Winchester, Virginia served as headquarters for both George Washington and Stonewall Jackson.
Washington came to Winchester in 1748, when he was just sixteen. He spent four years there, working as a surveyor along the Virginia frontier. He returned in 1755 as a colonel in the Virginia militia. He commanded the militia and supervised the construction of a fort from an office inside the building shown above. Route 50 runs right next to the building.
Stonewall Jackson’s office
The Confederate Civil War general Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson lived in Winchester during the winter of 1861-62. Based on his letters, he liked it. He was the commanding general responsible for Confederate campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley. He planned those campaigns in this house.
There are 222 miles of U.S. 50 in West Virginia. The first 149 miles, from the Virginia border to Clarksburg, feature occasional 15 mile-per-hour switchback curves in the Appalachian Mountains.
Take it easy going up the mountains in West Virginia
From Clarksburg to the western border at Parkersburg, Route 50 is four-lane, divided highway through wooded mountains.
Things to see as you drive through West Virginia on Route 50.
Aurora, West VirginiaThey’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!Lawn care in West VirginiaLots of attractive scenery in West VirginiaFarming in West VirginiaMy West Virginia home away from home?Watching the traffic on Route 50
Metal roofs are common in West Virginia. Actually, they’re common in a lot of places — they are said to comprise 10% of the “residential re-roofing market.”
Residential metal roofs
Metal roofs can be made from a number of different materials, including copper, lead, tin, and “stone coated steel.” They are very durable and even disperse lightning strikes, but they may corrode, and they require lots of insulation because they heat up nicely.
And there’s a disadvantage not imagined when the buildings in the photos were built — they can interfere with cell phone reception.
A metal roof installed BCP — Before Cell Phones
The use of metal roofing extends beyond residences. Further west on Route 50, we’ll see examples of metal church steeples.
Route 50 passes through the middle of Romney, a town of approximately 1,800 people in the eastern part of West Virginia. It is the oldest town in West Virginia (1762).
Romney is the county seat of Hampshire County, and both Romney and Hampshire County have had a difficult history with wars. In 1928, local citizens erected a statue in front of the Hampshire County courthouse in Romney to honor those killed in “the World War.”
The inscription on the base of the statue is a quote from the second stanza of the poem, “In Flanders Fields,” by John McCrae. He wrote it after the death of a friend in a World War I battle, while he sat in the back of an ambulance at Ypres, Belgium. Here it is:
We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, Felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved.
There are 27 names.
During the time of the American Civil War, Hampshire County voted in favor of the Confederacy. That didn’t settle the matter for Romney, which was on the preferred route for armies traveling north and south through the surrounding mountainous territory. The result? According to a historical marker in Romney, Union and Confederate forces swapped control of the town 56 times.
Today, Romney is fighting a battle of a different kind:
This is a spotted lanternfly, a species native to China, India, and Vietnam, where it is kept in check by natural predators. It arrived in the U.S. in eastern Pennsylvania, where it was first recorded in 2014. Finding no inhibiting predators, within five years it spread to 14 counties in Pennsylvania, and onward into the nearby states. It can badly damage trees and agricultural products. Romney and West Virginia are on the alert.
In more positive agricultural news, Romney hosts the West Virginia Peach Festival in late summer.
Should you attend, and if you are very fortunate, DoodleBugs Desserts will be there. That means you will be able to sample their Peach Foldovers — delicious! And an excellent way to remember Romney as you continue on Route 50.
The Doodlebugs
Unkind folks have said that Hampshire County is named after a pig, specifically the Hampshire Hog. The connection is tenuous, however, since the breed was not officially recognized as “Hampshires” until 1907. It’s more likely the county was simply named after County Hampshire, in England. Still it could be considered an honor to be named after hogs that have been described as “exhibiting good carcass quality when used as meat animals.”
A Hampshire Hog
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The Hampshire Hog photo is from Wikimedia Commons.
Cathedral State Park in West Virginia contains the last remnants of a hemlock forest that once covered a wide area in the Appalachians. The average age of the mature trees here is 350 years.
The eastern hemlock is the climax species in this forest, meaning that it is crowding out other plants, except those that share its love of acid soil.
The hemlock tree is unrelated to the poison-hemlock plant, famous for its use in the execution of the philosopher Socrates.
There are picnic areas in the park, and easy hiking trails depart from the parking lot right next to Route 50. The trees are completely non-poisonous, so feel free to pull in for a restorative stroll in the woods.
In the middle of West Virginia, Route 50 leaves the state briefly for a small sliver of far western Maryland. It crosses Backbone Mountain there at an altitude of 3,095 feet. It is an interesting spot for two reasons.
First, it is the beginning of the Mississippi River watershed, the area where all water drains into the Mississippi River.
Second, this is Route 50’s highest point east of the Mississippi River. You will never again be this high until …
Where will you be and what will it look like?
Take a guess, and then come along. I’ll tell you when we get there.
If you look closely at the map above, you’ll see the finger of Maryland that reaches over the top of West Virginia. Route 50 passes through that finger, and on Backbone Mountain in Maryland it enters the eastern edge of the Mississippi River watershed.
Beginning at that point, the shape of the land forces the water in all the creeks, streams, and rivers you pass on Route 50 to eventually flow into the Mississippi, if not prevented from doing so by a local land formation, evaporation, consumption by animals or plants, or acts of man. The watershed covers 1.15 million square miles and includes all or parts of 31 states and two provinces in Canada. Route 50 reaches the western end of the watershed at Monarch Crest, Colorado, on the Continental Divide. Some 1,660 of Route 50’s 3,000-plus miles are in the Mississippi River watershed.
But take another look at the map. You’ll see that the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi (at St. Louis, Missouri). Rivers that reach an ocean are generally named for the longest upriver branch. Based on that approach, it should be the Missouri River that flows south of St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Mississippi, and we should be entering the Missouri River watershed.
Perhaps the naming difference occurred because it was in 1541, near what is now Natchez in the state of Mississippi, that Hernando de Soto became the first European to report seeing the Mississippi. It wasn’t until 132 years later, in 1673, that Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, French explorers, reported seeing the Missouri.
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The map of the Mississippi River watershed is from the U.S. National Park Service and available for public use.
Route 50 enters eastern Ohio from Parkersburg, West Virginia, by crossing the Ohio River. After 200 miles of rolling countryside and small towns, it reaches the Ohio River again at Cincinnati, where the river forms the border with Kentucky. It then follows the river west to Indiana.
Living on Route 50 in eastern OhioUsed to live on Route 50 in eastern OhioMcArthur, OhioMcArthur, OhioChillicothe, OhioSummer in ChillicotheMidwestern summerRoute 50 through Mariemont, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati
