Last weekend’s flash flooding in northern and north-central West Virginia has caused over $10 million dollars in damages.
Eleven counties are facing damage costs totaling $10,604,778, according to the West Virginia Department of Transportation.
Doddridge County has the lowest damage cost at $60,000, while Marshall County has the highest at $3 million.
Additional counties impacted by flooding were Harrison, Marion, Monongalia, Preston, Taylor, Ohio, Wetzel, Randolph, and Tucker counties.
The Division of Highways says personnel have been sent out to continually review the roads and damage costs could rise.
Rain began late Friday, July 28 resulting in high, rushing water. Eight counties were declared a state of emergency by Governor Jim Justice. Members of the National Guard were sent to aid affected communities.
The West Virginia Board of Education has agreed to close an elementary school in Randolph County that has 27 students.The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports…
The West Virginia Board of Education has agreed to close an elementary school in Randolph County that has 27 students.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the board voted Thursday to close Valley Head Elementary. The students will be transferred to George Ward Elementary next school year.
Randolph County school board members previously voted to close the school, but the move requires the state board to approve the decision.
Valley Head has split-grade classrooms, with multiple grade levels being taught by the same teacher.
State board member Miller Hall said closing the school seems to be in the best interests of the students over the long run.
School Principal Melissa Wilfong, who said she is in her sixth year as principal, declined comment afterward.
George Coussoule, who supported keeping the school open, said after the vote that he was disappointed.
Mary Lewis was born in New Jersey on August 26, 1763. After marrying Joseph Kinnan, she moved to Randolph County in 1787 and settled in the Tygart Valley.
Four years later, Shawnee raiders entered their home and killed Joseph and a neighbor child. Mary Kinnan fled the house with her young daughter, but a pursuing Indian killed the child and captured her.
It’s believed Mary was taken to the Buckhannon River, then down the Little Kanawha to the Ohio River, and eventually to a village near Fort Wayne, Indiana. She was sold several times before becoming the property of an Indian woman and settling about 20 miles from Detroit.
Nearly two years later, Mary Kinnan slipped an Indian trader a note, which found its way to her old childhood community in New Jersey. In 1794, she was rescued by her brother and brought back to New Jersey, where she lived the rest of her days, dying in 1848 at age 84.
Despite having lived in our region for only four years, Mary Kinnan’s harrowing experience has been a staple of West Virginia history books.
On July 11, 1861, the Battle of Rich Mountain was fought in Randolph County. It was the climax of a successful Union campaign to seize control of Western Virginia early in the Civil War.
Confederate General Robert Garnett had established defensive positions at Laurel Hill and Rich Mountain. Suspecting an attack on Laurel Hill, Garnett placed only about a fourth of his men on Rich Mountain, under the command of Colonel John Pegram.
Union commander George McClellan surprised Garnett and dispatched the bulk of his force, led by General William Rosecrans, to Rich Mountain. Rosecrans trapped the Confederates and captured the mountain.
The battle had two important results. First, the victory propelled McClellan into command of the Army of the Potomac—the Union’s most significant army in the East. McClellan’s Western Virginia campaign, though, was the last of his military glory. As head of the Army of the Potomac, he was continually bested by Confederate generals Joseph Johnston and Robert E. Lee. More importantly for our state’s history, Rich Mountain ensured Northern control of the region and helped pave the way for the formation of West Virginia.
There are 100,000 less sheep in the state of West Virginia today than during the 1970’s. Now, there are 36,000 sheep in the state. The demand for synthetic fibers over wool for our clothes and blankets is one reason for the sharp decline. One man from Upshur County is about to hang up his shears. After sheep shearing for 64 years, Calvin McCutcheon says he will retire next year.
At just under 80 years old, Calvin McCutcheon looks like a bodybuilder. His thick stocky torso is bent over while he wrangles a full grown sheep, trying to get it to lay still and stop thrashing.
But this is nothing- McCutcheon holds the state record for shearing 300 sheep in one day.
Sheep at Sam Cunningham’s farm in Beverly, West Virginia
He began shearing when he was a teenager. At a 4-H Farm in Spencer, someone with WVU Extension offered to teach him.
“And as a cocky 14-year-old I climbed down off the fence and said “I’ll try anything once. I’ve sheared a 100,000 sheep since then.”
At 23 years old, he was determined to step away from the shearing business and become a Methodist pastor.
“But the best sheep shearer in the 10 county area lost his arm to a corn picker the fall before. So he got his arm cut off. He couldn’t shear sheep any more. And they were hurting. I sheared 1,200 sheep right there in that area.”
And so, McCutcheon picked his clippers back up and became a sheep shearing preacher.
He prepares for the spring shearing season almost like an athlete- he goes to the gym about 20 days a month, working to strengthen his shoulders and his lower back.
Beverly, West Virginia. This field is down the street from Sam Cunningham’s farm on Rich Mountain.
One of the farmers who hires McCutcheon to shear sheep is Sam Cunningham, who says it’s just really tough to raise sheep, and there’s not a lot of money in it. “I used to keep 75, now I keep 10 head around here just for my grandkids,” said Cunningham.
Cunningham runs the wool up to a buyer in Pendleton County, named Joe Harper. From there, it will get sold to South Carolina, where it’s carded, and then exported to woolen mills China. Most of the woolen mills in this country have gone out of business.
The view from Sam Cunningham’s farm on Rich Mountain
Farmers here in West Virginia earn less than a dollar per pound, which is hardly even a profit. Some farmers make value added craft products out of their wool, which can help turn more of a profit. Sheeps and Peeps Farm in Aurora and The Holler Farm in Renick are two businesses that sell locally made wool crafts.
Sheep farmers earn more income selling the lambs as meat.
Even though the wool industry is on the decline, there’s still a high demand for sheep shearers because sheep farmers still try to keep the wool off their sheep’s backs to keep them clean and healthy.
But there just aren’t many people interested in learning the trade. Some farmers in West Virginia even hire people from out of state to shear their flock.
Over the years, Calvin McCutcheon has taught dozens of young people to shear sheep, but most of them quit because the physical labor is so tough.
“Well if someone wants to shear sheep, they’ve got to be willing to do hard work, learn a skill and keep at it.”
In 1955, McCutcheon won fifth place in a national contest for sheep shearing. In sheep shearing, time is important, but the way you handle the sheep and keep them comfortable and controlled is the main thing judges look for.
When he won the national award, McCutcheon was recruited by a professional shearing company to work full time out west.
“I was invited to be a part of a shearing band that would migrate from Texas to the Dakotas. I would have been able to make in 4 months times more than I made all of probably 20 years before I made that much money as a pastor.”
But instead- he decided to stay in West Virginia, and that’s where he plans to stay, even as he puts down his professional sheep shears next summer.
Although he officially retired as a Methodist preacher, he was recently asked to return as a pastor, so he’ll be continuing that work next year.
On February 29, 1888, Stephen B. Elkins gave his first political speech in West Virginia—at a rally in Wheeling. He soon bought into the state’s leading…
On February 29, 1888, Stephen B. Elkins gave his first political speech in West Virginia—at a rally in Wheeling. He soon bought into the state’s leading Republican newspaper and built a summer mansion in the Randolph County town that would bear his name.
In the post-Civil War years, Elkins had been a political official in the New Mexico Territory. On a trip to Washington, D.C., he’d met his future wife, Hallie Davis—the daughter of Henry G. Davis, a U.S. senator and one of West Virginia’s richest men. The Republican Elkins and Democrat Davis made a fortune developing West Virginia’s coal, oil, and timber resources. Despite being from different parties, they shared similar political interests and forged a dynamic team. Three years after his Wheeling speech, Elkins was named President Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of war. In 1895, Elkins was elected to the U.S. Senate from West Virginia. More than any other person, he built West Virginia’s Republican Party into a powerhouse that dominated state government from the 1890s until the Great Depression. Davis and Elkins are also remembered for the college they helped found in Elkins.
