Chapter Nine

“We walked up on top of the hill, and that morning—it was about 5 o’clock, it was daybreak—and there was water from one side of the hill to the other. Just tops of houses sticking out.” — Jim Phillips, Parsons resident, speaks about the 1985 flood

Floods and Weather:

It Comes in a Big Roll

West Virginia is a water wealthy state. And after Pickens in southwestern Randolph County, Shavers Fork and Cheat Mountain are the wettest areas in the state. Combined with the high altitude, this creates some nasty weather atop the mountain. This high ridge had always been an obstacle in European immigrants’ move westward. It wasn’t until the 1830s that a wagon road—the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike—was built to cross Cheat Mountain. Modern day U.S. Route 250 follows much of the old turnpike’s path over Cheat Mountain, crossing the river at Cheat Bridge and descending on the other side.

The Trotter brothers, who were charged with transporting the mail from Staunton to Parkersburg between 1855–1858, provide some the first written evidence that we have of the extreme weather on the mountain. That first winter was especially bad, and mail service suffered as a result.

After being reprimanded by their superiors, the brothers replied with the following letter:

In the 1850s, there was no logging activity on the mountain. The soil retained much of the precipitation, and floods weren’t such a problem. However, snow was. Logging crews soon learned how harsh West Virginia winter can be: 1907 was the winter that many old timers recall as being the worst.

Granddaddy snow of them all came between 1906 and 1907. Five feet, eight inches. Shut camps down latter part of 1906 because of snow. Started back up in 1907. A lot of us came back to town, and some stayed at camp, the ones who didn’t have homes.

The super came up there and told them, “The ones that want to stay, as long as we can get here with a couple of engines, we’ll have something to feed you. All that want to go out, go out now.” They were off quite a good while (Pocahontas Times, 1976).

Perhaps not a coincidence, one of the worst floods the area has ever seen occurred in 1907. Unusually heavy rainfall combined with the recent loss of forest in the area, and the mountains acted like a funnel, channeling water fast and furious down the Monongahela River. This flood caused more than $100 million damage to the land around the river and an additional $8 million more in the city of Pittsburgh. And that was 1907 dollars. A flood of those proportions today would surely be a national disaster (C.R. McKim, 8).

Crossing Whitewater

Harry Werner, a doctor in Bemis at the time, recalled the 1907 flood in his memoirs, Big Doc, Little Doc:

It was 4 o’clock on an early April afternoon, and I had dismissed the last patient from my office. As I stood a moment by the window to listen to the roar of Cheat River, a cloud no bigger than a coat button, appeared above the mountain ridge, casting a shadow that grew until the narrow valley lay brooding like a tired foxhound. Spears of lightning flashed. Thunder rattled the windows. Rain poured for ten minutes and was gone.

I had two calls to make on my way home. As I got into my raincoat, the office door was pushed open, and Rufe Kisner came in. “Hello, Doc,” he held out his hand.

I had known Rufe a long time. He worked in the woods and lived on a farm near Glady. “I hope you’re not fixen to go away, Doc,” he said. “I’d like to get you to come up to my place to see the baby. You know, Doc, you fetched him along about Christmas.”

“Well, he had the croup last night, somethin’ awful. We thought he was better this mornin’, but he’s right smart choked up agin, and ‘pears to be pretty hot. My woman’s afraid he might be gittin’ pneumony.”

“It’s a long walk to your place. Do you think I can see the child and get to Glady in time to catch the train back?”

“Sure, Doc. It ain’t a fur piece the way I come down the hill an’ across the river.”

“Naw,” he said. “I didn’t have no trouble. It’s pretty swift, but you’ll be safe as if you was in the Lord’s vest pocket. You don’t need to worry none about gittin’ back neither. I’ll fetch you.”

As the calls that I had expected to make on my way home were not urgent, I could make them as well in the evening, I told Rufe I would go with him to see his baby. The rain had stopped, momentarily. We walked to the river where Rufe had tied his boat to a tree. When I saw the swift whitewater, I was about to change my mind. But I thought of the sick child and remembered that Rufe had made the crossing once. His confidence jacked up my courage.

Rufe stowed my medicine case in the bow of the boat, untied the rope, and yelled, “Jump in, Doc, I can’t hold her agin this current.”

I looked at the raging water. Only a few days ago it had murmured under a mask of ice. Now it was a twisting, swirling challenge. It was thick with pilfered woods loam, yellow clay, broken branches. With a prayer in my heart for Rufe’s guardian angel not to desert him now, I stepped into the small rowboat. Rufe jumped in and grabbed the oars. The current snatched our craft, and we were swept along at a giddy rate of speed.

We barely missed a huge boulder that would have crushed the boat like an eggshell. Rufe rowed hard upstream, using all his strength and skill to keep us from being smashed against the rocks.

Rufe’s face was grim. His lips were parted over clenched teeth. He did not answer my question. It had begun to rain again. For a moment I was blinded, then I froze to immobility as a big pine log headed directly toward us. Rufe rowed like mad. Then, he thrust an oar against the log—not to divert it from its course—but to try to push our boat away from sure destruction. The log swept by, missing us by a straw.

“That one was close,” Rufe gasped. His face was the color of the foam that swirled around the boulders. Then he grinned.

I bowed my head, and the water ran in a stream from my felt hat. The river seemed to thunder louder, and the wind slammed like a loose shutter at our backs. Our craft was caught in a whirlpool and spun almost in a circle. Rufe grabbed the branches of a spruce tree that had been blown down with its top in the river. He pulled with all his might, and the boat slid out of the current between the tree and the bank.

Rufe yelled at me to jump, while he steadied the boat. I scrambled up the slippery bank. Rufe followed, and pulled the boat up on the bore where he left it. We had landed 100 yards downstream from where we started, in spite of Rufe’s having rowed upstream all the way.

I stood for an instant watching the deluge sweep down the valley. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. We climbed a steep hill for more than a mile to Rufe’s farm. By crossing the river and climbing the hill, we had saved ourselves from walking four miles on the railroad track.

A Cheat Mountain Club logbook entry describes Thomas McGowan’s experience of another flood in that same year:

9:30 p.m.—Heavy rains. Stage of water four feet above bank of bottom ground. Boardwalks, stove wood gone. Dog in kennel liberated. Provisions, such as flour, sugar and meal, removed to upper stories. Old boat ready for emergency. Hired man scared and will now depart for the hills. We will hold the fort as long as we can and imagine that we will have to change socks within a short time if rain continues. Water now up to third step. Folks a little scared. There will be no sleep or rest tonight. The tempest and roaring of water and extra darkness of night is awful, but we believe the clubhouse on the Cheat and property of the Cheat Mountain Sportsmen’s association is the second ark that will hold her inmates safe.

12–2 a.m.—Water still rising fast. Flood of July 1897 reached. No one wishes to retire. Chickens and cats begin squalling. Drift logs and trees are bumping foundations, and affairs generally are getting doubtful. I expect water on floor in main clubroom soon and made preparations to save furniture. We expect no mail for several days now. Road to bridge inundated and out of sight. River continues to give us the paramount issue of a watery campaign. All our wood for stove and fireplace is gone and will be in a bit of a fix for some days on account.

7 a.m.—Twenty-six boardwalk steps to our warehouses gone. Twelve feet of bank behind club house partly sunk and gone. Much or nearly all wood gone out. Trees undermined on bank of stream and ready to fall into river. The park around clubhouse’s cyclone struck: full of big rotten and green trees, rubbish, sand, roots, bark, and even rocks. Considerable damage done to crib work above clubhouse and old dam part below clubhouse. All but two bridges between New Hatchery and Cheat Bridge washed away.

Black Cloud and Rolling River

This was the flood that led to the creation of the Monongahela National Forest, whose stated purpose was to protect the headwaters of the Monongahela River. But timbering activity barely slowed down.

Now, when I was small, of course, they timbered. The Porterwood Timber Company timbered up there on the opposite side of the river. They started in 1913, and then they disbanded the train. They finished the logging in 1927. It doesn’t do it now, but I guess they clear-cut the timber so close that there was nothing to hold the water back.

Mother would say, “No going to the river today. There was a black cloud up the river last night, and it may come down in a roll.”

It don’t do it now, but it would come down that river in a roll that big (she raises her arm chest high). And see, there was nothing to hold that water back because they timbered it all. Those hollers, they just, you know, every half mile or so there was a holler. And it would all feed in, and it would just . . . Mother would say that, and sure enough, you’d look out and someone would say, “There goes the river.”

There were numerous floods throughout the years, some devastating, others not so damaging. Increased settlements in the river floodplains led to more risk of flooding.

I remember one time, that river used to be full of beaver dams up where Snowshoe is now—it goes into a big bowl, and it flattens out—and down from that bowl it was nothing but rapids for about a mile and a half. Well, up in that bowl was a beaver dam, and up came a flash f

lood one time . . . it had to have been ‘46–‘47, somewhere in there. You could see it raining and raining, and it wasn’t even raining up in Spruce.

You know where the bridge is above the town of Spruce? It almost went over the top of that there, and then it opened up after that. It widened and took out two of the river bridges down below there, where the shops was—the shops where they worked on the engines—it took them two out. That was back in the ‘40s. That was right as Spruce was closing down.

Watershed Floods

Most watersheds are shaped like a big tree, gathering water from many small creeks and coming together at the “trunk,” gradually making it bigger and bigger. The Shavers Fork watershed is shaped more like a finger, with very short streams feeding the mainstem. The high volume of rain falling on the watershed, combined with the steepness of the river all contribute to the high frequency of flooding.

Jim Phillips remembers growing up in Parsons during the 1930’s and 40’s:

Practically every spring we had to be evacuated. Here come the spring thaw and spring rains, and we was up in the school building. An old neighbor of mine had an old Model T Ford, and he would come down there to pick up his two daughters. I will never forget—I always wanted to ride that old Model T Ford—he pulled up in front of that old school and told the girls to get in.

He opened that little door, and I got in. I poked my head out and watched those little skinny wooden spoke wheels as they separated the water—about two feet of water then when we evacuated.

These floods were nothing, however, compared to the 1985 flood, which has been called a thousand-year flood because of the rarity of the weather events that surrounded the flood. September 1985 was the driest month on record, followed in November by the wettest month. More than a foot of water fell in the area in that month—6.3 inches of rain fell between 8 a.m. and midnight on November 4, 1985 (Parsons Advocate, December 11, 1985).

This heavy rain, flowing over the already saturated land, swept through the watershed like none before it. Parsons, sitting in the floodplain where the Black Fork and Shavers Fork rivers meet to create the Cheat River, was the worst hit city in the state.

Hayward Phillips, then in his late 50’s, lived just outside of Parsons in 1985:

The Black Fork and the Shavers Fork form [the Cheat River] below Parsons, and during that ‘85 flood they formed in Parsons. That’s the reason Parsons was damaged so bad.

Yeah, we were living here during that flood. Our pond flooded the basement. But that’s it. I remember the night before I drove home, and there were some stumps on the road but nothing too serious. The water was high but not over the road. It was just lapping.

I drove on and I thought, “What are those people on the bridge for?” But I came home and the next morning, I told my wife, I said, “Maryanne, what is that roaring?”

I heard this roaring and timber crashing and banging. So I went and climbed up on the hill and saw the river flowing over everything. It took houses and all but we didn’t even know about it at the time.

Farmhouse: This is the Shaffer’s old house right after
the ’85 flood (taken Nov 5). The flood came and moved their
house into that hill. It was later burned.
Photo courtesy Hazel Shaffer Phillips

lifted off its foundation and thrown around town.
Photo courtesy Grace Shaffer Gainer.

Jim Bazzle, owner of Revelle’s River Resorts, recalls witnessing the river’s power:

In 1985, it was November the 4^th if I am not mistaken. That was the date of that hundred-year flood. Of course, it caused massive damage here. We were sitting here in front of our camper center and water was up to about this windowsill on this building. So, you can imagine that river running, you know, at that level, just all through here.

Sections would be moving very quickly, and other parts would either be kind of back, so there would be sections where the water would be still but running down where his truck is right now. It tore up the road. It tore up the little bridges. I mean, it was extremely destructive. Unfortunately, the old Western Maryland railway station had been relocated across from Mr. Vance’s house and the water picked that old station up—he was using it as a wood house, I believe—and took it down, the water did, into our store, which we were hoping to preserve. It knocked the foundation out from under the building.

We also had a small church sitting on a site just beyond where that trailer is located right now. My aunt and uncle had helped build that back in the early 1900s as a Methodist church and it was picked up and it went down and crashed into one of our bathhouses. It pretty much demolished the bathhouse. It wasn’t so much water damage that we had on our property—well, on the grounds there was tremendous water damage—but in terms of buildings, the destruction was mostly debris or other buildings hitting into buildings.

I mean, here was this church floating in the river and the railway station, campers, these units. These camping units, just like these units that you see sitting here today, we had a large number of them down in this area, right down here where these trucks are. All of them were picked up and moved downriver. Some floated all the way down the Cheat River Bridge, three or four miles down river. Others came crashing into trees and sort of stayed on our grounds. We have pictures of these units. It was just like the water picked them up and, you know, they weighed 10,000 pounds! That’s hard to believe that water would have that much power and velocity to be able to pick up 5-, 10-, 15,000-pound-units and just take them downstream.

In 1985, there was the old bridge—the old super-structure blue bridge that was across here at Bowden—and it had been there my entire lifetime. I remember my father had gotten everyone out of here that he could. I

mean, no one was ever lost here but in 1985 he was up there at 7 in the morning and was actually standing out on the edge of the bridge feeling it shaking. Within about thirty minutes, that bridge, literally, was taken down river. He stood—several people there witnessed it—and that was quite something.

A camper trailer completely trashed from the flood.
Many of these trailers were simply picked up and washed
downstream until they broke apart or hit something very solid.
Photo courtesy Chuck Hayhurst

You know that flood they had in 1985? I was working in a mine down by Buckhannon.

We come out of there, and I had to go all the way around Buckhannon. I got all the way around there, and I finally got to [Route] 33 and I come out through and down over and come out to Crystal Springs, the lower part of it.

I saw it, and I thought, hmm. Well, I’ll never get around it that way. So I headed through Harpertown, which goes around the backside. I got through Harpertown to Cravensdale where there is a bridge. There was water on both sides of that bridge. There was a Harman boy by the bridge, and I asked, “Is that bridge still in there?”

So I put it in four-wheel drive, aimed at that bridge, and shot across that bridge. And when I got to the other side, I felt something [slap!] thump down. I had it in four-wheel drive and I had it wide open so I just kept on driving.

Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but I ran into that Harman boy later, and he said, “That bridge went out right back of you.” I said, ”I thought it did because I felt the dog-gone bridge gone out.”

Anyway, I go up across the mountain to Fairview schoolhouse, up across the mountain, down Lower Cheat—for about a mile right there, you’re right on top of that river—until you get to this road right here: it comes across. You never heard nothing like that in your life! A roaring. The river run like that. I was afraid that bank might just disappear. You never heard nothing like it. And the next day, it washed Parsons and St. George out all the way. I barely made it home that day. If I had gone any other way, I wouldn’t have made it.

Stuarts Park after the ‘85 flood? I could tell you lots about that. My friend called me, and we started moving furniture out of her trailer. And we saw that water just go down. I saw a church—a church that floated all the way down to Cheat River Bridge. It was in one piece, and it hit that bridge and just exploded.

There was an iron bridge up here, and it made it clear down to here. Iron! And the fish—it got the hatchery—there was fish all over. I’d seen a lot of bad things happen. For about two weeks, I helped clean the place up.

The flood of ’85 at the Alpine Shores campground. While the photo might lead you to believe that water is simply covering a lot of the ground, much of that water is moving with tremendous force. It will also deposit a lot of debris on that plain when the water subsides. Photo courtesy Chuck Hayhurst

Cleanup from this natural disaster was immense. There was so much destruction in the area that many people paused their lives to help their neighbors get back on track.

“Week of November Tenth 1985: Worked 117.5 hours.”— Kenny Watson, Track Crew for Western Maryland

Kenny Watson recalls that week in November as the busiest week of his career:

The ‘85 flood killed the railroad more or less. We were out about two weeks straight and stayed out. You know, you’d go home—a lot of times, I’d go home—get my lunch bucket repacked and then go back. We were staying in the caboose at the Bayard yards, and it was winter. It was cold. A lot of guys had lost their homes, and they were right out there because that was the important thing, to get the train through.

The biggest thing that I worked on at the Shavers Fork was right down below the Greenbrier Junction. There’s a real steep place there right below where the railroad bridge is. It was right after the ‘85 flood. I was working over in Bayard and they called us over there—it had all slipped, and it was so wet—and we went in there at night and the bridge and building crew had been cribbing that whole side of the hill, right after the flood.

What happened is we worked all night getting that cribbed up, and then they would bring carloads of ballast in. They were just knocking the pockets. I mean, just whole carloads going down in there like there was nothing. We finally got it filled up—and about the time we got it filled up, the cribbing broke—and just everything that we had done went right back down the river.

I mean it was hours and hours and hours of filling and cribbing this up and cribbing that up. And it was all going right in the river. The river was still high—Shavers Fork—and it was gone. Hundreds of crossties and I don’t know how many loads of stone—and just that fast, you know? We were looking at it just piled up like four–five feet above the tracks, and next thing you know, it was all gone.

Cookie Ladies Go to Washington, D.C.

Parsons relief work was ongoing. One silver lining of the disaster was the formation of the famous “Cookie Ladies,” who raised money to prevent further flooding in Parsons though grassroots events, such as bake sales and garage sales. They have worked on creating a floodwall for Parsons as well as a veterans’ memorial.

We are the Cookie Ladies, and this is where they paid our way and we got to go to Washington. They put us in a motel for three days. They had a big banquet, and they brought the Cookie Ladies up. We got a standing ovation—600 people out there. We were the only ones to get a standing ovation when all the talking was done. We really had a nice time.

We had a bunch of cookbooks, and we had sold some of them. Someone said that we could sell the rest of them down in the lobby, and we got down in the middle and started yelling, “Cookie Ladies’ cookbooks!”

We were selling them for $15 and some folks gave us $20. We sold all our books. We’ve done lots of work on the river. We’ve probably put $40,000–50,000 dollars into the river, with a lot of help and a lot of volunteers.

- Cookie ladies: Joan Davis, Grace Gainer, Julie Little, and Hazel Phillips in Washington D.C. FEMA flew them out there for the work that they had done.
They were at the time known as the CCC (Concerned Citizen’s Coalition). Photo taken December of 1998, courtesy of Hazel Phillips

That wasn’t the end of the flooding—1996 saw another flood, which actually rose higher in some places than the ‘85 flood had. In total damage, it wasn’t even comparable. What was remarkable about 1996 is that there were twin floods.

That [January 1996] flood resulted in two or three months of clean up. The thing that was really significant was my father was managing this—and he was getting up in years, in his 70s—so this was very, very hard on him. We had literally just recovered from this flood and put everything back in place, and it was starting to look green again and nice. And that same year, 1996, we had a second flood, almost identical in height etc. to the earlier one in January. Flooding almost to the same inch. It was eerie.

Now, the one in January could be explained because of the time of year, it’s always a risk from November 1 to May 1, but this was the week before Memorial Day. Normally we just don’t have high water here over the summer months. What was ironic about it was we had flood insurance—we did have damage to some of our buildings and the insurance had just settled with my Dad—and then it happened again. And the settlement on the second go-round, the second flood, was almost identical to the first. It was eerie.

We lost almost 50 percent of our revenue that year. The only salvation was the flood insurance. Since ‘96 we haven’t had significant flooding. However, every year we’ve had one or two close calls but the water receded. It seems that in recent years, as a result of mining or timber being taken above us, that the potential for flooding is greater than it ever has been.

It just seems to me that there’s more risk these days. I’m more concerned. I think timbering practices are much better these days, permitted and controlled. However, people continue to cut lots of trees, even for farming, hunting camp. Part of our protection is having that forest base. It remains a concern. But we live with it.

Chuck Hayhurst and his wife were evacuated from a section of Jim Bazzle’s campground that had become an island during the flooding:

Now, we got evacuated here in the flood of ‘96. It was 2 o’clock in the morning and Elkins Fire Department come up, gave us ten

minutes to get out. There was probably twenty-five or thirty motor homes down in the bottom here, and we were the only ones up here on this end.

They took us up to a maintenance building, and their fire engine was over by the railroad tracks. They had cables thrown across there to the maintenance building. There was probably ten foot of backwater. My wife wasn’t on oxygen then, but she is on oxygen now, and she had a breathing problem. They give us ten minutes to get ready and get out of here. We left the lights on. We left the door open, everything.

We thought, well, this is it. We left the car set, and we got in the boat, in a little old canoe-type boat. There was about six inches of water in the bottom of the boat, and you couldn’t sit on the seat. The seats were up higher and they wanted you down in the boat. We were the first ones across on account of her breathing problems. And here come a camper floating down the river.
The Cheat River Bridge in Bowden during the first ’96 flood. Taken from the deck of the Shavers Fork Store. Photo courtesy Henry Nefflen

Fortunately, the boat made it back to shore and after waiting until the camper had past, they made a second, successful attempt. Nonetheless, flooding is a fact of life on the Shavers Fork. There’s been some work on the river, but floodwalls simply rush the water downstream to the next town. Dredging the river would be an incredibly expensive and perhaps futile effort. In the end, gauges were installed to monitor water levels. Gauges at Cheat Bridge and Bemis now serve as rulers to help determine how bad the flooding will be and if it is continuing to rise.

One significant change is that the weather reporting [Early Warning System] coming to us is much better now. The Shavers Fork, which I understand is one of the fastest rivers on the east coast, forms on Cheat Mountain. By the time it gets here, it’s normally moving pretty good so I am concerned about what’s happening on the watershed above us. At times the river will actually come down as a tidal wave, a wall, anywhere from a few inches to a few feet in height.

We contact a person in Bemis who watches a gauge. That is extremely helpful. I think that person, those people, they also report to the state police or to some central agency. There is a system in place.

I just sort of plug into it to check with this one person in particular because it’s about seven miles upstream and that tells me what I need to know.

Recently, for example, we had high water, and we were concerned. We call him at eleven in the morning, and he says the water is now receding; it’s down five inches. Water was still a little bit higher here but if he tells me that, then I’m relieved. If he said the water is a foot higher here than it was at seven this morning, then I’m more concerned. But, that is not exact science.

- River gage: These river gages are placed at various bridges so that flooding can be better predicted. By showing what the level of the water is upstream, people lower down on the river are able to know if the river will continue to rise and by how much. Here members of the Shavers Fork Coalition work to repaint one of the river gages in 1997. Photo courtesy Shavers Fork Coalition

Jim Bazzle briefly mentions the flash floods that rush down the river. Many believe this is how the Cheat River got its name because if a person were caught in the middle of the river during one of these waves, there wouldn’t be enough time to escape.

David and I were fishing just above Glade Run. It got very dark and looked like it might rain but didn’t. A short time later, we were on different sides of the river when it started to rise. David backed up to the railroad, and I got to the west side of the river. The truck was on the west side at Crouch Run over a mile away.

We started that way, and the water kept rising. David arrived at Crouch Run long before me and couldn’t cross. I was worried because I was not there.

The riverbank is very dense with rhododendron and mountain laurel and you couldn’t walk the bank. I had to walk in the water holding on to the brush. I put my wallet in my shirt pocket, but it got all wet, along with my flies and other equipment. I held my fly rod with my right hand as I held the brush with my left. Many times the muddy water was up to my arms, and it took a long time to walk the mile or more this way. The edge where I was walking would have been high and dry when the water is normal. The river probably raised eight or ten feet.

When I got close to Crouch Run, people were yelling for me because David had been there quite some time by the railroad. When I arrived, we had to figure out how to get him over. It was decided he’d walk back to Glade Run and go up the trail to the Forest Service road, and I would drive around and pick him up a distance of twenty miles or so. As it turned out, he couldn’t find the trail and had to bushwhack his way up Glade Run.

I changed my clothes and fixed a cup of spirits to calm down, then drove around to pick up David. It was very scary at times but staying calm and not trying to cross the raging current was important.

And maybe twice in my life, and I looked up and there came a big wall of water with cross ties and we yelled at the kids to get out of the water. It can be that sudden, you can look up and see a four-foot wall of water coming down. It’s the rain on high Cheat that gets it. -Lorraine Burke

I was fishing one time up here in Bowden. I was fly-fishing and it was raining. It was just drizzling down here but it was dark upstream. I was in the riffles, and I started catching. I noticed that before the water was at my calves and now the water was at my knees. Then it got up to the middle of my thighs, and I looked upstream, and you could see it coming. By the time I got to the bank . . . I just about didn’t make it. That’s how fast that river comes up. It’ll come up fast. It doesn’t have to be raining. It could be fine where you are, and it’d be dark up at the top of the mountain. What happens is those beaver dams get full, and they start busting loose, and they break and send it all down.P

I got in trouble fishing over there on Shavers Fork one time. The water caught me. We were bass fishing—and I knew enough about the river—I knew Shavers Fork because I’ve spent so much time there. It was a beautiful day but stuff started coming down, you know, getting a little milky. I mean, it was low, but by the time I got across . . . if I had waited at any time, I wouldn’t have been able to get across the river.

I was trout fishing one time in the spring, and I heard this noise—it was a wall of ice, and it had broke loose from up above somewhere. It was scary. I got out of there OK and everything. That was probably about twenty years ago.

Who could foretell the river's rise

as you sit tying red and yellow

flies in a gold-filtered afternoon.

In a magic tree house suspended by

hemlock, maple and locust

entwined in dutchman's pipe,

you, contemplate trout.

Across a river running low, you set course.

Without warning, water inches toward

your wader tops while you recite

the litany of rivers—Black, Dry,

Gandy, Laurel, and Shavers.

All forks of the Cheat.

Trapped between this rock cliff

and stony river bottom on a

cloudless October day. As waters

deepen you watch shadows lengthen

into evening. With the moon's rise

a silver bridge spans the swollen flow

and you cross with ease to the other side.

When Henry Nefflen was a kid, he seems to have gotten the worst of one instant flood:

Another time Leo Weese and I went down the river from Cheat Bridge to a place called McGee Run. We found us a nice place on the river and made a camp there. A day or two before our parents were to pick us up, I woke up—I had taken a cot with me, I think we both had cots because our parents could drive us to where we were going to stay—and I woke up and there was water almost to the top of my cot.

There was stuff floating around. The river had come up overnight, and everything was soaking wet. There was ten to twelve miles from McGee Run to the highway. There was no way we could stay. The only thing that was dry was our sleeping bags, and they were getting wet from the humidity.

We had a hell of a time trying to catch our stuff and take down our tent as it floated downriver. So we started out of there. I was wearing a red leather hat. Some guy came out of the Linan mine. He stopped to pick us up because he thought I had cracked my head open. Dye was running over me. He took us to the highway, and we then wanted to go and call from the Pocahontas Motel, which is right on the county line. We got another ride and got there, and they still had a crank phone that we used.