Wandering, and wondering why these sites were so clean, I stepped on what might be the most interesting find, not the most humorous or noteworthy, but a link for me with this camp and a photograph. Free of rhodies and underbrush, and not even using the detector, I stepped on a pile of glass. This was no ordinary pile of glass. At first sight, I recognized the telltale brown glass as beer bottles. There were few pieces larger than a silver dollar, but fingering through the fragments, it was clear that the beer was German Beer, brewed in Cumberland Maryland. I really wanted an unbroken bottle, but that was too much to ask. There must have been a hundred or more bottles in that pile, for it was very deep and wide. There was no evidence of a campfire, like a contemporary Stroh’s pile and fire ring, so I took it for the real thing. Holiday time restraints ended this exploration here, but beer brewed in Cumberland somehow reminded me of something as I drove out of the woods to an Easter dinner. A few weeks later, I came across the Cumberland Brewing Co. in Clarkson’s book. Figure 237 in Tumult on the Mountains shows cases of beer in the background, some of them from Cumberland. (I particularly like the fellow passed out in the foreground.) Woodhicks boozing in camp? I think so.

Some three months later, I ventured to another predetermined spot, hoping for a third score on this lumber camp search. Just like the two before, the railroad evidence was striking. I found four branches of railroad exactly where I expected the camp to be. There was some nice elevated stuff and some really steep grades indicative of Shay locomotives. This camp had the classic look of an old camp, as I had formulated them in my mind. This quick hour of exploration satisfied me that this was another camp. The obligatory horseshoes, axe heads and bits of iron settled any question in my mind. This camp seemed to be the cleanest of the three, for there was nothing on or above the ground to find, but it showed, even from the road, industry influences. Brookies in the stream nearby were an added bonus.

Since exploratory searches, I have been back to each site several times. Each time, of course, revealed more artifacts and clues as to how these camps were arranged. Artifacts is just a nice word for rusted iron junk, but, for me at least, a chance to hold a scant piece of American history from an important era to the land I love. The third site did give up fragments of a beer bottle or two from a brewery in Columbus, Ohio. There was no name of the beer, as in German Beer, like the second camp. I also found some bricks near the third camp while fishing. Again the rare bricks, obviously too valuable to leave behind once a camp was abandoned. The first camp visited finally gave me something to talk about and value.

Two years after my first visit to the first camp, I decided to try the rhododendron forest across the creek instead of the nice spruce grove. Anyone who has tried to walk in a laurel break knows that this is hard enough. Imagine trying to work a metal detector along the ground in any kind of covering pattern and walking! I think that nonsense lasted about twenty minutes. But on the way back to the road, I still worked the electronics. Just within sight of the road, I heard a blip that was different from the dull tone of the usual lumberman’s iron. There was something else under the duff than a spike or shoe. My excitement was heightened when I pulled a tarnished coin from a felt-like mat of rhodie roots. I tossed it in the air and caught it, savoring my prize before I looked. Imagine my shock and horror when I rubbed away the tarnish from a 1994 Jefferson nickel! How did this coin get into this rhodie hell? The only thing I could imagine was that spot was someone’s facility once. Like I said, shock and horror. But the day was saved when I found a somewhat fragile brass buckle in the same area that I had covered twice before. This was the first thing that I found that could really be called an artifact .It was much too thin and delicate to have belonged to a hick, unless he was a dandy. Thus two mysteries in one day. These lumber camps are like eating salt cured ham. They make one thirsty. Oh, the ham makes you get up at 2 AM for a gallon of water, but the camps cloud themselves, as if in salt, and, like the ham, just beg you to get more.

The reader might notice that the locations of these camps have been by-passed. There is a good reason for that, in fact several. Those will be left for the reader to decide. I will share one more nugget. These three campsites share one thing in common. They were all built on forks of streams. All of the forks were topographically convenient for the railroads, and probably gave the camps two water sources, a third if the water below the forks was also used, which it must have been. There is another camp of which I know, but have never visited, that was also built on a fork. But this gets us into topography and even geology. Think about it. The lumbermen’s largest challenge was the lay of the land, not the trees.

I selfishly hope these sites will remain in obscurity, but, somehow, want the logger, his railroad and his camp forever to remain in the minds of anyone who travels the mountains. Perhaps there could be an effort to reconstruct a logging camp at Cass, for instance. The Cass Scenic Railroad is a marvelous achievement and the singular link to West Virginia’s logging history and loss of those enthralling forests. Why not bring the railroad and the lumberman’s camp together for a better understanding of that railroad, the men that used it and how they lived while using the rails? Their lumbering was complete. Their methods were destructive. Their story is captivating.

These few words lay fallow in respect for the work to be done to give our history of the boom time substance. It was the best of times, economically, for the populace, but a horrible crime upon the land.

Jocie Armentrout, from her book, Pioneer Days to Present in Four West Virginia Counties, quoted before, again masterfully handles our theme. "I remember having roamed the primeval forest in my childhood. It is a memory I especially cherish, for it is a privilege children today cannot have."

We need a better understanding of what happened to that cherished memory. For me, it has started following old railroad grades to forgotten camps, something that I especially cherish.