58 



THE DESTRUCTIVE AGENTS OF FORESTS. 



Progress of the Lumber Industry. 



It is not known when or where the first saw mill was built 

 and operated in West Virginia. It is probable, however, that 

 there were a few built by the early settlers who occupied the 

 valleys of the Potomac river and its tributaries prior to the 

 year 1755. No records have been examined that confirm or 

 deny this statement, but it is reasonably safe to say that there 

 were a dozen rude water mills in the territory now occupied 

 by Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Hardy, Grant and 

 Pendleton counties as early as 1775, and that the number had 

 increased to five or six times as many by the year 1800. There 

 may have been more at each date. A record dated in the year 

 1810 states that there were about 50 saw mills running in 

 Berkeley county alone at that time. 



Those who left the settlements on the Potomac and 

 other settlements in the east and north to take up lands and 

 establish homes west of the AUeghanies had doubtless become 

 familiar with the water saw mill and knew its value, but many 

 of them journeyed such a distance that it was not possible for 

 them to take anything so cumbersome as machinery of this kind. 

 As soon as roads could be cut through the wilderness, however, 

 among the first things to be hauled over them were the clumsy 

 irons of these mills, which were taken farther west, year after 

 year, until they reached the Ohio river. "We find that there was 

 a flourishing colony established on the Monongahela river as 

 early as 1758; that there was a settlement containing 5,000 

 people on the Ohio river near Wheeling in 1769 ; that colonies 

 were established at Parkersburg in 1773, and at Point Pleasant 

 in 1776. During the decade between 1770 and 1780 settlements 

 were begun in a number of places along the Cheat river in 

 Preston and Tucker counties; along the Tygarts Yalley river 

 in Randolph; along the Monongahela and its West Fork and 

 Tygarts Yalley tributaries in the whole region now embraced 

 by the counties of Monongalia, Marion, Taylor, Harrison^ Bar- 

 bour, Lewis and Upshur. During the same period, or slightly 

 earlier in some cases, settlements were established on the Green- 

 brier river in Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties, and in the 



