers constructed of hewn log cribs. Lock chambers were 125 feet long and 25 feet wide - big enough to accommodate one large barge or one small steamboat at a time.
Vessels using the system generally were made up of a single steamboat with a tow of two barges, which passed through the lock chambers one at a time.
"I've never been able to find out just how long it took the steamboats and their tows to travel from St. Albans to Peytona," Dean said. "But they ran around the clock. Cannel coal was very much in demand. Oil refined from it was used in lamps, and cannel coal oil was the interim home lighting oil source between whale oil and oil from petroleum."
Much of the cannel coal mined in Boone County was used in Cincinnati, but it was also shipped to markets in New Orleans, New York and Boston.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, cannel coal production came to a complete standstill because of military and political considerations. With the closing of the mines, the river system also shut down for the duration of the war.
At war's end, after a brief period of repairs caused by flooding and raids from both armies, the system reopened. But the eventual arrival of the railroad signaled the end of the Coal River Navigation Company.
"Industrial development in the Coal River area followed a different pattern than most of the rest of the state," said Dean. "Usually, the land was clear cut of timber first, from about 1880 to 1920, then bituminous coal mining took place. Here, cannel coal mining took place first, followed by timbering, then bituminous coal mining."
After the lock and dam system closed in 1881, the river was used primarily to float newly cut logs to downriver sawmills. Log and stone cribs were built to anchor boom cables used to contain the timber, which was sent downstream during periods of high water.
"The booms could hold about 50,000 logs," said Dean. The ends of the logs were stamped with the brands of the St. Albans area sawmills for which they were destined.
While the river's days as a highway for natural resources are long gone, many reminders of the Coal River's former role are still visible.
"If you know where to look, there's still quite a lot to see," said Dean. His book contains numerous photos of lock sites log boom cribs, both in their heyday and as they look now.
The St. Albans native said he has always been interested in the Coal River and his hometown's past, but credits the late Sam Nurnberger and his keen interest in local history with prompting him to write about it.
"When I was a kid, people appreciated the Coal River," he said. "If you lived in St. Albans, you knew that it had great beaches and great swimming. But when they started washing the coal upstream, people here didn't want to put up with all the coal dust that it produced, and they started to lose interest in the river."
Dean credits the Coal River Group with promoting a resurgence of interest in the stream, which is rebounding thanks to pollution controls.
"People are getting back to boating on it, this time for recreation," he said. "I'm very optimistic about the future of the river."
Dean's book, which also traces the industrial development of St. Albans, is available at Tamarack, at McGhee & Co. office supply on Kanawha Terrace in St. Albans, and at the Curiosity Shop in Olde Main Plaza in St. Albans.