WEST \TRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



117 



early as 1846, and perhaps several years earlier, there were many 

 persons employed along Elk river in constructing flat-boats. 

 These boats which were often 18 or 20 feet wide and from 75 to 

 120 feet long were largely made of yellow poplar. Many of 

 the finest poplar trees groAving close by, or within easy reach of 

 the river were cut down, squared, pitted and sawed in two with 

 whip saws for flat-boat gunwales. At the date mentioned above, 

 and for several years thereafter, these boats were loaded with 

 split staves and taken to the salt furnaces in the Great Kanawha 

 valley. There the staves were sold to coopers who manufactured 

 salt barrels, and the flat-boats were sold to salt producers for 

 the transportation down the river of the large quantities of salt 

 then being produced in that region. The boats usually sold at 

 $1 for each running foot. Some of the first timber to go out 

 from the county was floated and rafted on the Elk and Little 

 Kanawha rivers. This industry was carried on at first prin- 

 cipally by the farmers or the owners of small boundaries of 

 woodland and not by companies as in some other sections. The 

 principal timbers rafted were poplar and black walnut. In 

 later years lumber companies with mills at Charleston, Parkers- 

 burg, and other points bought stumpage high up on the Elk 

 and the Little Kanawha and rafted out their logs. 



One of the pioneer mills of central West Virginia was lo- 

 cated at or near BuUtown on the Little Kanawha. It is proba- 

 ble that this mill was in operation more than a hundred years 

 ago. Several primitive ' water saw mills were in operation 60 

 years ago along the larger streams. Two of these were Peeble's 

 mill at the mouth of Holly river and Frame 's mill at Frametown 

 on the Elk. When the Richwood branch of the B. & 0. railroad 

 was built through the county and a branch extended to Sutton 

 in 1892, a lively lumber industry was begun by portable saw 

 mills and by larger stationary mills in the interior forests. 

 Prior to the building of these roads there had been little sawing 

 except by water-power mills. 



Pardee and Curtin Lumber Company operated a band mill 

 at Sutton from about 1892 to 1905. The logs for the mill were 

 largely obtained in Holly district of Braxton and in Webster 

 county. 



T. M. Mitchell began to operate a circular mill on Wolf 



