Hatfield McCoy Trails Story Archives - Page 2 of 2 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

W.Va. Officials Recommend $27 Million In Abandoned Coal Mine Cleanup Funding

West Virginia officials Thursday announced the names of the recipients they are recommending for millions of dollars in federal funding to help clean up abandoned coal mines.

The West Virginia Department of Environment Protection is recommending 12 projects in the Mountain State receive $27 million in Abandoned Mine Land Pilot program funding.

“They are great projects for West Virginia that will spur economic development,” said Gov. Jim Justice, speaking at a virtual press conference Thursday.

The AML Pilot program was created by Congress in 2015 to provide additional federal funding to the six Appalachian states with the most abandoned coal mines, including West Virginia.

The program provides funding to clean up abandoned mines and boost the economic and development goals of local communities. Project recipients ran the gamut, although all are required to be on or adjacent to mine sites that ceased operation prior to the passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.

About half of the projects recommended for funding this year will expand outdoor recreation opportunities and lodging options along the Hatfield-McCoy Trail system in southern West Virginia. Development along the Cheat River and Blackwater River also received funding.

More than half of the funding will go to projects expanding access to clean water in communities, including some in Raleigh, Summers and Fayette counties.

The group Reconnecting McDowell was recommended to receive $1 million to help finance the construction of the Renaissance Village in Welch, which will offer rental apartments to teachers and others in McDowell County.

Federal regulators with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement must still give final approval to recommended projects and funding amounts.

Here is a list of the recommended recipients:

Indian Creek ATV Resort Project $3,378,000

Building the Indian Creek ATV Resort to serve as an anchor development for the newest Hatfield-McCoy Trail system in Boone County. Project includes construction of 20 cabins, 15 RV Sites, and will be the location of the new Coal River Trail System.

Oak Hill Sanitary Board – Minden Sanitary Sewer System Rehabilitation $1,500,000

Upgrading existing sewer lines, pumping stations, and sanitary collection system.

Claudia L. Workman Wildlife Education Center $959,613

Building an educational and wildlife viewing center within the Forks of Coal State Natural Area, located on Corridor G, just south of Charleston.

Renaissance Village in McDowell County $1,000,000

Aiding in the construction of a housing facility for teachers. The proposed facility will also have space available for commercial use.

Twin Hollow Campgrounds and Cabins Expansion Project $2,699,422

Expanding the Twin Hollow Campgrounds and Cabins Resort in Mingo County to an even larger, more prominent destination that will bring in thousands of Hatfield-McCoy Trail Riders annually and facilitate a private sector investment of $3,970,230 over the next five years.

Reclaiming the Cheat River as an Economic Asset through Trail Investment and Nurturing Greenspace (RECREATING) $1,000,000

Improving trail and river access by building a destination trailhead at the Preston site.

Harper Eccles Sewer Extension Project $7,647,398

Providing approximately three miles of public sewer to residents along Route 3 in Raleigh County.

Rhodell Water Service Upgrade Project $2,125,000

Constructing approximately three miles of public water service to residents along Route 33 in Raleigh County.

White Oak Waterline Extension Project $1,319,050

Providing approximately 19,750 linear feet of public water service to residents along the border of Raleigh and Summers counties.

The Blackwater River Loop Project: Hiking, Biking and Heritage Tourism $818,000

Constructing a water treatment system to improve water quality of the north fork of the Blackwater River and make the site a visitor-friendly education project. This project will also create a scenic trail between the towns of Thomas and Davis and restore the Davis Coal and Coke Company engineering building for use.

Fleming – An Old Mining Town Transformation to Rustic Ravines $250,000

Building a lodge and wedding/conference venue, cabins, cottages, pods, RV and ATV parks, tennis amenities, basketball amenities, walking/hiking trails, ATV trails, an Alpine Coaster, a disc golf course, a miniature golf course, and an indoor driving range to increase tourism.

Brenton and Baileysville Waterline Extension Project$4,500,000

Providing water service to 254 customers, Baileysville Elementary and Middle School, along with a potential expansion of the Hatfield-McCoy Trail.

Justice Says State Park Lodges To Close, Farmers Markets Stay Open, Coronavirus Cases Climb To 8

This story was updated at 5 p.m. EST with the latest positive case count.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced new tourism-related restrictions Friday, March 20. By Friday afternoon, the state Department of Health and Human Resources reported eight positive cases of the coronavirus in the Mountain State.

During a televised press conference, Justice said all lodges in state parks will close to help prevent spread of the virus. Campsites, cabins and access to state parks will not be affected.

“We want you to enjoy the parks. We want you to get outside,” he reiterated. “We want you to bike, and hike, and fish and get outside and stay away from people.”

Justice also said effective at midnight on March 20, the Hatfield-McCoy Trails would close. The 700-plus miles of ATV trails, located in southern West Virginia, are a popular destination for out-of-state visitors.

The governor also confirmed there are now seven positive cases of the virus reported in West Virginia. Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch said there are two cases in both Jefferson and Tucker counties, and one each in Mercer, Monongalia and Jackson counties.

Later Friday, the DHHR website reported an eighth confirmed case in Kanawha County.

Justice said he would also sign a series of measures aimed at extending licensing and other regulatory requirements. That includes expanding access to telehealth and extending renewals for driver’s licenses. Farmers markets and livestock markets are to remain open at this time.

“The net of it is, we’ve got to keep our food channels open,” Justice said.

The West Virginia Red Cross is also urging healthy residents to donate blood.

Great, Great Granddaughter of William Anderson 'Devil Anse' Hatfield Carrying on Family Traditions

Spring, summer and fall in Gilbert, West Virginia, in Mingo County, most days you can find a barrage of ATVs rolling through town.

Most of the riders are visiting for an adventurous vacation. The asphalt road runs are usually a short trip from their cabins, or hotels to the woods onto the Hatfield and McCoy Trail systems.

Chad Bishop is the master distiller in a nearby distillery.

“You come down here at any given time and you’ll see twenty four-wheelers over here, five over there six, ya know,” Chad said. “Those people come in here to spend their money.”

To get there, you have to drive up a steep hillside to get to the Hatfield and McCoy Distillery. Most of the customers are ATV tourists.

“When they come up my distillery if they want a bottle of my product they’re getting the best money can buy,” Chad said.

Chad Bishop, master distiller at Hatfield & McCoy Moonshine.

Chad takes a lot of pride in making moonshine. Technically it’s whiskey according to the Alcohol and Beverage Commission, but for Chad the craft of brewing corn mash will always be moonshine. Chad said the recipe comes from the infamous William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield himself.

Chad married into the family. His mother-in-law is Nancy Justus, the great, great granddaughter of “Devil Anse”.

Nancy’s father worked in the coal mines. But the boom and bust cycle meant he was often out of work.

“Everybody was poor. We didn’t know no better,” Nancy explained. “He had a tough life. Coal mining’s hard. It’s a hard life. We would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for bootlegging back in the 50s.”

Her daddy made moonshine with a radiator. She said today, it would take a lot longer if they had to make moonshine that way.

But the moonshine tradition goes back even before the 50s, according to Nancy’s mom, Billie Hatfield; often people call her ‘Granny Hatfield’.

“Back when I was 20 years old, we got married and we moved to Ben Creek a little hole in the ground; one way in one way out,” Granny Hatfield said. “To make extra money, we made moonshine and sold it. We hid it when he’d bring it out of the mountains, I would mix it in a bathtub. And I got pretty good on my 90 proof and all of that. Back then we made 90 proof and 100 proof. You had to watch the feds all of the time because they were all the time after us.”

Today, the family business is legit, a registered, tax-paying business that helps them make a living and stay in West Virginia.

In addition to the distillery, Nancy Justus also runs a small lodging company that rents vacation cabins and hotel rooms to tourists. She doesn’t mind sharing her family’s story with visitors.

“I enjoy talking to them,” Nancy said. “I talk to so many people, take so many pictures. I’m not famous or anything, but they always a picture.”

Nancy said she feels like she’s reclaiming her family’s name through her businesses, and by telling these stories. Even though the family wasn’t consulted before construction of the trail system that uses their name, both Chad and Nancy said the Hatfield and McCoy Trail system has been great for business.

Still, running a business that depends on tourists isn’t profitable year round.

“There’s only seven months of business,” Nancy said. “It’s dead for five months and it’s hard to come back when you come back in March, first of April, because you had to spend all your money for the winter. That’s the only downfall, you know. It’s so hard.”

Just recently, Nancy’s moonshine company won a long battle with producers in other states, including Missouri and California, who were trying to use the name for their own brands of liquor.

“I got what I wanted. I want my name,” Nancy said. “I don’t want anybody to have my name that’s not the real people. It’s not fair.”

Nancy and her company won the lawsuit. Now they get to keep the name, Hatfield and McCoy Moonshine, to label their liquor. Chad said it’s good for tourism too. Along with the Hatfield and McCoy Country Museum in Williamson, it’s just one more way to bring another layer of authentic heritage to share with visitors.

“You can come here and go to a museum, and you can come here and watch whiskey being made the mountains you know, just like they did 150 years ago,” Chad said. “So yeah. I mean, they use the name but I think if anybody’s got the right to use it, it should be them.”

After all, the craft and recipe for this liquor was developed and preserved in the backwoods of the West Virginia hills. So the only way for it to be authentic, is to keep the name.

“We don’t really play off of the name but we want what we want people to know is here we stick true to tradition,” Chad said. “We’re from the mountains, we make whiskey in the mountains. We do it all in the mountains.”

Reclaiming their name for their business is also about taking back the narrative that has been told over the years, said Nancy. Ever since the feud, reports have traditionally focused on the fights and anger among the families.

“I could write a book on our family,” Nancy said. “It was Hatfields. The curse was handed down there’s a lot of temperament. They have a lot of problems with forgiving. They can’t forgive. It’s sad.”

Family photos of the William Anderson Devil Anse Hatfield hang on the wall of Nancy Hatield’s house. Nancy is Davil Anse’s great, great granddaughter

While she admits that most of her family members have a bit of a temper, she’s quick to point out that there’s more to her family.

“Hatfields are great people. My daddy would have given you the shirt off his back. I loved my daddy,” Nancy said.

“I was his sidekick and anything he told me to do, I’d do it. And there was things I did that I probably shouldn’t have done. I should have been killed. He bought me race cars. I raced them. What was I going to do with Corvettes? I raced them. Camaroes. Daddy taught me all of that.”

This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that explores tourism in southern West Virginia and the lasting impacts the Hatfield and McCoy feud has had on the region’s identity.

Hatfield McCoy Trails Bring Tourists To Southern West Virginia (And Need For Lodging)

When in the late 1990’s a group of recreational-vehicle enthusiasts began developing a network of riding trails in Southern West Virginia, it didn’t take them long to pick a title that would immediately garner name recognition for the region.

“Geographically, this area is primarily associated with the Hatfield McCoy feud,” said Jeffrey Lusk, executive director of the Hatfield McCoy Regional Recreation Authority, referring to the notorious dispute of the late 1800s between the West Virginian Hatfields and Kentucky’s McCoy family.

“We’ve taken what was maybe otherwise looked as a negative, you know, one of the largest family feuds in the country, and turned it into a positive,” Lusk said. “[We] turned it into, you know, the most successful all-terrain vehicle trail system in the eastern U.S.”

Today, Lusk’s group works in 14 counties, maintaining and adding onto what is currently more than 700 miles of wooded riding trails.

The Hatfield McCoy Recreation Regional Authority has opened trailheads in five Southern West Virginia counties, including Logan County, pictured here.

Eight trailheads are open in five of those counties ⁠— Logan, McDowell, Mercer, Mingo and Wyoming.

The regional recreation authority sold roughly 50,000 permits to use the trails last year, according to Lusk. He said the group expects to sell around 55,000 this year, 85 percent of which are going to out-of-state riders.

Such tourists include Eric Hryhorchuck and Renee Simons from Texas, who were taking a break from fourwheeling one Thursday morning to check out the Hatfield family cemetery in Logan County.

“In Texas, it’s just mud. You know, there’s no hills,” Simons said. “It’s nothing like up here, and the colors up here are so pretty.”

Devil Anse’s grave is topped by a life-sized statue of himself made of Italian marble.

The Hatfield McCoy trails are riddled with historical markers and sites, which can teach visitors more about a state some are admittedly unfamiliar with. As Hryhorchuck and Simons were leaving the gravesite that Thursday morning, riders from Illinois and New Jersey were approaching the same entrance.

Millions Of Dollars In Reported Economic Impact

Reports show that this influx of tourists could mean big bucks for southern communities that have traditionally relied on a waning coal industry.

In 2014, a Marshall University study showed tourists visiting the Hatfield McCoy trails generated an economic impact of around $22 million for the region in 2013. Lusk expects this number will double when Marshall University completes a new economic impact study in 2020.

These numbers didn’t happen overnight ⁠— developing a network of trails involves years of work, Lusk says. The recreation authority has to secure access to land from logging and mining companies who own much of West Virginia’s wooded areas. All of the private companies that Lusk says he’s worked with volunteer to share their space for free ⁠— he added that the regional recreation authority probably has access to more than 250,000 acres of private land.

“You have to have enough property to do it,” Lusk said. “You have to have willing landowners, all the pieces have to line up just perfect to get one of these open. [That’s] definitely why, you know, after 19 years we only have eight systems and not 19. You can’t build one of these every year.”

Right now, the regional recreation authority plans to open two new trailheads in Wayne and Lincoln counties this spring, according to Lusk, and a second trail system spanning five more counties further north.

How Some Towns Are Becoming ATV-Friendly Communities

Work isn’t done once a trailhead is open ⁠— economic success demands a level of investment from the communities around the trailhead, Lusk says.

The city of Welch in McDowell County is working on that. Drive into town, and you’ll see welcoming signs advertising the city as an “ATV-friendly” place.

The city of Welch in McDowell County welcomes visitors with an “ATV-Friendly Town” sign.

Restaurants and local businesses have similar signs welcoming trail-riders inside. During popular riding seasons, most parking lots have at least a few recreational vehicles.

“There’s not a weekend that you don’t come to Welch, that you don’t see ATVs running all over the highways, all over the mountains,” said Jason Grubb, the city’s newly-hired business development specialist. “And every local restaurant, and every place you can imagine. A lot of people consider that they may be the salvation for Southern West Virginia by way of tourism.”

Grubb says the city started on its journey a few years ago, when it passed an ordinance allowing ATVs on public roads. Many communities along the Hatfield McCoy Trails have done the same.

There’s still a lot he says the city needs, specifically from its business community.

“We need more restaurants here in order to facilitate places for entertainment, we need more lodging in the area,” Grubb said. “And that’s something we have not had a lot of. In the past, we used to. In the 1960s and 1970s, when coal was popular, we had a lot more lodging in the area.”

Welch’s business situation and the work it’s doing represents several trail communities in southern West Virginia, even those where trail access points have been open longer.

In Logan County, entrepreneur Diana Barnette is working on redeveloping an old strip mall in Man.

“We envision it as a whole resort,” Barnette said, adding it will open as the “Appalachian Outpost.”

“We have 25 cabins up so far, that will be open in April. We have 10 more additional cabins that we’re going to build next year.”

Logan County business-owner Dianna Barnette is redeveloping an old strip mall in her county. She plans to open a resort for ATV riders next year. Emily Allen, West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Some of the old storefronts, Barnette said, will host an array of local mom-and-pop establishments to keep tourists busy.

“We saw this as an opportunity to diversify from the coal industry,” Barnette said. In addition to a local pizza joint, she said her main businesses are directly related to the coal industry. “This gave us a great opportunity to dive in, and we want to make a large impact.”

The People That Come ‘Are People Who Come To Spend Money’

Almost an hour southeast of Man is the town of Pineville in Wyoming County, where other entrepreneurs like Barnette are expanding their horizons to fill a large need for more lodging.

John and Karen Bailey run a set of cabins along West Virginia Route 97, just minutes away from the Pinnacle Creek Trailhead in town. The couple retired from the mobile home industry a few years ago.

“We knew we had a good location to get to the trails,” Karen Bailey recalled. “So, we started looking around and we just decided, ‘Well, we weren’t going to go home and sit down and not do anything.’”

John and Karen Bailey own Pinnacle ATV Lodging in Pineville, Wyoming County. Emily Allen, West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

The Baileys have been running Pinnacle ATV Lodging since September 2018. John Bailey said when he and others first heard about the trail system in the late 1990’s, he was skeptical it would be successful.

“One thing that people had a misconception about, back even in 1995, is that all you’re going to get is just a bunch of rednecks that are going to tear up the place. And nothing’s further from the truth.”

“The people who come, the majority of the people who come, are people who come to spend money,” Karen Bailey said. “They have money. They’re driving sixty, seventy, eighty-thousand dollar vehicles, they’re pulling trailers that cost ⁠— I don’t know how much!”

A few minutes away from the Baileys’ is the Ole Jose Grill and Cantina. Owner Jill Hendrick said the site has been open for nearly eight and a half years now.

She estimates tourists make up more than half of her daily business, during the six to eight months when they’re most active.

“As the riders were coming in, we just started realizing that there was such a need for lodging,” Hendrick recalled. She has three houses, two of which are duplex models, for visiting ATV riders. As a real estate agent, she says she’s even sold a few vacation homes to out-of-staters.

“The people are coming and buying houses here,” she said. “I mean, when I was a kid, you couldn’t give away a house if it wasn’t to a local … We’re probably, in our little county, we may be selling four or five, maybe six a year, us personally.”

Jill Hendricks stands beside a wood-fired oven from Verona, Italy, in her restaurant, the Ole Jose Grill and Cantina

Tourists have definitely helped buoy the local economy with their spending, but Hendrick says having outsiders come into these small towns can boost morale within the community.

“Sometimes, when you’ve lived in a place and have been raised there, I think you become complacent,” Hendricks said. “Sometimes, you can become a little negative. And then you see all these people coming in that are so positive, and then you start looking around and going, ‘Wait a minute, maybe this is a pretty cool place to live.’”

This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that explores tourism in southern West Virginia and the lasting impacts the Hatfield and McCoy feud has had on the region’s identity.

Land Sales Result in Closure of 2 Hatfield-McCoy Trails

Two Hatfield-McCoy Trail System trails in Boone and Lincoln counties are being closed because the trail land has been sold.

The system will lose 200 miles of ATV trails from the closure of the Little Coal River Trail in Boone County and the Ivy Branch Trail in Lincoln County.

Hatfield-McCoy executive director Jeffrey Lusk tells the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that the trail land had multiple owners. A single company bought all of the land.

Lusk says the trail system will work with the new owner to try and reopen the trails. He says he doesn’t yet know the company’s identity because the sales are private transactions.

He says the system still has more than 500 miles of trails.

2 Sites Considered for Hatfield McCoy Trails Visitor Center

Mercer County officials are considering two sites for a Hatfield McCoy Trails visitors center.

A selection committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to choose an engineering firm to design a trailhead. The trailhead will serve as a visitors center.

Committee chairman Gene Buckner tells the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that the location has been narrowed to Coaldale Mountain near Bramwell and River Road near Montcalm.

Buckner says the committee could choose the location at Thursday’s meeting.

Hatfield McCoy Trails executive director Jeff Lusk says the project’s estimated cost is about $500,000. Trail officials hope to begin construction in the spring of 2016.