By Colleen Nelson
Keeping both my good humor (read sanity) and good social distancing (out here we call it rural isolation!) alive and well these last few weeks has led to some adventurous drives on many a back country road through the hills and valleys of northern Richhill Township. This is where Enlow Fork of Wheeling Creek draws a blue line on the map between Washington County and us. This is where the coal conveyor snakes over ridges and disappears down valleys, plunging in and out of wilderness on its way to the outside world. Out here, when old dirt roads suddenly sprout a fresh layer of macadam, you can bet there’s a well pad nearby and you start watching for convoys. This was crazy wild country when the first settlers arrived, just in time for Lord Dunmore’s war and it’s getting crazy wild again, as farms and villages disappear; coyotes can be heard at dusk and those who still live here, like the settlers who are their ancestors, value their rural isolation as much as they love this land.
I have in mind a spring tour of post offices that are no more but can still be tracked on my trusty Greene County map that lives in my glove compartment. I compare Durbin, Crows Mills, Video, Burdette and Eno on G. Wayne Smith’s Post Offices of Greene County map to the roads I’ll be taking. Crows Mill is now Workman, Video has been renamed Nebo and Eno has become Enon. Video is the Latin word for “to see” and the stretch of Nebo Road it sits on pulls your eyes across forever on both sides of the ridge.
Dr. Smith tells us that in 1887, Video had a post office in James Durbin’s country store and it served about 100 people. By 1908 the route was discontinued and folks got their mail in West Finley. Durbin’s old store is one of the two buildings still standing, dwarfed by the coal operations that transform the landscape beside it.
Turn at Video onto Walker Hill Road then hang a left down Smokey Row and you’ll see why I love this place. The road switchbacks then drops under the beltway from Baily Mine, down to the hidden depths of Enlow valley, carpeted now until mid-May with an enormous array of wildflowers. Enlow Fork, broad and sometimes riffled where it’s not undermined, meanders through and is stocked for trout season. Turkeys strut their stuff here and nesting warblers, some rarely found this far north, can be heard but seldom seen for more than a bright instant as they flit through the high canopy. I’ve been coming here since the 1980s and this year is no exception. The trillium, cut leaf toothwort and Dutchman’s breeches say hello! I slide into wet leaf litter to take photos and smell the earth. I’m home.
On May 3, 1980 the Association for Rural Conservation held its first Spring Fling here, with experts from regional botanical societies leading tours. The Paul R. Stewart Archaeology Society from Waynesburg College showed where indigenous tribes once encamped and marked trails by bending trees. Local ornithologist Ralph Bell identified the warblers and other nesting birds by their trademark songs and 100 plus people came to listen and learn that Greene County has a rich history and a beautiful biosphere well worth saving.
The community, from township supervisors to back-to-the-landers, vowed to save this valley from being flooded by U S Steel in its bid to have a body of water as part of its coal preparation process. The fact that future repairs to the dam would be the responsibility of the county once the coal was extracted was not lost on local leaders and savvy taxpayers. The dam projects were eventually redrawn, a dry dam was put in to protect Wheeling WV from flooding and the land around Enlow Fork, became State Game Land 302. CONSOL Energy bought the coal reserves, opened Baily Mine and its massive infrastructure now pops out of the trees beside Enon Church on Ackley Creek Road. Smith tells us that Eno post office sat near the church, but the village has all but vanished and Smith offers no photo.
Further south, the Burdette Post Office (1890-1902) was in Ellsworth Ackley’s stately home that stands behind the monument to pioneer matriarch Sarah Ackley. All that’s missing is the Ackley covered bridge on Wheeling Creek that once connected Richhill and West Finley townships. Dr. Smith notes that in 1934 “the historic 80 foot bridge, dating from 1832 was bought by Lucille Ackley Evans, who gave it as a gift” to Henry Ford for his museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Heading west to Durbin and the West Virginia line, State Route 21 climbs to Wind Ridge then drops down to where the creeks begin their flow to the Ohio River. History becomes a little wilder here.
First settlers like Jacob Crow who arrived, according to historian Andrew Waychoff, “between 1765 and 1770” made tomahawk claims and began to build new lives. Waychoff writes of a revenge war that would soon set the frontier on fire. In the spring of 1774 Chief Logan, known as a friend to settlers found his entire family massacred in Ohio on Yellow Creek by “Daniel Greathouse and a party of bushwackers.” Thinking Captain Cressop was involved Logan “became an avenging demon. His name became a terror. …Greene County drank the blood of almost numberless victims….” Guerrilla war between frontier settlers and Logan’s raiding parties would continue into the 1790s. Waychoff gathered military records and family histories from these times for his weekly columns in the Democrat Messenger in the 1920s. These antiquated words still ring with some unvarnished truths.
Here in the steep rocky ravines wrapped in native hemlock, there were plenty of places for ambush and nowhere to go but Fort Lindley, ten miles to the north where the village of Prosperity would be someday.
Jacob Crow built a fort on his land when the troubles came, a place lost to time but described by descendant Gary Murphy as “probably a big fortified log cabin that could hold all the neighbors with slots in the walls to shoot from.” The ambushes and attacks continued for 20 years as British rule ended, old scores were settled and the fledgling Federal push was on to secure the Ohio Territories for settlement. General Anthony Wayne won the Battle of Fallen Timber in 1794 and in 1796 Greene County was happy to announce the name of its new county seat.
As the new century turned settlements into villages and frontier rangers into farmers, in 1815 the federal postal service arrived in Ryerson Station. By 1856 Crows Mills had a post office and by 1890 so did Durbin. Goodwin’s Store, still standing in what’s left of Durbin housed the last post office before it was decommissioned in 1908.
Driving on the many offshoots of Wheeling Creek Road these days is an almost empty window into our cultural past – forested intersections are all that remain of Crabapple and Workman and it takes an educated eye to pick out the broken foundations and patches of daffodils that show where the likes of us once lived. I still remember when Durbin looked like an abandoned movie set in the 1980s, with a few buildings still standing and a barn with old machinery parked downstairs and a cat in the upstairs window. Now only horses, cattle and goats are left to shop for spring greens in the fields around Goodwin’s store. Nature’s taking back her own and there’s no beating the raw mountain nature to be found here – that Colorado Rockies high you get when the big ledges loom over the road and Wheeling Creek comes churning out of the shadows of hemlock trees. And did I mention the spring wildflowers? They’re everywhere right now. It’s time to take a walk on the wild side. Go for it! Hint – get a fishing license. Fresh trout is some good eating.