Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
Fairmont State University assistant professor Don Teter gave a presentation about the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike last Saturday at the Durbin Public Library.
Teter, a retired surveyor, teaches surveying, history and political science at FSU. He has been studying and collecting information about the turnpike since the 1970s and is working on publishing a book on the subject.
In his presentation, titled “Through Thick and Dark Laurels,” Teter discussed the actions that led to construction of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, which is still used today.
Teter said he derived the name for his presentation from the report given to the Virginia General Assembly by principal engineer Claudius Crozet in 1827. Crozet reported on the difficulties in identifying a potential route across Greenbrier and Cheat mountains, stating:
“… it being impossible, in some places even to explore without cutting the way through thick and dark laurels.”
“What he’s calling Greenbrier Mountain is the mountain between here [Durbin] and Shavers Fork,” Teter said. “Then from Shavers Fork on over to the Tygart Valley, is Cheat Mountain.”
The need for the turnpike first came to the Virginia General Assembly when it saw how many people were settling in the western part of the state – now West Virginia. It served two purposes – it gave the assembly access to the people and gave elected officials in that area better access to Richmond, Virginia.
“There were people who saw an opportunity here, but it was important to find ways to be tied to the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia,” Teter said. “It was also important – and this was part of the impetus for the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike – it was important for the state of Virginia to be able to hang onto western Virginia to get those connections.
“Before those turnpikes were built, people that were elected to the state legislature from areas like Clarksburg or Beverly or other areas– to travel to Richmond – went north, following the topography,” he continued. “Went northeast and either followed roads or eventually, railroads, to get to Richmond.”
The other reason for the turnpike was to try to strengthen ties between the eastern and western parts of the state – and later – between the two Virginias.
In 1811, the Virginia General Assembly appointed Matthias Whitman and William Currence, both of Randolph County; and Peter Hull and John Yeager, both of Pendleton County, as commissioners to mark out a road that would connect the east and the west.
“They were to mark the way for a road from the Mouth of Riffle’s Run across Allegheny Mountain to the headwaters of Jackson’s River and to continue then all the way to Parkersburg,” Teter said. “The interesting thing was it was to be funded by unpaid taxes. Delinquent taxes from the period before 1808.”
Teter found that quite humorous.
“This is people living out in this country before 1808 that haven’t paid their taxes and you think you’re going to build a road with the money that you’re going to collect from them,” he said.
For obvious reasons, the funding didn’t work out the way they planned.
In 1817, they incorporated a company to build a road from Staunton to the Ohio River in Sistersville. A year later, the commissioners were told to get subscriptions – to have people buy stock – to fund the road.
“Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, eventually, when it was actually built, was financed by the state,” Teter said. “They organized turnpike companies in a lot of parts of the state and the idea was they would sell stock, and it would maintain the road and pay profit to the stockholders.
“It didn’t work out that way,” he continued. “Usually what would happen is either forty or sixty percent of the stock was sold to the public, then the state would buy the rest of the stock and of course, the state never got any of that money back, either.”
Not a lot happened until five years later when Crozet, who was the principal engineer of Virginia, was hired to survey the best way from Staunton through the mountains to Parkersburg.
Crozet was an engineer in Napoleon’s Army until he emigrated to the United States and lived in Virginia and Louisiana, working as an engineer, until he finally settled back in Virginia.
Crozet used triangulation from mountaintop to mountaintop to find the distance and best route for the turnpike.
“He was a very meticulous, very well-trained engineer,” Teter said.
When Crozet engineered the turnpike, he relied not only on a compass, but also solar observations.
“He even did solar observations to find astronomical north,” Teter said. “That’s not something that would have been really common at that time. The compass needle points to magnetic north.”
Teter said that magnetic north is constantly changing, and he has seen this happen in his years as a surveyor. He had his compass calibrated to magnetic north in Elkins and years later when he went back to do it again, magnetic north had changed several degrees.
“There are some places out in the Midwest where astronomic north and magnetic north are as much as thirty-five degrees away from each other,” Teter said.
That is why it was important to Crozet to use both in order to have exact measurements for his survey.
Teter showed a couple of Crozet’s maps and field notes, stating he had transparencies of the maps that could be laid over current maps and the turnpike lines up rather well.
A second map showed the town of Slavens Cabin, which was renamed Durbin. With this map, Teter said today’s highway is “pretty much dead on” to the turnpike as Crozet engineered it.
“I have record of another turnpike, the Summersville and Slavens Cabin Turnpike and some of that was built,” he said. “They never built the part from Valley Head to Slavens Cabin. That would be straight across Cheat Mountain, and they already had, at that point, Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike going down to Huttonsville.”
At the end of his presentation, Teter opened the floor to questions and welcomed those in attendance to take a closer look at the maps he printed.
The event was sponsored by the Upper Pocahontas Community Cooperative and Durbin Public Library.
