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presents

The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, WV /

CR 9

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Highway	Names	Start	Terminus	Length (km)
CR 9	Glen Lyn Rd., Red Sulphur Turnpike, Old Dairy Rd., Southern Hollow Rd., Hatcher Rd., Elgood Mountain Rd.	WV 20 (State St.), Athens	Giles County, Virginia state line, Glen Lyn	24

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Overview

County Route 9 is a long and meandering road connecting the town of Athens to Glen Lyn, Virginia. It's really a composite of different roads stitched together, with distinct names, multiple changes in direction, and great variation in surface quality...not exactly a cohesive highway.

The first segment of CR 9 consists of Athens' east-west thoroughfare, Vermillion Street, and a descent into the Laurel Creek valley east of town. This segment had its origins in the nineteenth-century Red Sulphur Turnpike. It also happens to be the best-improved portion of the road, with two full lanes and a centre line.

At Laurel Creek, the highway splits. The improved road continues ahead as CR 18, while CR 9 takes a sharp deviation south along Old Dairy Road. This continues for approximately 4 kilometres.

After an ascent to a crossroads west of Elgood, CR 9 descends through the Payne Branch valley on Southern Hollow Road...only to ascend back to Elgood again, 5 kilometres from where it started. This segment is gravel-surfaced and is far from being the most direct or level link between these two points, making its inclusion in the route something of a mystery.

After that, CR 9 bears eastward 4 kilometres through Elgood to Chestnut Knob...then takes yet another turn off the beaten path with a southward deviation onto Elgood Mountain Road. The majority of this road is paved, with a gradual 5.6-kilometre descent into the Adair Run valley...and plenty of hairpin turns.

The last three kilometres devolve into complete chaos. Traffic from CR 9 is funnelled over CR 9/5 to the state line. Meanwhile, the actual whole-numbered road follows a mis-signed turn onto Pleasant Hill Road, followed by an unsigned turn onto gravel, followed by an unimproved portion that's probably impassable on anything other than a dirt bike. Gravel eventually resumes, and the road follows Adair Run to the Virginia state line where it continues as SR 650 to a terminus at the New River.

History

CR 9 was commissioned in 1933, and routed primarily upon pre-existing infrastructure from the late nineteenth century. The Southern Hollow Road and "complete chaos" segments, however, do not appear on any pre-1930s topographic map...making it plausible that they were new construction built expressly for CR 9. In any case, the convoluted course of this highway has been unchanged since its inception.

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CR 9 begins here, at Athens' sole traffic light. In the 1980s and 1990s, signs posted at the intersection designated the highway as "Glen Lyn Road." (Photo by the author, 2006.)

Although West Virginia's county highway system didn't exist yet when this picture was taken in the teens, it's representative of the types of conditions that would have abounded in CR 9's early years. This picture was taken in Athens facing west at Cooper Street; several of the structures still survive today. (Photo postcard.)

One of the mysteries of CR 9's routing is why the highway follows a switchback-laden gravel path in and out of the Payne Branch valley instead of following the more direct, level course to Elgood atop the adjacent ridge. The circa-1935 WV SRC map reveals a possible answer: This road had better grading and surfacing than other nearby roads in the timeframe when the county system first came into effect.

The other big mystery of CR 9 revolves around the last three kilometres of the route, and why the highway number deviates away from the prevailing connecting vehicular road (CR 9/5).

Here, though, there are no answers in old maps. Topos reveal that CR 9/5 was always the prevailing road, even as far back as the 1890s...and until the 1930s, the last segment of CR 9 didn't even exist on the map. Nor did CR 9 have a surfacing advantage over 9/5: 1930s SRC maps show that both roads were ungraded dirt. One map shows a school along the route, yet another map shows the school in a different place. So we may never know...

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Fractional spur roads

Road	Names	Start	Terminus	Length (km)	Notes
9/1	Alvis Rd.	CR 24 east of Athens	dead end (originally terminated at CR 24/2)	4	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east. Small portion of west end was originally CR 24/2. East end does not actually touch CR 9.
9/2	Pisgah Rd.	CR 9 east of Athens	CR 9/8 west of Elgood	2	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east.
9/3	Little Island Creek Rd.	CR 9, Elgood	CR 20/1 near Summers County line	8	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east.
9/4	Clemons Rd.	CR 9 near Chestnut Knob	Giles County, Virginia state line north of Glen Lyn	3	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east.
9/5	Elgood Mountain Rd.	CR 9 west of Glen Lyn	Giles County, Virginia state line, Glen Lyn	insignificant	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east.
9/6	Adairs Run Rd.	CR 9 west of Glen Lyn	CR 28/3 north of Willowton	2	Original 1930s road with numbers assigned from west to east. Originally extended further west; extremity later renumbered as an extension of CR 28/3.
9/7	Beckett Hill Rd.	CR 9, Athens	dead end	insignificant	Added by 1945.
9/8	Elgood Rd.	CR 9 near Elgood	CR 18, Pettry	6	Originally CR 20.
9/9	Thompson Cemetery Rd.	CR 9 near Chestnut Knob	dead end	2
9/10	Witherspoon Dr.	CR 9, Athens	dead end	insignificant

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