Boom, Bust & Rebirth

Boom, Bust and Rebirth. . , Before the timber boom in the New River area, the Glade Creek and Piney Creek valleys contained about 50,000 acres of virgin pine and substantial stands of yellow poplar and oak. This seemingly endless old-growth deciduous forest was a siren song for timber companies, as loggers with hand saws, axes, and teams of horses cut and dragged the trees from the mountains to sawmills and mill towns., By 1930, as much as 90% of the gorge had been deforested. Logging practices of the time meant that ‘boom’ towns like Glade and Hamlet went ‘bust,’ and old rail lines were abandoned. The Hamlet sawmill closed in 1936, and the metal girders atop the Glade-Hamlet bridge were recycled by the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) at other bridges along its routes., New River Gorge National River, a unit of the National Park Service, today protects over 72,000 acres of Appalachian forest, including the remains of Hamlet and Glade. Today’s intrepid visitor can find stone foundations of the sawmill at Hamlet, and the piers of the old bridge still stand tall in the New River. The mature hardwood forests are slowly returning, as natural re-growth once again covers the ridges, slopes and valleys of Glade Creek and its tributaries.