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presents

The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, WV /

CR 120

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Highway	Start	Terminus	Length (km)
CR 120	Tazewell County, Virginia state line west of Bramwell	US 52, Bramwell	5

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Overview

County Route 120 is a road serving the community of Bramwell in western Mercer County.

The road is built to primary highway standards with two full lanes and a centre line. Interestingly, it's also signed to "primary" standards with freestanding black-and-white route markers...the only secondary highway in Mercer County to have this status. Its high number is an anomaly, derived from its history as an extension of WV 20. In Virginia, the route continues towards Pocahontas as SR 644.

History

The infrastructure that CR 120 is routed upon dates back to the late nineteenth century. It's gone through multiple incarnations as a highway, however, bearing three numbers in succession since 1933.

The highway's course was originally part of CR 15, which still exists downstream.

In the early 1940s, WV 44 was redesignated WV 20 and extended westward to the Virginia border. Thus, CR 15 was promoted to a primary highway and replaced by WV 20 west of its intersection with US 52 in Bramwell.

CR 120 finally came about in or shortly before 1980, when WVDH elected to truncate WV 20 to Bluewell, eliminate its concurrency with US 52, and assign the Bramwell portion of the route a new (but obviously derivative) number. The road also reverted to secondary status at this time, possibly to reflect lower maintenance expenditures.

In 1991, a new bridge was constructed for US 52 across the Bluestone River. This wound up being the final adjustment for this highway, since the transition point between CR 120 and CR 15 was moved 200 metres east and a stub of former US 52 was added to CR 120, functioning as an access ramp for the latter road.

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Photos by the author, 2013:

Bramwell was the "Home of the Millionaires:" The place where the wealthy robber barons of West Virginia's early 20th century coal industry resided and commissioned impressive works of residential architecture for themselves built on the backs (and lungs) of human lives. Millionaires are also a fickle bunch who abandoned the town that they helped create: Bramwell's population started shrinking as early as the 1920s, and the town's architectural development became stopped in time.

CR 120 traverses Bramwell's block-long downtown core, then takes a U-turn to head upstream along the south bank of the Bluestone River. It enters Virginia 4 kilometres from this point.

Signs for CR 120 and US 52 at the corner of Main and Bloch in downtown Bramwell.

This road is an anomaly in many ways. It's signed with full-size black-and-white route markers equivalent to the standard for state highways; not the one-piece guide signs that West Virginia county roads usually receive. It's built like a state highway, with edge and centre-line striping...not a one-lane slab of asphalt with gravel shoulders like so many county highways typically are. It also has a three-digit number (obviously selected for its similarity to "20") instead of the low numbers and fractional numbers that county highways typically receive. In other words: It might as well still be WV 20.

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Fractional spur roads

Road	Names	Start	Terminus	Length (km)	Notes
120/1	Jones Hill Rd., Hunk Hollow Rd.	CR 120, Bramwell	US 52 north of Bramwell	2
120/2	Peeled Chestnut Rd.	CR 120 near Virginia state line	Tazewell County, Virginia state line	insignificant	Road straddles state line, and continues as VA SR 663.
120/3	(unknown)
120/4	Bloch St. Extension	CR 120, Bramwell	dead end	insignificant
120/5	Spicer St.	CR 120, Bramwell	dead end	insignificant
120/6	Rose St.	CR 120 (Bloch Rd.), Bramwell	CR 20/79 (S. River St.), Bramwell	insignificant

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