The Shadow
WAITEVILLE, W.Va. – A long-forgotten piece of railroad history has come back to life in Monroe County, W.Va.
A century after trains rumbled down the Potts Valley branch of the Norfolk and Western Railway, railroad aficionados and nature buffs alike can now take advantage of almost five miles of the former railroad bed which has been turned into a hiking and biking trail.
Last October, after a 78-year-hiatus, the former rail bed was brought back into service, this time as an interpretive trail through the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, which encompasses 15,000 acres of Monroe County, including much of the Potts Creek valley.
About 90 percent of the Potts Valley Rail Trail lies on National Forest land and follows the old rail bed along a slope overlooking the south fork of Potts Creek in Waiteville, W.Va.
Starting from a trailhead that’s located a few hundred yards from the Virginia state line on State Secondary Route 17, the trail passes through rhododendron thickets, railroad cuts and rock outcrops as it gently descends the hillside.
Signs along the uphill section of the trail mark its border with the 11,113-acre Mountain Lake Wilderness, the largest wilderness area in the Jefferson National Forest.
A side trail leads to one of several hand-cut masonry culverts that allow small streams to pass under the rail beds.
Three miles into the hike, the trail comes to an abrupt halt at the site of the former Crosier Branch Trestle, a 98-foot tall, 600-foot long, wooden bridge that once carried rail traffic across the Crosier Branch stream below.
Since it was too expensive to build a new foot bridge across a chasm two football fields wide, trail organizers decided to have the trail turn to single track and switch backs down to a shallow, rock-hop crossing of Crosier Branch, and then continue down the slope away from the rail bed.
Along the way, the trail passes a number of hand-cut stone pillars that once supported the railroad bridge.
“There’s close to one mile of new trail from the trestle site to the place where it joins the rail grade again near the lower trail head,” said Craig Mohler, editor of The Monroe Watchman newspaper in Union, W.Va., a former Monroe County commissioner and coordinator of the Potts Valley Rail Trail project.
From Crosier Branch, the trail descends the hillside, crosses through private land and eventually offers sweeping views of farmland extending to the north along Potts Creek.
A short trail to the edge of the forest gives hikers and bikers a place to stop and take in an unobstructed view of the bucolic Potts Valley and the steep, green southeastern slope of Peters Mountain.
A $44,000 grant from the West Virginia Recreational Trail Program paid for the new trail segment and the repair of several drainage issues along the former rail bed.
“Much of the trail was ready to hike before any of the work started,” Mohler said. “All but one of the old stone culverts was still working. I don’t know if people who used the rail bed for hunting kept it cleaned or if trees just didn’t grow back on it for some reason, but there wasn’t much to clear or repair.
“It’s an easy trail to walk or bike. It gives seniors and others who may not be able to hike the Appalachian Trail or the Allegheny Trail, which also passes through the national forest here, an enjoyable way to get to an area that’s been left unchanged since the railroad was abandoned,” Mohler added.
Directions to the Potts Valley Rail Trail’s southwest trailhead: From Route 311 at Paint Bank, follow Route 600 (CR 17 at the Monroe County line) for 12 miles to Waiteville, W.Va. Continue on CR 17 for another 4.5 miles to the southwest trailhead.
Signs are posted along the roadway to help direct you to the trail.
History Coming To Life
Having most of my family hail from the Waiteville, W.Va. area, I grew up listening to my dad, granddad and countless uncles and other old-timers talk about the railroad that had once clattered through the Potts Creek valley.
But it wasn’t until last fall, when I first met Craig Mohler, that I got the opportunity to learn more about the Norfolk and Western Railway and, finally, after a lifetime of hearing about Crosier Branch got to make my first visit to the Crosier Branch stream and see the masonry pylons which, a century earlier, had held the massive Crosier Trestle.
It was through Craig that I was able to get much of the historical information included here.
In the years following the Civil War, railroad surveyors began looking for a gentle grade across the Eastern Continental Divide to connect iron and magnesium ore mines in the remote valley to mainline tracks along the New River near Pearisburg in Giles County.
It took decades for that vision to become a reality, though, thanks in part to several Waiteville-area farmers who opposed the project and balked at selling their land to the railroad.
The line initially began as three separate railroad charters.
Track for the first, the Big Stony Railroad in Giles County, was completed in 1896.
In 1906, charters were written for additional segments under the names of the Interior and West Virginia Railroad and the Virginia and Potts Valley Railroad.
Track would be built northeast from the Great Continental Divide along the side of Little Mountain to a point southeast of Waiteville.
There, trains would loop around a knoll on the mountainside near what would become Ray Siding and then travel back toward the southwest at a lower elevation along the same mountainside.
Upon finally reaching the valley floor, the track reversed direction again through another broad loop and resumed a northeast course toward Waiteville and Paint Bank.
Although iron ore was one of the principal motivating factors for the construction of the Potts Valley line – and some was indeed transported by the railway from entities such as the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company at Paint Bank – it was timber which would prove to be the mainstay of the railroad.
Vast virgin stands were reported in Potts Valley, in the North Fork country and in neighboring Johns Creek Valley.
Railway officials noted that local loggers had lumber and tan bark stacked at the depot at Waiteville awaiting the coming of the trains even before the tracks had reached that point.
By 1920, the demand for timber began to decline.
And, in fact, probably a good deal of the available timber had already been harvested.
Nonetheless, the railroad continued to operate until 1932, providing passenger and mail service and a convenient outlet for agricultural goods and livestock.
The Potts Valley branch also played a significant role in the introduction of the Model T, at least to eastern Monroe County.
Partially assembled Model T Fords were hauled to Waiteville by train, loaded onto horse-drawn wagons and pulled 12 miles across Peters Mountain to the new Ford dealership at Gap Mills, where they were assembled and the vehicles were offered for sale to the public.
Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone once visited the Gap Mills dealership during one of their well-publicized jaunts around the country.
In July 1932, the death knell for the railroad was sounded when the Interstate Commerce Commission gave the Norfolk and Western Railway permission to remove the tracks and the railroad authorized their abandonment that November.
By 1933, the Potts Valley branch of the Norfolk and Western Railroad and disappeared, including tracks and trestles.
A rusted railroad spike I found on my walk along the trail last October, which now sits on my desk at The Virginian Review, is one of the few remnants of that railroad that, for almost eight decades, went largely forgotten.
Until now.
