That eyesore by the bridge

For several years Davis High Valley Real Estate has had the property at the bridge (above right, by the pond in the Riverfront Park) listed for the incredibly out-of-sight price of $1.1M. The lot contains the old Highland Motel, a convenience store (complete with inventory on its shelves from years ago (do you think the beer is skunked yet?)), and a gas station (gee do you think there are problems underground?). This 2.7 acre plot has been marketed as a hotel, gas station and restaurant, but in reality it is a demolition job and a substantial gas station removal and remediation project.

This multi-year listing at a stunningly unrealistic price, combined with the public health and welfare damage of an abandoned, open, building chock full of mold, water and who knows what, has been and continues to be an embarrassment and annoyance to area residents. For 5 years people have asked me to please buy this piece of junk and transform it. Sorry, I may have overpayed a bit for one or two parcels, but few people would be foolish enough to pay 8X to 12X its value just because its owner, Roger Fussell, decided to ask for that.

Well, I have learned recently that this gentleman has passed away. I haven't had the opportunity yet to discover whether the property will go through probate yet, and what the plans for its disposition may be.

Sold at a market value that reflects the risk or actual cost of Underground Storage Tank removal and related remediation, plus the demolition of the old hotel, this property is potentially worth less than 1/10 of its asking price. The comps for that section of Davis raw land are around $50k an acre (flood lines considered). I know, because I created those comps buying land on the other side of the Riverfront Park. Now the demo will cost $50K+ easily, and the UST removal will be a minimum of $25K (speaking from experience with a clean removal down the street).

Additionally, a large strip of the parcel runs behind the buildings of main street and is subject to adverse possession claims by every owner who has used that alley as a means of egress over an extended period.

This parcel is the other bookend to the Davis Riverfront Park and is important to the Town's future for that reason, as well as its prominent location. That does not make it valuable, but it makes it extremely important to the community, and to the value of real estate in Davis.

Consider this plan for that property: Where the motel is, a larger multi-story structure with retail and Inn/Hotel/Condo suites; ample parking; an alley and townhouses along the railroad bed strip facing the park. Call or write if you would like to form a team to take out that property when it becomes available.

It IS a small town....

The Davis Riverwalk tract is shown in beige and the Town of Davis' Riverfront Park is next to it in green. Google has not yet implemented the streets of Davis Annex (west of 7th) , and has a ways to go before our new 911/delivery addresses are accurately reflected.

View Davis Riverwalk in a larger map

Remembering the mill days

In a vacant lot near 3rd and Thomas Ave in Davis, not a sign of any past structure can be seen. But at one time it seems to have been the site of Worden Hotel. Long since burnt and removed, the Worden Hotel was a favorite of spelunkers in the 50's, as this photo suggests. On June 17, 1958, Mr. Riley Worden sat down with reps from WVU for an interview about how things were back in Davis' boom days. Here is a brief extract of his thoughts on the Babcock mill, which was located along the Blackwater, today the site of the Town of Davis' Riverfront Park and the Riverwalk tract.

Transcript of recorded interview:
Lambert: When were the mills built in Davis?
Worden: Gam Rumbarger, he started his mill in ’(18)85.
Lambert: Where was it located?
Worden: Right down here across from the depot, where the mill always stood. Right below this big bridge down here, you can see a lot of the concrete stuff down there.
Lambert: Now tell us about the operation of the mill and the cutting of timber and the floating of the timber down the Blackwater, Mr. Worden.
Worden: They had no log trains in here then and most of the logs was floated down the river. Mr. A. Thompson and his son, Frank, floated the logs down to the sawmill down here. They had three splash dams. They had one on Sand Run and one on Little Blackwater and the big one up here 2 ½ miles above Davis, and all the logs came into that dam and then they would open the booms for about an hour and let the water bring the logs on down to the mill out here. While Rumbarger’s were in here they only took out the timber, the cherry lumber. They hauled that in from Canaan Valley in big sleds. They didn’t float that, they hauled that.
Lambert: That was done during the winter season.
Worden: Yes, during the winter season.
Lambert: …and the Rumbargers sold their plant to the Thompsons.
Worden: They sold out to the Blackwater Boom and Lumber Company and so the Blackwater Boom and Lumber Company bought out Gam Rumbarger and then Mr. Thompson came in here, he bought a lot of timber up in the swampy land here and he was going to float it down the river too. Mr. Hamilton knew there would be a lot of trouble sorting their logs and Thompson’s logs down here at the mill. Sortin’ them out of course, they stamped them all on the end. Then Mr. Hamilton, when they bought Rumbarger out, Rumbarger then went to Elkins and put in a mill up around Mill Creek. Then Mr. Thompson came in and he built a mill down below town here a mile, before Babcock put in a hardwood mill, but he just had the framework up and that is what started Blackwater Boom and Lumber Company to sell out to Mr. Thompson because they would have all this trouble sorting the logs. Then they sold that mill to Beaver Creek Lumber Company up here. The man who put it in was Jag Allen from Hagerstown and they took all the timber out back on the land.
Lambert: That was on Beaver Creek?
Worden: That was Beaver Creek. I was just a boy when they bought that mill. I was seven years old when they bought that mill and I was five years old when I came to Davis.
Lambert: How many mills were built in Davis?
Worden: Well, the Blackwater Mill burned down twice and they rebuilt it and the Beaver Creek never did burn down. That ran until they had all the timber, mostly all, cut out and they only took the best timber. There was so much timber cut in those days out in this section, at Pendleton Run, out there. A man named Burger had a mill down at Pendleton Run that is 2 ½ miles from here, and he had a big mill down at Douglas. They only took the best timber. The hemlock lumber sawed only brought $6 a thousand and the best of spruce only brought $18 a thousand. Mr. Burger cut this big timber down anywhere from 4 to 5 foot across the tree and just took the bark and left the timber lay and rot, and they did that all over this country.
Lambert: Now tell us a little more Mr. Worden about Rumbarger cutting the cherry and walnut and bringing it in on bobsleds.
Worden: They did that for a couple of years. The snow in those days came along in October and it stayed until April. It never left then the way it does now. It might have been because of the big timber being here, what kept the winters cold. You know back years ago up at your home the winters were colder and lasted longer.
Lambert: What conveyance would they use to bring the sleds in? Would they have horses?
Worden: They used horses. When Mr. Thompson came in here he brought some oxen in with him from up in Ridgeway (PA). They used the oxen where they couldn’t use horses, in the swamps and skidded the logs out with them. I forget just what year it was they came in.
Lambert: Tell us about Mr. Babcock buying the Thompson’s out, Mr. Worden.
Worden: Mr. Babcock came in from Pittsburgh. Him and his two brothers came in and they were here just a few days buying Mr. Thompson out. When they bought Mr. Thompson out they put in a lot of improvement on the mill and then they brought the trees in, the whole tree and tried it. It would take two of the long flat cars to haul the trees in and they had a jig saw across from the mill where they sawed this up into logs instead of hauling the log in. They ran that for a couple of years but that wasn’t a success so they went back to cutting the logs anywhere from 14 feet up to 20 feet. Mr. Babcock had brought in the skidders which Mr. Thompson had never used. They took the timber out of the Canyon with these skidders where Mr. Thompson was going to build a mill down there in a place called Lime Rock. He was going to cut his timber in the Canyon and float it down Lime Rock to his mill down there. Of course, all the timber in high grounds he brought that in on bob trains or he couldn’t have gotten it out of the Canyon by trains. Mr. Babcock had put in a lot of switchbacks down the Canyon and took quite a bit out, what he didn’t get out with skidders. Then he took most of the timber out on both sides of the Canyon on the right hand side of the Western Maryland Railroad, what when down to Hendricks. He took that all out on skidders across the railroad over on the other mountain and that is where they dropped them. Then they loaded them up with loaders and loaded the log trains.
Lambert: About how many camps did they have in Canaan Valley when they were operating in the Valley?
Worden: Mr. Thompson had about five lumber caps and then Mr. Babcock, after he got up in there, he took out so much timber out of the sawmill with skidders, he had in there three or four camps up there. Then they kept on building the railroad they bought a lot of timber over in Grant County. They bought enough timber to run twenty years over there. Mr. Viering was a wood superintendent for Mr. Babcock and he was coming in from Stony River Dam one evening. It was raining and the old gentleman had a straight connected engine and when he got at the top of the hill he didn’t put the brakes on quick enough so the engine got away from him. He had five cars on, flat cars. The men on the train was a fireman, a conductor and another man. They jumped off the train and Mr. Viering came down into the lowlands at a pretty bad curve and the engine turned over and killed him. It buried him in the mud. Well, after that Mr. Babcock then sold all his timber out over in Grant County to people that had small portable sawmills. He quit business then, so that finished up our lumber business. If Mr. Viering could have only lived, our sawmill could have run 20 years longer than what it did.

Digging into Riverwalk site's past

I'm still reeling from all the impressions made on me by a trip to Pittsburgh Wednesday. Several years ago I had begun poking around on the internet for vestiges of companies, men, and mills that occupied the present site for Davis Riverwalk. I had browsed the few books on the industrial history of the area and found over and over again that Davis history -- despite its scale and duration of boom times - was barely documented.

A couple of years ago I searched with Google for the Babcock Boom & Lumber Company. Amazingly the main operator of the mill operations in Davis, Babcock Lumber, was still in existence and even celebrated its Davis history on its corporate web site. Consider that this is a business that cut and milled virgin timber in the Valley at the turn of the century, and today they still exist as a lumber company with the same name, and run by the grandaughter of the principal founding Babcock, E.V. Babcock.

I began a dialog with the corporate office that eventually resulted in an invitation to visit their offices in Pittsburgh, where we reviewed archives for anything related to the Davis operation. Cindy Phillips, the author of "Images of America: Tucker County", joined me for the visit.

It turns out that E.V's son, Fred Babcock, who died in 1997, had made a sustained effort over years to collect and preserve the history of Babcock Lumber. In that effort he had corresponded with several prominent Canaan Valley community members who had records and photos from the days of industrial pioneering. The folks at corporate still carry Fred's enthusiasm for Babcock's legacy in their hearts, and welcomed me and historian/author Cindy Phillips to come in and review their archives. What is also refreshing is that Babcock Lumber company sees the old photos and documents as both special and -- ultimately -- for the public to appreciate.

Yes, we saw photos we have never seen in the usual collections on the area's industrial history. And these will be collected for the public to enjoy. But for me the biggest surprise was how rewarding it was to get a glimpse of the Babcock family and the corporate culture they built over more than a century. It was captivating to read letter after letter between Fred Babcock and various decendants of the early families of Canaan. It was clear that one could spend several years on a full time basis doing interviews, research and writing from the clues and information we saw Wednesday.

There are no structures, few artifacts and little writing to tell today's residents and visitors what happened right here on this site, along this river. The promise of fuel for our collective imaginations lies in a digital history: history writings, letters, photos and drawings. Many of these bits exist and seem to satisfy the hunger of their collectors or original owners, but you and I don't get to know much of it without going into research mode -- yet.

Fun in the Valley and even living on the mill site in Davis Riverwalk has its merits even with no understanding of its history, but for many it will be that much richer with a sense of the people and stories that took place here, where the Beaver Creek flows into the Blackwater River.

The three 'trade routes' to Davis

Here is a Google MyMap with the three routes and some initial placemarks. There is an additional segment to our vacation property in Timberline as well.

View Davis Riverwalk in a larger map

Christmas in Canaan

It's been a classic Christmas

Kicked off by the Nor'easter December 19th, this holiday season has been blessed with Canaan's full winter conditions. A big lake-effect snow before Christmas, an insane ice storm with 26-mile an hour average winds and 45mpg gusts, a couple of warm days that let the snow become mist...and now the mother of all lake effects is burying us in 2ft of powder while the temps hold in the high single digits...Yes it's the real deal in Canaan this holiday.

Skiing today is limited to those who are either immune to the temps or are out of days to choose from. Wind chill is 5 degrees on the valley floor here, so it is of course out of control up on top.

Since listing Rock'n'Laurel (in Timberline) for vacation rental, we already have our first guest scheduled. Two more pioneers of mountain luxe will be getting the 20% promo discount.