The Old Stone House on the left, trucking facility on the right
When Elizabeth Dye Walker lived in the Old Stone House of Mineral County in the beginning of the twentieth century, getting around employed a diversity of methods. It could mean a horseback ride, a horse-drawn buggy, or taking the Twin Mountain & Potomac Railroad, which rolled through her property blasting its whistle so she could run outside and wave. Nowadays, both the horse and train find themselves on the margins of transportation. Where the railroad once ran, across the Northwestern Turnpike from the Stone House, now lies a trucking facility. The future of transit was never self-evident, and before the present dominance of the gas powered automobile there were many contenders. Elizabeth Dye Walker’s childhood in the Stone House was colored by these various modes for motion, the resilient horse-drawn buggy and sled, a fruitless fruit-filled train, and a peculiar horseless carriage.
Traveller’s Rest ledger in 1870 (courtesy Mineral County Historical Foundation)
Elizabeth’s grandfather, George Russell Dye and his brother-in-law Enoch Bales, purchased the Stone House and the adjoining Traveller’s Rest, a stagecoach stop along the Northwestern Turnpike, in 1870 at the tail-end of the stagecoach age. They planned to acquire enough property to develop a family farm, and achieved this by 1875 when they closed Traveller’s Rest, ceasing its operation as a stagecoach stop. The final years of the inn survive in its records. In addition to hosting coach teams for the Northwestern Turnpike and providing their horses with hay, the inn also provided rest for farmers and pastoralists taking their cattle to market. Not all could afford stagecoach fares or their own wagon, and instead traveled by horseback or on foot. Traveller’s Rest provided hay, dinner, and a bed for around $1 ($26 in today’s money).
Decades earlier, in the 1830s, the stagecoach had already been overshadowed by two dueling giants: the canals and the railroads. Water transit was the basis of wealth for many merchants, the Potomac River as busy as any modern highway. Canal supporters championed the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, intending to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio River. For the more imaginative, the newfangled steam-powered railroad was the way of the future. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad charted a similar course to reach the Ohio River. While both projects started on July 4th, 1828, the C&O never made it past the Potomac River, in Cumberland, MD, while the B&O reached Wheeling, VA (now WV) on the Ohio in 1853.
The B&O makes it to the Ohio River, while the C&O (on the border of Virginia and Maryland) stalls at Cumberland (Wikimedia)
Running just north of the Northwestern Turnpike through western Virginia (now West Virginia), the B&O railroad proved unbeatable. Locomotives didn’t stall during the wet season like the stagecoaches, and railroads could actually turn profitable, unlike turnpikes. Train fares undercut stagecoach prices, especially for heavy shipping, and the ease of a day-long trip outbid a three-day voyage through an unpredictable, albeit romantic, countryside. The trade implications of railroads were immense; the volume of coal and timber among other resources that could be shipped via rail would create abundant riches for Virginian industrialists.
Following the opening of the B&O in 1853, the Northwestern Turnpike entered an era of neglect. Maintenance issues added up and the Civil War left the road in disrepair. In the wake of the turnpike’s deterioration, the Dye family found it more feasible to farm than to operate an inn, as they closed Traveller’s Rest in 1875. The Northwestern Turnpike limped into the 20th century, clinging on as a feeder road to the B&O. While the railroads defeated the stagecoaches, they never fully banished horse-powered transportation.
Elizabeth Dye Walker (courtesy Mineral County Historical Foundation)
The memoirs of Elizabeth Dye Walker breathe life into our image of the Stone House in the early 20th century. The day to day of getting around still required horse-drawn carriages and wagons, especially for a rural population. Removed enough from the mass-produced commodities made more accessible by the railroad, the Dye family had to put in conscious effort to supply their way of living.
When the Dye family needed heat, Elizabeth’s father, William Dye, strapped his horse and set out at daybreak on a long trip to Mount Storm. Roughly 40-miles there and back, he would trot in by dusk with a fresh cart of coal. To keep things cool, they waited for the ideal ice-harvesting day: when the pond-ice was thick and the weather was fair. Carved ice was lifted by a pulley and packed into sawdust and hay on a horse-drawn bobsled. That was their year's supply for refrigeration.
The Dyes got creative with their horse-power. When the holiday season came around William Dye added to the festivities by hooking up a team to their bobsled and adding sleigh bells. They would ride to church, school, and the family home of Mary Dye, the mother of Elizabeth and wife of William. For young Elizabeth, picking up friends and dashing through the snow to the sound of jingle bells was a total joy.
Courtesy Mineral County Historical Foundation
The last decade of the Dye family’s residence at the Old Stone House saw the sputtering of a railroad, and the rise of the automobile. In 1912, William Dye and his father granted a strip of land through their property to the Twin Mountain and Potomac Railroad company. The TM&P was building a line to connect fruit orchards to the B&O line at Keyser, WV. In addition to fruit, the line carried passengers and wood products. While the TM & P made memories for those like Elizabeth Dye, it did not make a profit. Less than a decade after the line was completed, it was shut down. The cost of locomotives had saddled the company with debt, the investment required for building tracks through steep terrain proved too burdensome, and a new technology, mass-made on assembly line, was redefining transit.
Automobiles provided a more versatile and personalized form of transportation. As a result they overwhelmingly overtook both horses and locomotives. Elizabeth Dye remembers her first encounter with the “horseless carriage” when her friend took a reckless joyride that ended off a bridge and at the bottom of Mill Run. No disastrous accident could slow the automobile, however, and they proved to be the mode of the future. When the Dye family moved from the Stone House to Indiana, they did so on a touring Studebaker, leaving behind their once-reliable horses. They travelled west on the Northwestern Turnpike, newly rebuilt for its renaissance in the age of cars.
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References
Daley, Scott. “From Turnpikes to railroads: Antebellum transportation improvements and community development in Taylor County, Virginia,” Graduate thesis, West Virginia University, 1999
Pawlett, Nathaniel. “A Brief History of the Roads of Virginia 1607-1840.” Virginia Highway and Transportation Research Council, 1977 (revised 2003).
Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860, New York, NY: Rinehart, 1951.
Twin Mountain and Potomac Railroad, Traveller’s Rest/The Old Stone House, Burlington, WV.
Walker, Elizabeth Dye. The Old Stone House “Traveller’s Rest”: A History in Bits and Pieces, Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company, 2008.
