SANDERSON, W.Va. — If you've examined a road map of West Virginia, you may have noticed a vast and remarkable expanse of emptiness just east of the state’s capital.
While the valley surrounding the capital is one of the most populated areas in the state, few roads penetrate the dense forests to the east—a rugged wilderness spanning more than 70 square miles, stretching between the Elk River to the north and the Kanawha River to the south.
Although coal mining and oil drilling introduced commerce to this remote region in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it has remained sparsely populated. Its enduring isolation has captivated many, drawing fascination to the rugged and untamed countryside.
Among the historians who have made a study of the region, Earl Fridley has spent years exploring two of its principal watersheds—that of Blue Creek and Falling Rock Creek, both of which extend south into the hills from the Elk River.
Fridley recently found a memoir dictated by Owen D. Hill, former owner of the Kendalia Lumber and Coal Co., which vividly captures the region's character. "In those days," Hill said, "there were no roads and no neighbors nearby. The woods were full of bear, deer, panther, and wolves, and the streams were full of fish."
Those panthers and wolves make an appearance in the following tale. An adventurer exploring that remote countryside would probably have little trouble imagining the darkness that yet falls in those hills fewer than 10 miles east of the lights of Charleston.
A Grandfather's Story: How Panther Branch Got Its Name
Dictated by O.D. Hill
Nearly or quite 100 years ago, my grandfather, Joseph C. Kendall, a millwright, came from King George County, Virginia, to what was then Greenbrier County, Virginia, which is now Kanawha County, to build a mill for Mr. Jacob Snyder, who lived just above Queen Shoals on the north side of Elk River.
While thus employed, he purchased at public sale lots 2, 4, and 6, containing 39,000 acres, which was a part of the John Barclay Survey of 50,000 acres on Blue Creek and Falling Rock Creek in what is now Kanawha and Clay counties.
After completing the mill for Mr. Snyder, my grandfather married Elizabeth Burgess, the daughter of Edward Burgess, who had emigrated from Luray, in the Valley of Virginia, and who had brought with him 100 negro slaves and began the manufacture of salt on Elk River about eight miles from its mouth at a place known as Big Chimney.
After his marriage, he settled on Blue Creek near the center of this 39,000-acre tract where the village or Sanderson now stands. He brought with him to this settlement two negro slaves, "Roxy" and "Lee," and a team of bay mares. When not at work, these horses ran at large in this vast wilderness. In those days, there were no roads and no neighbors nearby. The woods were full of bear, deer, panther, and wolves, and the streams were full of fish.
One evening, the horses were turned out after their day’s work was done, and the next day, Lee failed to find them. Later in the evening, my grandfather undertook to hunt for them himself. There were no roads to follow, so the horses followed up the bed of Blue Creek a distance of six miles to the mouth of a tributary that comes into Blue Creek about six miles above Sanderson and about 18 miles from the mouth of Blue Creek.
It had grown dark by this time, and grandfather had not located the horses. It was the month of August, and a furious electrical storm was coming up. He was forced to take shelter under a large hemlock tree. For hours and hours, the thunder roared, the lightning flashed, and the winds blew until it was impossible for him to follow the horses or return home. So, standing there amid this vast forest in all its loneliness, in this impenetrable darkness. His rifle was by his side, though the powder had gotten so wet that the gun would not fire. However, the powder in the powder-horn and shot pouch around his shoulder was still dry.
Standing alone, he heard the screams of what he thought was a woman seeking help to find her way out of the wilderness. He answered the call, and every time he hollowed, the supposed woman answered in return, but the screams came closer and closer to the tree where he was standing.
When he answered the call again, another shrill scream was heard just on the other side of the tree from where he stood and in the opposite direction from where the first screams were heard. For the first time, he realized that these were the screams of a couple of panthers, and he began to realize what real danger he was in. It was only a few moments until those panthers came so close that he could see their eyes shining in the darkness.
Attracted either by my grandfather's voice or the scream of the panthers, a pack of hungry wolves also surrounded the tree and growled and howled and fought each other. The only way my grandfather kept the wolves and panthers off was by holding a piece of punk—a dried, decayed piece of wood found within the bodies of large dead trees that retains fire for a long time. This he had brought with him in his shot pouch, and when the wolves and panthers got uncomfortably close, he poured a few grains of rifle powder out of the powder horn into his hand. He sprinkled it on the punks, and the fire flash thus produced kept these hungry animals from attacking him and thus saved his life.
About three o'clock in the morning, when the storm ceased and the gray dawn crept out of the darkness over the eastern hills, the wolves disappeared one by one, and each panther slipped away in the direction from which it had come, still occasionally giving vent to these unearthly screams that sounded in the distance to my grandfather so much like the voice of a woman in deep distress.
When the storm was over and the day dawned and these screaming hungry panthers had returned to their lairs and the hungry wolves had slunk away to their dens in this wooded forest and their voices were again silent, an owl hooted in a lone pine tree. The sun looked down on this vast silent, boundless wilderness, and the songs of thousands and thousands of birds that had never before beheld the face of a human being echoed through valley and mountain and hill.
As they welcomed the dawn of this new day, unafraid of man or beast, warbled eternal and never-ending praise to Almighty God, who had protected and kept my grandfather unafraid and unharmed through this hideous and never-to-be-forgotten night of danger and distress, and who, in his wisdom, had planted these wonderful songs of praise and glory in their tiny feathered throats and who, in His goodness and mercy, saves and protects the birds as well as he does the man.
From that day till this, as its sparkling water flows on toward the sea, that tributary of Blue Creek that comes into it from the north side about eighteen miles from its mouth, and empties into the creek near where the tree stands, under which my grandfather stood, has from that day till this been called "Panther Branch."
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