“A small company of about fourteen English and as many Indians, under the command of captain Henry Batt… set out together from Appamattox and in seven days march reached the foot of the mountains. The mountains they first arriv’d at were not extraordinary high or steep, but after they had pass’d the first ridge they encounter’d others, that seem’d to reach the clouds, and were so perpendicular and full of precipes, that sometimes in a whole day’s march they could not travel three miles in a direct line. In other places they found large level planes and fine savanna’s three or four miles wide, in which were infinite quantity of turkeys, deer, elks, and buffaloes, so gentle and undisturb’d that they had no fear at the appearance of the men,” - Thomas Salmon, 1737
Among the fantasies of a bountiful New World that beckoned to European settlers, the large, hefty bison stood tall. This American mammal, a symbol of the continent and adorning the National Parks Service logo at the bottom of this page, is descended from the last surviving megafauna who roamed the western hemisphere. The buffalo, known taxonomically as Bison bison, once ranged west to Utah, South to northern Mexico, North to Canada’s Northwest Territories, and the earliest written documentation of the bison places it in present day Washington, DC. The Appalachian mountains were a long but permeable barrier to the eastern extent of the bison, as in the case of Henry Batt’s expedition where just west of them lay large herds in the savannas and plains of West Virginia. Batt’s encounter with buffaloes in West Virginia was not as rare an incident a couple centuries ago. Encounters with bison dot the early pioneer history of the region, and although the last recorded bison in the state was killed in Randolph County in 1825, their former presence continues to shape human society.
Indigenous placenames in West Virginia and western Maryland (click to expand)
Buffalo prevalence in the land east of the Mississippi is thought to be a relatively recent development, from the last five-to-six hundred years. They followed the expansion of the eastern prairies, engineered by Native Americans. An expansive Mississippian culture had once covered a region from the Mississippi River to the Ohio Valley, with a focus on large, agriculturally-based centers. While their large fields started to cut into the eastern woodlands, it was the arrival of Algonquian and Siouan speaking groups who helped coax the bison further east. With stronger hunting traditions and a tradition of fire, they burned old fields, left by previous cultures, and forest margins to develop an eastern prairie shy of the Mississippi River that served as both buffalo habitats and hunting grounds.
Further into the eastern woodlands, the bison made use of prairie-like enclaves. The Algonquian-speaking Shawnee in wooded West Virginia, used controlled burning to develop new micro-ecosystems for the bison, who they then utilized for subsistence and other materials. Their fire regime both flushed out game and ensured rich soil for returning grasslands lands, while beating back any encroaching forest, creating pockets of meadows and pastures. This is what Batt and co. witnessed when they crossed the Allegheny mountains of the Appalachian range, “large level planes and fine savanna’s three or four miles wide, in which were infinite quantity of turkeys, deer, elks, and buffaloes.”
New prairie lands and the invitation from tribes with a bison culture were not the only pull factors, additionally there was salt. For hundreds of millions of years, most of North America was underwater. Entrapped seawater deep underground is firmly sequestered in most areas, yet Appalachia, where the structurally jagged crust created by the range allows avenues for the salt water to travel to the surface. These salt springs, now sourcing historic resorts and spas in the AFNHA, were first raved over by bison willing to travel hundreds of miles for the highly enriching salt.
Ecoregions of the AFNHA, background image from Izel Native Plants
In West Virginia, the forests of the plateau region could be burned back to create flat, grassy meadows. In Upshur County early settlers reportedly witnessed “herds of Buffalo, Elk and Deer, which gamboled sportively around.” In 1778, geographer Thomas Hutchins had noted that “the whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buffaloe, Deer, Turkeys” in the lands between the Monongahela and Little Kanawha River. Salt springs in Webster, Braxton, and Greenbrier Counties and manmade fields drew the bison to travel further east.
To reach salt springs, bison traveled in small groups and often in a single file line. Undertaking lengthy journeys, their path also had to provide access to food, by way of meadows and freshwater via streams. When stringing these points together, the herds would map a path of least resistance described by William Hornaday as, “as good a piece of engineering as could be executed by the best railway surveyor, and… governed by precisely the same principles.” Buffalo trails navigated steep terrain by following ridges while avoiding high peaks and hugging valleys with access to freshwater and grassy clearings. The power of their hooves, volume of the herds, and frequent use of the same paths created deep and distinct roads. These paths were muddy, plant-free, and could reach a depth of several feet. Descriptions ranged from them being as narrow as a foot to as wide as two wagons. Along the sides of bison trails were vegetation the buffalo might have grazed and most likely spread. Running buffalo clover, named for its distributor, in addition to pea vine and winter fern were often described in close proximity to the trails.
The indigenous people of the Appalachian Forest often worked in conjunction with the bison for their mutual benefit. Samuel Hildreth, drawing from early settler manuscripts about the Ohio Valley, identified the “autumnal fires of the Indians” that cleared space for “the buffalo clover, and the wild pea vine… supplying the most luxuriant and unbounded pastures to the herds of deer and buffalo.” Alongside meat and fur, the bison also provided ready-to-use trails. The north-south routes made by bison in their seasonal migration were also followed by traveling indigenous peoples and served as highways for tribes at war, emigrating populations, and general travel. The Seneca Trail, running north-south through Randolph, Pocahontas, and Greenbrier county, likely originated as a bison trail and now holds the marker for the last bison in West Virginia’s death site. East-west trails were also common, used for crossing the Allegheny Mountains and often linking the old fields maintained by Indigenous people, freshwater springs, and salt.
Bison trails and the “Indian” trails that adopted them were utilized by early settlers in the region, with the even terrain, gentle grade, and ample width often suitable for wagons. At salt springs, settlers drew their name for the place from the elk, deer, and bison’s propensity to lick the salt-enriched ground. In Webster County, there was Hacker’s Lick, Buffalo Lick, and Fork Lick, now known as Hacker Valley, Cleveland, and Webster Springs respectively. Salt was crucial for all animals, including the early settlers who used the bison trails to find it.
Bulltown of Braxton County, its name also deriving from the buffalo, was the site of one of West Virginia's earliest salt factories, established in 1809. As the name betrays, the bison likely led the pioneers to the salt. Similarly, salt also led settlers to bison. Early salt-makers at Webster Springs often observed the herds that frequented the nearby lick. Webster County historian William Dodrill described the lick as a meeting point for “scores of buffaloes” in which “battles royal often occurred between the leaders of herds from different localities.” When congregated at the lick, the bison were rarely attentive of their human observers.
Bison trails and points, mapped by Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy, et al. in “Primeval Paths”
This proved a problem for the majestic West Virginian bison. While indigenous people hunted the bison, they did so with keen ecological awareness, being sure to enable the replenishing of their population and often creating the habitats for them to do so. White settlers viewed the New World as a ripe garden of Eden for their taking. The game was, in Thomas Salmon’s words, of “infinite quantity,” and the colonists had exclusive “free liberty at all times, for ever hereafter to discover and view… to have, hold, occupy and enjoy,” as described in a decree from the Queen Elizabeth of England to the earliest European explorers. Wanton hunting of the bison and the wasting of their resources came to characterize the final human interactions with the animal in the Appalachian Forest.
In 1769 a herd of buffaloes had eaten the crop of a group of settlers who lived on the Buckhannon River. Out of vengeance, pioneer John Hacker pursued the herd on foot via a forty mile long buffalo trail which took him four days. He ended up at Buffalo Lick, present day Cleveland of Webster County, where he witnessed a stunning congregation of bison, deer, and elk. Hacker shot a single buffalo cow, skinned her robe, and extracted a choice portion of meat to bring home as “jerk.” Having killed the buffalo in a trophy hunt, he left the rest of the animal to rot into waste.
Where once bison had been described in infinite abundance, by the early nineteenth century they were disappearing quickly. The last reported bison killed in Webster County had been shot by Colonel Isaac Gregory in 1812 at a lick now commemorated as Buffalo Bull Knob. In 1825, West Virginia’s last reported bison had been tracked with her calf from Webster Springs to Valley Head, Randolph County where they were felled. Although the last chapter of the buffalo-human relationship has ended in wanton extermination, the legacies of earlier cooperation survives.
The bison trails, carved with enviable design and adopted and maintained by Native Americans still shape travel in the Appalachian forest. Many modern roads follow a path initially set by bison, such as portions of the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike in Braxton County, now roughly US Route 19. The buffaloes initially blazed a course from a salt lick at Saltlick Creek to islands on the Elk River in Sutton which many settlers observed as being better than a county road. During the Civil War the route was worn down to disrepair by Union and Confederate troops. Another key Civil War route, the Parkersburg-Staunton turnpike, is believed to follow the traces of bison in Randolph and Upshur County. This is now on US Route 33.
The settlers’ first gateways to what lay west of the Appalachians were opened by the bison. In 1750, the Ohio Company desired a path for their traders to reach the Ohio River from an outpost in Cumberland of Allegany County, Maryland. They contracted Lenape Chief, Nemacolin, to chart the course. He did so by marking a preexisting Native American path that had been adapted from an earlier buffalo trail. In 1754, French-and-Indian war lieutenant colonel George Washington expanded Nemacolin’s Trail to be a wagon road. From there settlers could stream past the Allegheny Mountains and ignore any restrictions on expansion deemed by the Crown. In 1811, Nemacolin’s Trail, also known as Cumberland Road, became the starting point for the first national highway built by the US government, the National Road. The National Road quickly became clogged and destroyed by overuse, and declined when railroads began running through the Appalachian Forest.
The railroad surveyors who looked to expand into West Virginia often found a good part of their work had been already done by them. The bison, whom Hornaday had compared to being on-par with the best railroad engineer, set the route for many westward ho-ing locomotives. The railroad that overtook the National Road in the mid-nineteenth century, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, crafted its route over the Alleghenies from bison traces. To reach the Ohio River, the B&O route followed the paths of least resistance through the Appalachian terrain of Allegany County and Garrett of Maryland and Preston County of West Virginia among others. Another Allegheny crossing, by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad from Hot Springs, Virginia through the range and into Pocahontas County, is also said to be charted by buffaloes. Manifest Destiny enthusiast, Missouri Senator Thomas Benton, once claimed that the buffalo had shown the way for the railroad to reach the Pacific Ocean.
The history of bison in the AFNHA unfolds like a windy trail that aligns with a stream of human change. Their presence and proliferation in the region was first blazed by indigenous tribes who brought a fire regime to the Appalachian forest, creating and maintaining the savannah and meadows that invited, hosted, and fed migrating buffalo. The well-engineered buffalo trails proved so useful that they were shared by Native Americans. When European colonists came to West Virginia, they found much needed salt by way of the bison. Yet the settlers’ domineering conception of the New World broke the balance between humanity and bison leading to their abrupt extermination in West Virginia. As a parting gift, and now a ghost of our past cooperation, we have adapted bison trails in order to navigate these mountainous lands. The cars and locomotives that traverse these paths of least resistance owe a great debt to the herd-minded engineers they now succeed.
Works Cited
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