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Surge Of New Visitors Pressures Tucker County, W.Va.’s Towns And Wild Places

Tucker County, West Virginia, has seen a surge of new visitors in the years since U.S. 48 opened from Washington, D.C.

Drawn by nearly 130,000 of acres of rugged state and federal land, these new visitors have seen the previous drive four or five hours up winding mountain roads shrunken down to less than three hours along the road, also known as Corridor H — easy, breezy four-lane highway. The growing number of visitors has boosted business, but it’s also strained the resources of a county with one stoplight and just 7,000 year-round residents.

Maddy Carter of Washington, D.C., visited the Tucker County town of Thomas on a recent Saturday in May. She and a friend perused vintage clothes at Quattro Music Co. and Frock and Roll Vintage.

“We looked at getaways close enough that we could get to for a long weekend,” Carter said. “And we heard lots of good things about Thomas.”

Thomas sits up on a mountain; even in May, threatening clouds filled the skies and occasionally throw down snow flurries. But the weather didn’t deter the numerous pedestrians busy exploring Thomas’ art galleries and shops.

“When I ask people where they’re from, it’s now 80% ‘D.C. Beltway, D.C. Beltway, D.C. Beltway, Northern Virginia,” said Quattro, the record store owner.

Darrin and Nikki Queen drove up from nearby Upshur County — a tradition they started as teens and now as a married couple. They can see the change just on social media.

“Now, it’s like an Instagram spot,” said Nikki Queen. “Now, it’s like everyone has to come and have their Instagram photos there.”

It’s true that Tucker County makes for great photos. Elected officials have expanded public land around Davis and Thomas for decades, both through the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Dolly Sods Wilderness.

With the pandemic driving everyone outside, Tucker County is seeing more people than ever. That’s good for business. But it’s also created problems, especially for working people in the area, said Quattro.

With many owners of rental properties converting them from annual leases to Airbnb properties, “ our service staff can’t afford to live here,” Quattro said. “They’re being moved to Parsons, which is 15 miles down the mountain, which on a good day is 15-20 minutes drive. On a bad, foggy, trafficky behind-truck day, it’s a half-an-hour-plus drive.”

Many of the county’s current residents found the county through outdoor recreation. Matt Marcus first visited in 1984, and decided to stick around. He now works at Blackwater Bikes in the town of Davis. Over the years, he’s grown frustrated with public land expansions and the way they’ve fueled the rapid growth in visitors, which puts more stress on the people already here.

“Used to be April, November was totally dead around here,” Marcus said. “And then now, it’s just regular business going on [all year long]. And if we have a nice summer, it’s going to be crazy this year.”

That should position the bike shop for a big year. But it’s been hit by pandemic-related supply chain troubles. Marcus says that usually, the shop would have 30 or 40 new bikes available by May. This year, it had two.

“We’re looking at probably the worst year ever, when we should be having our best year ever,” Marcus said.

His co-worker, Sue Haywood, said the county can’t keep up with the new growth.

“A lot of wealthy people are coming in here and buying second homes, but then at the same time like this, the town of Davis doesn’t even have the capacity to change the trash bags in the town park,” Haywood said.

Down the road at Sirianni’s, an Italian restaurant that’s been a cornerstone in Davis since the 80s, co-owner Walt Ranalli felt more optimistic. He pointed to the artistic renaissance in Thomas, and growing opportunities for entrepreneurs.

“It’s so nice to see young people buying the buildings, doing galleries, being able to ship their work all over the world,” Ranalli said. “I don’t think anyone imagined what was going to happen after they opened up that highway. We’re within about a six-hour drive of a quarter of the United States population.”

Ranalli, previously one of the nation’s youngest mayors in Thomas, acknowledged that the towns aren’t keeping up. But he said those problems are solvable with planning and smart investments.

“We only have one stoplight in the county, which is Parsons, and we envision three up here eventually,” Ranalli said.

One story that came up repeatedly involved a policeman setting up to direct traffic at the turnout from Blackwater Falls State Park.

“It took over an hour to get out of the park on a Saturday because the traffic was so backed up,” said Ruth Bullwinkle, the park’s chaplain.

Like a lot of locals, Bullwinkle can see different angles to the growth in visitors.

The good thing is that there are people coming in, there’s money coming into the area that was so depressed, but the bad thing is that a lot of people coming in don’t appreciate the beauty,” Bullwinkle said. “They don’t take care of the creation that’s here.”

Matt Baker, the superintendent at Blackwater Falls State Park, acknowledged that the crush of tourists can create problems, especially at peak times like in fall leaf-looking season. But he added that the flood is also laying the groundwork for the next generation of visitors and adventure seekers.

“Last summer, we saw lots of families [with] young kids that went camping that may never have gone camping,” Baker said. “They fall in love with it. They’re taking their kids 30 years from now.”

Baker said those camping trips happening now will ultimately build the next generation of people who love — and protect — places like Canaan Valley and Dolly Sods.

“Yes, some of our special places are getting more discovered,” Baker said. But “without generating those future people, our protected areas aren’t going to be as special.”

West Virginia Could Play A Role In Revolutionizing How We Travel

Updated on Dec. 18, 2020 at 8:40 a.m.

In October, Gov. Jim Justice and Virgin Hyperloop made a major announcement. West Virginia would be home to the first hyperloop certification center ever in the country.

“For years, I have been saying that West Virginia is the best kept secret on the East Coast, and it’s true,” Justice said in a press release. “Just look at this announcement and all it will bring to our state – investment, jobs and tremendous growth.”

A hyperloop is a new concept for transportation that can move people and goods through pods in a vacuum at roughly 600 mph. To put that into perspective, a hyperloop could theoretically enable travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago in about 40 minutes, or from New York City to Washington, D.C. in just 30.

The hyperloop concept was first proposed by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Virgin Hyperloop’s new certification center will include a six to seven-mile test tube in the Canaan Valley covering parts of Tucker and Grant counties. The center is expected to be completed in five or six years.

The project may create up to 10,000 construction jobs in that time. Once fully operational, it could employ anywhere from 150 to 200 people with engineering and high-technology backgrounds who either already live in West Virginia or want to move here. West Virginians are expected to be given priority in the hiring process, according to company officials.

Long term, there may be efforts to connect the test track in the Canaan Valley to Morgantown, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

Reporter Liz McCormick spoke with Mike Schneider, vice president of project development at Virgin Hyperloop, over Skype to learn more about the certification center, hyperloop technology and what this could mean for West Virginia and the world.

Transcript below. This conversation was edited for clarity.

MCCORMICK: In layman’s terms, what is a hyperloop?

SCHNEIDER: The concept of hyperloop is…it’s almost closer to aviation than it is to a train. It relies upon several technologies that exist but have never been actually combined to form an actual transportation mode. So, the centerpiece of hyperloop technology is a process called magnetic levitation. There’s a series of magnets along the track. And there’s a series of magnets inside the vehicle. And what makes the vehicle move is the pulling function of the magnets on the track, attracting the magnets on the vehicle. But if you put that system inside a tube, and then evacuate the air, so there is essentially no friction — because it’s the air friction, which is largely a deterrent to speed — but if you remove the friction component, then have it operate in effectively a vacuum, there’s almost no limitation to how fast those magnets can pull the vehicle without there being any air resistance. So, that’s what allows us to get up to 650 or 700 mph within the tube once evacuated of air.”

MCCORMICK: What will the certification center in the Canaan Valley be doing?

SCHNEIDER: The first step is evolving and proving the technology works at scale, meaning at speed. You probably have seen videos or reports of our recent successes with our initial, much, much shorter test track in the Nevada desert above Las Vegas, where we have actually achieved speeds in a very short tube, about a third of a mile. We achieved speeds of about 250 mph, which obviously is an acceleration that humans couldn’t withstand. But it has proved the concept of magnetic levitation in a vacuum tube. And then of course, just a couple of weeks ago, we did put two live people in a vehicle and did demonstrate that we can move people in a vehicle in a vacuum tube. We of course didn’t take it up to that speed; they achieved about 110 mph within the third of a mile. But we proved for the first time ever that people could ride in a hyperloop vehicle. So, the real purpose [of the certification center] is to have a facility where the technology can evolve, be tested, and be used with government observers and monitors to assure that all of the safety provisions are embedded, and that it is indeed safe and therefore can be certified. So, that’s the ultimate mission.

MCCORMICK: Why West Virginia?

SCHNEIDER: We chose West Virginia for a number of reasons. All of which are very, very relevant. We had four basic criteria. One, what were the corridors that were being offered? What were the alignments? Would they work for hyperloop as a test track with respect to the speed and alignment that we wanted to achieve? Secondly, what kind of funding and financing proposals were being proffered by the states to partner with us? What kind of incentives and packages were being put on the table for our review? Thirdly, what was the composition of the team? Who would we be working with? Who was leading the team? What organizations, public and private, would comprise those teams? And finally, what kind of overall support was there? Political, community, business? And frankly, West Virginia, scored exceptionally highly on all four of those. And in the end, it was not a difficult decision.

MCCORMICK: Was West Virginia’s workforce something you took into consideration when you were considering the location in Grant and Tucker counties?

SCHNEIDER: We know that the location is not in the middle of Los Angeles or Dallas or even Kansas City, but on the other hand, the commitment that [West Virginia] seems to be already making to both education, to job training, to employment growth, to a focus and a movement from an extraction economy, in many ways to a high technology economy. All of that was quite compelling to us. We knew there weren’t hundreds of thousands of workers living in Tucker and Grant counties at this point, but we also knew that this was an area that, over time, would be developing in a number of different ways, and we felt that the attraction of this high technology enterprise would be quite a stimulus for both local residents, those in school in West Virginia, and others from around the country who would move to West Virginia because of the opportunity to work on this project.

MCCORMICK: How do you envision a project of this magnitude affecting West Virginia’s image throughout the rest of the country?

SCHNEIDER: I think it’s best summed up by what Gov. Jim Justice told me when I first came to the state a year ago to take a look at the opportunity and to talk to our potential partners. Justice said in his characteristic style, ‘you will find out that we are the can-do state. If we say we’re going to make this happen and be your partner, we will.’ When you’ve had as many decades working with elected officials as I have, you take that with a bit of a grain of salt. But he was absolutely right. It was uncanny how enthusiastic everyone from the research community, the university community, the private sector, the state has been about this. And one of the things that we really like is the notion that we can be part of, I guess what I would call a transformative project, that everyone we’ve talked to in the state feels will do a great deal to help advance the economy and put the state on the map as an emerging, advanced technology center.

MCCORMICK: Looking nationwide, what do you think the impact will be from this certification center? On the country and the world as we explore how we are going to travel in the future?

SCHNEIDER: It’s time for two things to happen. We haven’t had a new mode of transportation in over 100 years. I think it’s time. Secondly, we want to take the status of our planet seriously, and we need to find new methods of utilizing less energy and having less impact on the environment. So, you know, while there are states in the country that I think might be viewed as having a greener ethic than one would think of West Virginia — I’m not sure that’s true. I think there’s a great desire to support a new direction, and I think having the technology development and deployment centered in West Virginia is going to be very positive for the state. Think about what Houston was before the Space Center was put there in the 1960s. Houston went from, kind of the home of the energy elite and the oil and gas industry to the space center capital of the world. And it didn’t take more than a decade or so for that to happen. I’m not sure that [hyperloop is] on that grand a scale, but it’s not a bad comparison.

Civil Rights Legend J.R. Clifford Dies: October 6, 1933

Civil rights trailblazer J. R. Clifford died on October 6, 1933, at age 85. A native of present-day Grant County, he served in an African American unit during the Civil War. Afterward, he taught at a black school and founded Martinsburg’s Pioneer Press, the first black-owned newspaper in West Virginia. He used its editorial pages to fight for better economic and social conditions for African Americans.

Five years later, Clifford became West Virginia’s first African American attorney. In this role, he fought landmark trials against racial discrimination. In the case of a Tucker County teacher, he was one of the first lawyers in the nation to successfully challenge segregated schools. He also helped organize a national civil rights meeting in Harpers Ferry that was a springboard for the N.A.A.C.P.

In 1917, he wrote a series of forceful editorials opposing U.S. involvement in World War I. In response to the criticism, the government shut down the Pioneer Press—after 35 years in print—for violating postal laws. Today, Clifford is remembered as one of the great civil rights leaders in West Virginia and the nation.

July 13, 1861: Battle of Corrick's Ford

On July 13, 1861, the Battle of Corrick’s Ford was fought in Tucker County. After the Confederate defeat at Rich Mountain in neighboring Randolph County two days earlier, General Robert Garnett pulled his men back to present-day Elkins along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike.

There, Garnett received bad intelligence that Union forces controlled the town of Beverly, located just to the south, so he turned his troops to the northeast.

Union Brigadier General Thomas Morris chased Garnett’s men to Shavers Fork in Tucker County and overtook them on July 13 at Kalers Ford.

The two sides fought a running battle down Shavers Fork to First and Second Corrick’s Ford, where the Southerners’ wagons bogged down in the mud and sand. At the second crossing, Robert Garnett was killed, making him the first general to die in battle during the Civil War. The Union forces captured a large number of Confederate soldiers and their baggage train at Corrick’s Ford. The remnants of the Southern troops eventually found their way to Monterey, Virginia. The Confederates never again controlled that portion of Western Virginia for more than a few days.

Tucker County Mine Permit Renewal Draws Concerns Over Future Of Beaver Creek

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection heard from the public Wednesday over whether it should allow coal mining to resume at a strip mine in Tucker County.

Mining stopped at the Beacon Mine after the West Virginia Department of Highways took 43 acres of the permit to build Corridor H, which is part of the Appalachian Development Highway System.

Mine operator, Beacon Resources, was never able to restart operations and in 2013 sold the mine to Keystone Coal Reserves. Since then, the now 136-acre site has sat largely inactive. Now, Keystone wants to start mining.

Many of the residents and conservation groups who attended Wednesday’s virtual meeting, which was requested by conservation group Friends of Blackwater, feared mining pollution could undo years of restoration work on nearby Beaver Creek — a tributary of the Blackwater River — and hurt outdoor recreation in the area.

“This surface mining is within the Beaver Creek watershed with impacts on water quality and ongoing stream restoration that many state and local agencies have committed to improving,” said Emmie Cornell with Friends of Blackwater. “Beaver Creek has recently been restored and improved enough to support trout, a milestone that would be devastating to have threatened by the discharge from this mining and future reclamation site.”

DEP officials said the mining operation would be subject to period inspections including water testing upstream and downstream of its sediment ponds on Beaver Creek.

Others, like Matt Hauger, a resident of Davis, expressed concerns that Keystone Coal Reserves would not fully reclaim and restore the site as required under their permit and by law.

“The economics of the situation were such that the original permit holder was allowed to leave the site devastatingly compromised, to leave open landscape sore, a dangerous landscape sore that has been there for far, far too long,” he said. “Might that happen again? Why take the risk? Is this really the only way that we can proceed?”

In a question and answer period prior to taking public comment, Division of Mining and Reclamation Acting Permit Supervisor Clarence Wright said the DEP would step in if the company were to fail to do reclamation, but it would prefer to allow Keystone to move forward with mining.

Wright said in recent years, while trying to restart operations, the company had come close to forfeiting its bond.

“DEP would prefer they didn’t. If they continue their mining and get this reclaimed it would save DEP and the state of West Virginia a lot of money,” he said.

The agency is accepting comments on the permit renewal number S200710 until 5 p.m. on Thursday. You can email them to Clarence.E.Wright@wv.gov.

DEP is also accepting comments on the mine’s water pollution permit, orNational Pollutant Discharge Elimination System or NPDES permit, WV1029444 , until July 3.

March 20, 1864: Skirmish at the Sinks of Gandy

On March 20, 1864, a Civil War skirmish occurred at the north end of the Sinks of Gandy in Randolph County. In the shootout, Union troops killed three Confederates and recaptured goods the Rebels had stolen from a Tucker County general store.

The Sinks of Gandy is one of our state’s most unusual places. Gandy Creek—a tributary of Dry Fork—seems to sink under the earth at a blind valley south of Yokum Knob, flows through a tunnel-like cave, and emerges about three-quarters of a mile downstream. It was famously described and sketched by David Hunter Strother in an article for Harper’s Magazine.

The Sinks may be the most visited wild cave in West Virginia. The cave takes the entire flow of Gandy Creek and can flood at a moment’s instant following a rain. A 1941 story in the Saturday Evening Post recounted how four cavers were trapped in the Sinks for hours.

The Sinks of Gandy have become even more popular in recent years due to the writings of Jack Preble and Martin Null, who wrote an award-winning 2010 short story on the topic.