Stagecoach stop on the Northwestern Turnpike, by Joseph H. Diss Debar (e-WV).
If you’re driving down Route 50 through Mineral County in West Virginia, blink and you might miss a curious stone structure on the side of the road. If you were a stagecoach passenger peering out from your horse-drawn carriage this L-shaped building would be a cause for celebration. This Stone House, also known as Traveller’s Rest, would mean the end of a long day's journey. As you draw closer, you’d notice no two stones composing the house are alike. The jagged blocks of Traveller’s Rest, fit together like jigsaw pieces, were cut and hauled by mules and horses from a mountain two-and-a-half miles away. These equine engines defined land transportation in the early nineteenth century. In the age of horse-drawn wagons and carriages, travel was no small feat and the people who relied on Traveller’s Rest viewed the process of getting around fundamentally different from today. For them, the landscape of the Appalachian Forest could be wild and unpredictable and the journey itself was always far from mundane.
The Stone House from the back, on the right is the original house while the ell-shape jutting out on the left was added to become Traveller’s Rest.
The Stone House was built in 1810 and an ell-shaped structure was attached to it in 1827 by Luke Kuykendall. Kuykendall had just purchased the land after plans for a turnpike running through it were drawn up. Kuykendall’s addition would be called Traveller’s Rest, an inn and stage-coach stop on the Northwestern Turnpike.
Travel on land in the first quarter of the 1800s was cumbersome to say the least. Roads were often little more than trails and horses, being living beings, needed food, water, and rest. Transportation was largely centered around waterways since boats lacked many of the horse’s animal limitations. When it came to traversing the country on solid ground, the National Road was a rare and exemplary route. Running to the north of Virginia, from Cumberland, MD, through Pennsylvania, and reaching Wheeling, VA (now WV), the turnpike was frequented by migrants and merchants heading westward to the Ohio Territory while its stagecoach lines maintained a high quality of service to satisfy the members of Congress travelling to Washington, DC.
Transit in the 1840s (Kappa Map Group)
Preceding the construction of the National Road, Thomas Wallcut travelled through the Virginian backcountry in the 1790s after purchasing a share in the Ohio Company. On his return journey he describes a ten-day trek from the Ohio River to Cumberland where they rode horseback, walked up to twenty miles a day, and waded knee deep in rivers and streams. Wallcut’s western interests were shared by many, and the National Road capitalized on it. If Virginia had their own path to the Ohio River, converting the undeveloped terrain surmounted by Wallcutt into a smoother, more straightforward turnpike, they could divert the flow of transit to benefit the state and its businessmen.
Under the direction of Claudius Crozet, a veteran of the Napoleonic army who also designed the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, the Northwestern Turnpike charted a path through the wilderness. The towns touched along the way would blossom as a result. Luke Kuykendall’s Traveller’s Rest anticipated this incoming flux; Luke had an advantage since his brother, Nathaniel Kuykendall, served as Superintendent in the construction of the eastern part of the Turnpike. While Luke profited by offering a rest stop for weary travelers, human and horse, to sleep and refuel, Nathaniel opened a stagecoach service once the route was finished in 1838.
The Route of the Northwestern Turnpike through (presently) Mineral County, Traveller’s Rest is located as two dots on Mill Run between Ridgeville and Burlington (Library of Congress).
An ad for Nathaniel Kuykendall’s coach service describes a three-day trip from Winchester, VA, just east of the Allegheny Range, to Parkersburg, VA (now WV) on the Ohio River. For a fare of $16, (around $540 in today’s money) one could take a journey with “first rate” teams and drivers through “scenery [that] is romantic, and quite interesting to the traveller.” When distance was measured in days instead of hours, a trip was no small commitment. A journey of 200+ miles at a pace hovering around 5-10 mph enabled the patient traveler to take in the beauty of their surrounding environment. This slow-rolling world was full of curiosities for an observant passenger.
Along with the romance of a passing countryside, the stagecoach journey was an intimate endeavour. A passenger was crammed in with eight-or-so other companions, people from all walks of life, from frontiersmen and prostitutes to the elite upper crust. Segregation could hardly be enforced, so enslaved passengers sat alongside white riders. Over the course of the multi-day journey, riders swapped stories, shared meals, and forwent customs of modesty as they awkwardly climbed over each other to reach their seats. The driver proved to be often the most entertaining figure, as someone brimming with gossip, local history, tall tales and anything in between.
Passenger solidarity was heightened by the tiresome, regimented schedule riding a stagecoach, rising by daybreak and riding into the night. Once at a rest stop they hardly got a break from these known strangers. An English traveler, Morris Birbeck, describes the American inn as a place where privacy is nonexistent. Travelers gathered at large tables covered with giant portions of food, in typical American style, and ate together. Additionally travelers “must receive their entertainment en masse, and they must sleep en masse,” for after crowding in small rooms, “you are fortunate if you escape a partner in your bed.” Custom dictated that opposition to such intimate conditions was being “standoffish” and “antisocial.”
a former room of Traveller’s Rest
Stage-coach passengers who reached at Traveller’s Rest along the Northwestern Turnpike at the end of a taxing day of travel had ample reason to feel relieved despite the inn’s cramped conditions. At the bar a drink, maybe whiskey (or a mint julep for those feeling more frisky), would take their mind off the day's excitement. Perhaps they needed to recuperate from the hard, backless benches of the coach, an unlucky day getting drenched in the rain and stuck in the mud, a terrifying crossing of a rickety bridge, or a hot summer trip where the dust from the road got everywhere. At least they had avoided the greater dangers: being overturned, blown off bridges, having to desert a coach stuck in the snow, or getting into an accident on the account of two competitive drivers.
Picture yourself as a stagecoach passenger along the Northwestern Turnpike. What would travel entail? How would you feel about a journey that may take hours in the automobile age, lasting for days instead? Perhaps you’d be rightly upset from the horses trotting along at a pace too slow, the peril of precipitation stalling your journey or making your clothes muddy and wet, or uncomfortable encounters with strange bench- and bedfellows. But if you allow your idea of travel to match that of the stagecoach age, you might see things differently. A trip becomes an adventure. What does speed feel like when it's the sound of thundering hooves and the feeling of the whipping wind? What would distance mean when beautiful landscapes elongate from minutes to hours and hours to days and the features of the land become close enough to observe and experience? We might see the environment as a dynamic agent in our lives and its unpredictability a source of challenge and great excitement. And while choosing our own company seems to be an irreplaceable luxury, what might we miss with the sudden, close-knit acquaintance of strangers? Perhaps you would enjoy being entertained with local knowledge and gossip about the country you pass through and engaging with travellers of all walks of life in swapping enough tales to last your trip. In the stagecoach age travel was an experience viewed less in terms of convenience and more so as a great venture into the unknown.
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See other places to visit to learn more about the history of transportation in our region.
References
Birbeck, Morris. Notes on a Journey in America from the Coast of Virginia to the territory of Illinois, London, UK: Severn & Co., 1818
Boyer, Roger. “National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Travelers Rest,” West Virginia Division of Culture and History, 2006.
Daley, Scott. “From Turnpikes to railroads: Antebellum transportation improvements and community development in Taylor County, Virginia,” Graduate thesis, West Virginia University, 1999
Earle, Alice Morse. Stage Coach and Tavern Days, New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1900.
Hair, William. “Stagecoaches and Public Accomodations in Antebellum Georgia,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 68, no. 3(1984): 323-333
Kuykendall, George Benson. History of the Kuykendall Family, Portland, OR: Kilhan Stationery & Printing Co., 1919
Lewis, John, N Kuykendall, and J Hildebrand. “North-Western Turnpike Road,” Alexandria Gazette, Aug 9, 1839, p. 3
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.
Wallcut, Thomas. Journal of Thomas Wallcut, in 1790, ed. George Dexter, Cambridge, UK: John Wilson and Son, 1879.
Walker, Elizabeth Dye. The Old Stone House “Traveller’s Rest”: A History in Bits and Pieces, Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company, 2008.
