Much like the gold rush of the west, some forty years earlier, Tucker County’s boom was also its bust. The trees that brought the railroad, the saw and the "woodhick," brought the most prosperous time Tucker County will ever know. Towns grew from the forests and the establishment of the railroad. Towns that became incorporated, probably, to vote out liquor, generated new towns, just outside the corporation, where booze flowed freely.

This pattern was not new to the world. The California gold rush, as well as other early western mineral operations, reflect the same boom to bust pattern. In fact, ghost towns are synonymous with the old west. Unless locally known, little is known about the ghost towns of the east, the lumber towns, but the story is the same.

Like insects, once the crop was totally consumed, the industry moved on. Towns died, some without a trace. Most likely, the saloons were the first to go once the saws shut down, for after weeks in the woods, the lumberman loved his drink. Railroads were torn up and sold for scrap. Businesses packed up or died like slash. Everything dried out. Once exposed to the sun that had never penetrated the virgin forest canopy, the forest duff burned, often to bedrock. Some fires smoldered forever and burned, not only cut timber stacked in the yards waiting shipping, but destroyed many acres of virgin forest, thus wasting both the virgin forest and timber production.

The high plateaus of Tucker County, once called "Canada" by the settlers on either side of the ridges, and held with dread for the deep snows and Laurel breaks, finally fell to the lumberman’s crosscut and his fires.

Jocie Armentrout captures the period. "Huge profits went to the mill owners, who were all from out of state, and West Virginia was made poorer by millions of dollars – that is, if our resources had been intelligently handled."

The forests of "Canada" are gone forever, but we have a rich history from that boom era that cannot be forgotten. Forever will there be stories and traces of that time for those willing to look or those willing to care.

Certainly, most of us have wandered along some favorite creek or hiked the main trails of our wilderness areas. Trails along the Laurel Fork, Otter Creek and Red Creek were once humming logging railroads. Signs of this activity are quite evident, especially along Otter Creek, where there are some lengths of rail strangely bent and rusting midstream. This is historic art; the artisans long gone. It is ironic that these arteries into the original forests would be ours into the second growth. These rails to trails comb the mountains. Much of the railroad mileage is lost to roads. However, there is so much lost to the forest. That is as it should be since the forest lost so much from those crossties.

Looking deeper onto these rail lines, and along side them, were the lumber camps. Let us call them the ghost towns, for they were small towns themselves. The lumber camps were where the hicks ate, slept and idled while not in the woods. The camps had fully stocked kitchens (the cook was the most important man in camp), stables, a sawyers shed, where saws and axes were honed, a bunkhouse and dining room, and other outbuildings of necessity, be it the foreman’s office or the house of necessity.

Clarkson gives us a wonderful eye into the camps in his book, Tumult of the Mountains, but not much else is known about them. Most of their locations are lost in time and recaptured by the forest. Some camps are mentioned, thankfully, in the printed word, and here lies the story.

In my years walking up and down trout streams and cross country in the highlands, there came the fascination with all the evidence associated with the boom era. Way up in the very headwaters of Stony River, while bow hunting, I came across a twisted crosscut saw. This rusted blade really meant nothing to me for several years. While in another headwater trout fishing, I found many more bits and pieces of rusted metal – and lots of it. Drawing from what a revered old timer had told me about the railroad spikes along some trails we had traveled together, I suspected that I had found an old logging camp. Some time that week, or later the next, I went to the Davis and Elkins College library and found Clarkson’s book, Tumult on the Mountains. Since I opened that book, my eyes are keenly peeled for any trace of what those people did to the mountains. I can never thank that man or that book enough for the deep joy and profound wonder that I have had studying the history of the mountains.

It is fortunate that I was already a passionate brook trout fisherman, for all the creeks that hold those mountain jewels also gave the railroads a line into the forests. Even without kicking around likely spots, I found things left behind. Before the sweat even dried from my hands from clutching "Tumult," I found a calked boot, almost intact. (I wish I had picked it up and kept it.) Every turn and cut of the railroad along those streams became a construction miracle to me. Cinders and hunks of coal deep in the woods were like finding gold. There was an intense activity of the past that was found everywhere, but it took me until I was well into my thirties to figure out where the action was.

Four years ago, this coming March, I came up with the idea of looking for logging camps. I really wish that I could remember the exact moment of revelation, but that, too, is lost in the past. Since then, I have found three camps that I have explored several times with a metal detector, am hot on the trail of a forth, and have spotted several places while trout fishing that have "that look." After exploring confirmed sites, the places with "that look" might come later. It is hard to discount "that look." One camp has no look at all, but is the most interesting. Ah, those wacky woodhicks!

March 29, 1997, under a crisp sky and warming sun, armed with a metal detector, hand trowel, notebook, and the most important tool, the map, I set off to find my first camp. The location was predetermined, and as it turns out, exceeded my expectations. A few steps into the woods let me know there was a railroad there. I followed that until rhododendron blocked the way, not far, about one hundred yards or so. If nothing else happened, I was happy simply to walk up this old grade, the streamside rails of the "brookie" streams somewhat forgotten with this new found road.

Working back from the rhododendron with the metal detector, I was blessed with my first finds. These were close to the old railroad and in a really pretty spruce grove alongside the grade. Never has a twelve-inch brook trout given me so much a thrill, as finding and holding such simple artifacts as a broken

J-hook, two horseshoes and some unknown fragments. Lying about in the spruce was plenty of broken crockery. This didn’t surprise me, because since the early days in the woods, pottery and glass crossed my path more than once. I was confident that I had found the camp. This lumber camp searching was easy!

There was time left in the day for a quick trip to another place where I knew a camp might be. This place was full of railroad evidence, more than I ever noticed in such a small area. Almost dominating this place was a very large railroad fill or elevated grade. Cinders and coal fragments blackened the earth where grass or ferns failed to grow. Being level and almost six feet high in places, at 96 years of age, this elevated grade still held its integrity. It was beautiful. I followed it for about 100 feet until it ended like a broken tooth near the creek singing close by. How would I have loved to see the bridge that spanned this creek! The old bridges were marvels in woodworking, the engineers having no shortage of raw materials. I had to laugh at myself when I crossed the creek following the path the bridge might have taken. The streambed was pretty wide, filled with rocks just big enough to make walking an adventure and rhododendron confined it like iron bars. "Why can’t I ever do anything normal?" I asked myself with a laugh. I decided that poking a metal detector through "rhodies" was easier than a fly rod, and found the other bank soon enough. Picking up a hiking trail, I followed it back to the present day road. Across the road, some rails went in the opposites direction, downstream. Somewhere along that grade, I came across some long moss-covered humps – railroad ties. I’d seen them before in other places, but not like some of these. Again, at 96 years, some of these ties were incredibly preserved, some still holding 90-degree corners instead of rotten rounds, more common. Wandering around, thrilled at those railroad ties, I never did come across anything of this lumber camp. I knew it was there, but found out that this searching wasn’t as easy as the first stop that morning.

His son, Levi, came to settle next to him on Rose Hill, by which was then called Pase Hill. The first child born in Thomas was Jacob’s granddaughter, Maude. Jacob’s son, Amos, was the first to die, contracting lockjaw while constructing the second house. John Henry Pase was the first man to die in a coal mining accident near Thomas.