Summary
Satisfying eastern tannery's growing demand for beaver more often came to the "Point" by canoe and raft from the Kanawha region's tributary creeks. Isaac Vanbibber and Daniel Boone's trading post was established about 1790 at the mouth of Crooked Creek at Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Hudson's Trade Post and early landing appears on the 1807 Madison map opposite St Albans. By this decade, the steel trap had increased efficiency as beaver became scarce within two decades. Fewer beaver dams brought drainage of many creek's "lakes". A shift to the state's other natural resources began in ever-increasing export quantity and a change to the riparian zone. The next century brought farmsteads on these naturally "drained" wetland creek bottoms. These settlers saw a slightly different "Topography as the study of place".
A network of local produce exchange was carried between the farmers' landings and major town markets along the rivers. For example, one pair in the 1880s, the paddle wheelers Courier and Express, carried the mail between Wheeling and Parkersburg. These two steamboats passed each other daily, boating also with local produce and passengers.
Kanawha Harbor had a great amount of freight and passenger lay-over after the "Old War" of the 1790s. Kanawha salt production followed by coal and timber floats were moved from West Virginia streams to the populace of other regions. A number of riverside locations were used for early Industrial Revolution keelboat building in the Kanawha region, including at Leon, Ravenswood, Murraysville and on the Little Kanawha River. Earlier 19th century steamboat building and machine repair were located at Wheeling and Parkersburg followed by Point Pleasant and Mason City. Wooden coal barges were built on the Monongahela River near Morgantown, on the Coal River, and some on the Elk River near Charleston before metal barges became the trend. As an example of how local water works progressed, Kanawha Harbor's boat building increased after a horse-drawn logging "tram" with special block and tackle for the hillside harvesting was brought into use and some expansion of Crooked Creek. Later, this tram and other steam machinery were used for collecting timber to be used as railroad ties in the railway construction along the Kanawha River. It was finished about 1880. This brought the small steamboat landings of the farmers along the rivers to use the railway. Many railroading spurs were built throughout West Virginia connecting mines to the riverboats' barge and coal-tipples.
Read more about this topic: Waterways Of West Virginia
Famous quotes containing the word summary:
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)