A Look Back

Source: The Daily Telegram (Clarksburg, WV) By William “Skip” Deegans Had the prohibition of alcohol not interfered, West Virginia may have had an industry of distilleries long before now. In the early 1900s, E. W. Davis, Clarksburg entrepreneur, operated a mail order whiskey business. His 1914 photo shown above is...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown in this undated photo is wood sculptor Wolfgang Flor. Born in 1928 in Germany, Flor escaped from Nazi Germany and later immigrated to the United States in 1951. He married Marie Luise Busz in 1958. Moving to Upshur County, the Flors were among the first...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown in this undated photo is the lodge building at Camp Washington Carver. It is purported to be the largest chestnut log building in the world. Located in Fayette County, a short distance off U.S. Route 60, the camp opened in 1942 as the first 4-H...

By William “Skip” Deegans  Born in Scotland in 1846, James R. Laing, came to the United States twenty years later. He rose from a mine superintendent to become one of the leading coal operators on West Virginia’s New River. In 1904, Laing and his wife, Susan Kay Laing, moved to...

By William “Skip” Deegans  Shown in this 1968 photo is one of the Civil War saltpeter (saltpetre) hoppers in Greenbrier County’s Organ Cave. The dirt in the cave is high in nitrite as a result of bat guano and percolating groundwater. The hoppers are used to leach the nitrite producing...

By William “Skip” Deegans  Shown in this 1947-1948 photo taken in Alderson is the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Railroad’s experimental M1 500 electric turbine locomotive. In 1945, railroads were switching fuel from coal to oil. Some 30% of the C&O’s freight was coal, and their executives were reluctant to switch....

By William “Skip” Deegans This circa 1920 photo shows a row of Rainelle’s Meadow River Lumber Company houses along U.S. Route 60. The houses were unusual by the standards of most company-owned houses found in mill towns and mining camps in West Virginia. Built in 1910-1911, the houses were well...

By William “Skip” Deegans In 1951, a bottle of RC Cola was a nickel. That year, West Virginia governor Okey L. Patterson proposed a one-cent tax on bottles of soda in order to build medical and dental schools at West Virginia University. West Virginians called sodas “pop” so the tax...

By William “Skip” Deegans Shown in this circa 1904 photo is Hinton’s C&O Railroad Baseball Team. In the early 1900s, baseball was a popular pastime in southern West Virginia. In addition to the railroad, many coal mining companies sponsored teams. The Hinton team played other railroad teams in Clifton Forge,...

By William “Skip” Deegans This undated photo shows Lewisburg’s McElhenney Lodge on Church Street when it was part of The Greenbrier College for Women. The front brick portion of the building may date to the 1840s although missing county records make it hard to pinpoint its age. It was occupied...