Joe asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, and I said "Come to Braxton County with me." I thought his face was going to fall on the floor. Still, he was game enough to agree to go. We went Monday, two days before my birthday. It was below freezing in the morning, sunny once the sun came up after 7:30, and 62 in the afternoon.
Mapquest says it is 91 miles from Morgantown to Sutton, the county seat of Braxton County. That's close enough that I don't have to stay over. It's a straight shot down I-79 from Morgantown.
I've been through Braxton County before, heading south. US 19 cuts off of I-79 south of Sutton. I-79 goes to Charleston; US 19 goes to Beckley and is the fastest way to most of the Carolinas and Florida from Pittsburgh or Buffalo. Flatwoods is an interchange on I-79. There are gas stations, fast food places, motels and an outlet mall with a Tommy Hilfiger store, an Amish bulk foods store, a Book Warehouse, with last year's best sellers at seventy percent off, and a Chinese buffet, where we lunched. Joe liked it better than I did. He was happy there was any kind of ethnic food in the boonies.
My goal was to hit each of the ten places listed on The National Register of Historic Places. I try to see a park, a synagogue, a college or university, a shopping mall. I guess the outlet mall in Flatwoods counts for the mall. We visited Burnsville Lake, a Corps of Engineers project with a dam, campgrounds, a historic park (with three National Register sites), and a boat launch. There is no synagogue or college in the county.
As in many places, we could see the importance of the rivers which include the Elk and Kanawha, eighty miles upriver from Charleston. Railroads cross the county. I didn't see any active train stations. There were skirmishes in the Civil War, as the Confederates tried to break the Union's water, rail and road supply lines. There were many Confederate sympathizers in the area, and indeed, we saw houses and trucks with Confederate flags one hundred fifty years after the end of the Civil War.
We had warm, dry, sunny weather at the same latitude as Santa Rosa in California. I was glad to have Joe with me. We left home at 9:30 and were home by 5:00.
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| Burnsville Bridge, 1893, over the Little Kanawha River, Burnsville, not in use |
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| Burnsville Lake, near Napier, maintained by The US Army Corps of Engineers |
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| Union Civil War Fortifications, Bulltown Historic Park, near Napier |
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| Cunningham House, Bulltown Historic Park |
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| portion of Weston-Gauley Bridge Turnpike, Bulltown Historic Park |
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| Braxton County Courthouse, Sutton |
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| Old Sutton High School, 1924, not sure what they are doing to it |
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| Elk River, Sutton |
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| Haymond House, Sutton, 1894 |
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| Sutton Historic District |
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| Main Street, Sutton |
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| Gassaway Depot, 1914, originally on the Coal and Coke Railroad, later acquired by the B&O. Vacant since 1988. |
