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presents

The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, WV /

Raleigh & Pocahontas Lumber Railway

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The Bluestone Lumber Company wasn't alone in laying iron track through the farthest reaches of Mercer County's forested areas. Accompanied in their league was the Raleigh & Pocahontas Railway, founded in 1903 in the quest of serving mines and lumber operations through the Beaver Creek watershed of southern Raleigh County.

The Raleigh & Pocahontas started at an interface point with the C&O Railway in Beaver, south of Beckley. From there the railway snaked its way south, terminating west of Cool Ridge at roughly 37.6519, -81.1294 in its original configuration. By 1932, an extension was built. The track entered Mercer County at Flat Top, and bore southwest to serve the Blue Jay Lumber Company's massive land holdings in the Camp Creek area.

In a tale repeated time before and time again, the Blue Jay lumber camp was an unsustainable operation. The land was overlogged...and the onset of the chestnut blight didn't help matters. So the camp closed, and the railway that served it ceased to operate. In 1947, the entire 4775-acre property was transferred to the State of West Virginia. Portions of the Raleigh & Pocahontas grade were converted to park roads, and Camp Creek State Forest opened to visitors in the summer of 1953.

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Points of interest

Flat Top

A: Flat Top is a community adjacent to Huff Knob on the Raleigh County-Mercer County line. The Raleigh & Pocahontas Railway passed in adjacence; however, it's doubtful that the company ever operated a station here or had any reason to.

Traces of the abandoned rail line are still visible on the newer map (blue arrows) through a series of cuts, an embankment, and a primitive trail.

Descent

B: The most interesting feature of the railway may have been its descent into the Camp Creek canyon. From the top of Sams Ridge, trains worked their way downhill through an extensive series of switchbacks to the creek banks an estimated 260 metres below. The short stub tracks would have limited the length of trains capable of traversing the track, and the sharp-radius turns would have all but required a narrow gauge to be employed. At the confluence of Cub Branch and Camp Creek, a wye was in place allowing trains to turn around. Coaxing a loaded train up this incline would have doubtless been a white-knuckle affair!

Following the 1940s abandonment of the track, its descent was repurposed as a primitive vehicular road; switchbacks and all. Surprisingly, the road is shown on the current Camp Creek State Park and Forest map. It falls outside the park borders, however. It is also absent from WVDOT maps and lacks a county road designation, suggesting that it's under private control.

Camp Creek

C: South of the wye, the rail line hugged the bank of Camp Creek and proceeded downstream for approximately 7 kilometres, occasionally switching from one side of the river to the other and occasionally switching to a double track. The entirety of this segment now serves as a park road.

The main buildings of the lumber camp were located at the confluence of Camp Creek with Mash Fork, adjacent to the current Camp Creek State Park offices. The rail line then deviated from Camp Creek, following Mash Fork west.

Today, this site forms the main entrance of Camp Creek State Park & Forest. A cenotaph stands topped with a subtle reminder of railways past: A bell belonging to one of the very Shay steam locomotives used by the lumber company in this area decades ago.

D: One kilometre west of the confluence (beyond a current campground site and waterfall), a branch of the line split off to the south along Marsh Fork. (Yes: Marsh Fork is a tributary of Mash Fork, and that's not a typo. Score one for confusion!)

It then disappears off the edge of the Flat Top quadrangle map. Its extent south of 37°30' remains a mystery. An earlier lumber line that connected to the Norfolk & Western in Springton is known to have run 1.6 kilometres upstream in the same creek valley, and it's tantalizing to think that they were part of a continuous system...however, the two railways probably did not exist simultaneously.

E: The Raleigh & Pocahontas Lumber Railway reached its terminus another 5 kilometres upstream at Miller Hollow, the site of Blue Jay Lumber's other main camp area. This site is now wilderness, and falls slightly outside the west limits of Camp Creek State Forest.

The vast majority of the Raleigh & Pocahontas grade within Mercer County is accessible to hikers and mountain bikers...making it one of the most conducive transportation artifacts to experience at close hand. That said, virtually no original infrastructure other than grading still remains.

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