On September 13, 1862, Charleston residents awoke to the sound of artillery. It was part of a Confederate push to take control of the region after 5,000 Union troops had been transferred from the Kanawha Valley to defend Washington. This left the remaining Union forces, led Joseph A. J. Lightburn, badly outnumbered.
The Battle of Charleston began in the East End near the site of the current capitol. By late morning, Union troops had withdrawn to the downtown area, where they torched a number of buildings to keep them out of enemy hands. The retreating Federals then cut the cables on an Elk River suspension bridge to slow pursuing Confederates.
Despite suffering a crushing defeat, Lightburn was able to maintain a continual skirmish line along his 50-mile retreat to Point Pleasant, while keeping his wagon supply train from falling into enemy hands. Unionist townsfolk and liberated local slaves joined in “Lightburn’s Retreat,” filling the Kanawha River with boats of all kinds and clogging the roads. The Confederate occupation of Charleston lasted scarcely six weeks before Federals reoccupied the valley for the rest of the war.
Eric Gardner has a different perspective than most about the rivers in central Appalachia. That’s because he spends most of his time in them.
Gardner is a commercial diver. He works in the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, maintaining tow boats, barges, pipelines and spillways.
“I started out with some older gentleman that ran the company. [They] took a liking to me and taught me a lot of the trades that I still use to this day,” he said.
A deckhand from the Dr. Edwin Welch towboat grabs the ball of rope and debris Eric Gardner has just removed from the boat’s propeller.
Being a commercial diver can be difficult work, but Gardner thrives on it. “I’m a man of the river,” he explained. Year-round, he is underwater for two to four hours a stretch. His support team above water maintains an air compressor that sends him air through a hose. Visibility is often so poor that he does everything by feel.
One common task he performs is clearing towboat propellers, also known as props.
“When they get debris into the props or have damage [underneath the boat] or problems they’ll call me out. Lot of times it’s trees, cables and ropes, wound up into props,” he said.
If Gardner can’t fix the tow boats, they have to travel to a dry dock up to 60 miles away and may be out of service for days.
Credit Courtesy Photo: Eric Gardner
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An example of the trash the floats downriver. This is between a towboat and the riverbank.
Spending so much time on, and in, the river, Gardner is troubled by the amount of trash he sees. It often ends up collecting at the locks and dams that aid the barge traffics’ flow along the river. The trash can foul the locks.
“You will have an island full of trash, different debris, tires, refrigerators, anything plastic just floats,” Gardner said.
“It’d be nice if we could come up with a plan and try to work with Army Corps of Engineers to where we may be able to stop this from happening.”.
The US Army Corps of Engineers maintains the locks and dams. A representative explained that there isn’t a safe and cost-effective way to separate the trash from the natural debris so they end up treating it all as natural and sending it on down the river.
Eventually, much of the trash makes it to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, which then feeds out into the ocean.
The view from the pilothouse of the sternwheeler Hobby III.
There was a time that life along the river revolved around riverboats. In the 19th century, the only way to get supplies or mail was the river. To keep the history of the river alive, a community of enthusiasts in West Virginia and Ohio maintain riverboats for their personal use.
The original riverboats were called “sternwheelers.” The stern is the back of the boat, so these riverboats had a paddlewheel that provided thrust to propel the boat up and down the river.
Eighty to ninety sternwheelers worked the Kanawha and Ohio rivers at their peak, according to Jack Fowler, the director of the Point Pleasant River Museum and Learning Center. Today, only a few still operate as work boats, but there are many more that private owners maintain for recreational use.
“These guys that have these sternwheelers just preserve those memories and what it used to be like,” he said. “It just keeps the spirit of the river alive, about what it was like back in the day.”
Credit Eric Douglas / WVPB
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WVPB
Sternwheelers dock at Haddad Riverfront Park in Charleston, West Virginia.
One of those private owners is JD Pauley. His boat, the Hobby 3, was built as a pleasure boat.
“I’ve owned this boat for 22 years now and it’s just the people you meet, the things you do, the places you go. It’s I wouldn’t I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for a million dollar vessel.”
Tom Cook is the treasurer of the American Sternwheel Association. The group works to preserve and educate the public about sternwheel boats and has been in operation since 1976. Cook is worried about the future of sternwheelers, though, as membership in the group falls.
“It doesn’t seem like that the younger people are as interested, or maybe they just don’t have the resources to purchase,” he said. “A lot of the people that own boats now are getting older so there’s there’s several for sale right now.”
Explorers Thomas Batts, Thomas Wood, and Robert Fallam set out on a momentous expedition westward from Petersburg, Virginia, on September 1, 1671. At the time, white settlers knew almost nothing about the land west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The explorers’ exact route is unknown, but they likely crossed into present West Virginia in Monroe County and then followed the New River. From there, it’s difficult to match their journal up with actual places. However, they likely made their way to the Falls of the Kanawha River at what is today Gauley Bridge in Fayette County.
At one point, they described a breathtaking view that everyone who has ever set foot in the Mountain State can relate to, writing, “A pleasing tho’ dreadful sight to see, the mountains and Hills as if piled one upon another.”
The explorers ended their expedition because their Indian guides were afraid of the Indians who lived in our region. Although they failed in their ultimate goal of locating a trade route across the continent, Batts, Wood, and Fallam provided the earliest known written description of present West Virginia.
A Kanawha County official is demanding more details about a small spill along the Kanawha River that apparently involved the same primary chemical that caused a water crisis in the area three years ago.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports County Commission President Kent Carper wrote a strongly worded letter Monday to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection regarding a small spill at a coal preparation facility last week.
State health officials have not given any indication that the local Cedar Grove drinking water supply had been contaminated or that the MCHM chemical had reached the river.
There also was no concern about potential contamination of West Virginia American Water’s main Kanawha Valley water intake, since it is located on the Elk River, upstream from the Elk’s intersection with the Kanawha.
Volunteers are gathering next month to help clean up the Kanawha River in Kanawha and Putnam counties.The West Virginia Department of Environmental…
Volunteers are gathering next month to help clean up the Kanawha River in Kanawha and Putnam counties.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release the event is being held from 9 a.m. to noon on Sept. 10. Cleanup sites are still being finalized.
Volunteers remove litter from the river’s banks, collect and properly dispose of tons of trash each year. Last year, more than two tons of trash and about two dozen tires were collected in Glen Ferris, Magic Island, South Charleston, St. Albans and Winfield.
Volunteers should register by contacting Terry Carrington at Terry.R.Carrington@wv.gov or calling (304) 926-0499, ext. 1359.
Bags and gloves will be supplied, and the Rehabilitation Environmental Action Plan will arrange for trash to be removed. Volunteers will receive free T-shirts.
