Saltville Museum of the Middle Appalachians

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Hi Blog!

It has been several weeks since our last blog. Since then we have traveled to Philadelphia to our daughter's 40th birthday bash and the 70th birthday party of a dear friends of ours. We also spent time with the Arlington Scrantons and entertained our grandson during his Spring Break. We are now back on the road and working our way toward Arkansas.

Our first stop after leaving Bull Run near Manassas was Wytheville (pronounced With-Vill) in the southwest corner of Virginia. We only have a couple days here before moving on. The campground gave us some suggestions. With rain in the forecast, we decided to take a scenic drive over to Saltville and explore the Museum of the Middle Appalachians.

After we arrived at the museum and signed in, one of the docents gave us a brief introduction. Saltville claims to be the most fascinating two square miles in Virginia owing to its geology, paleontology, history and past industrial productions. The museum's exhibits span over 30,000 years of history from the Ice Age to the Space Age. 

On our way to Saltville, we stopped at the scenic overlook on the ridge above town.

 

Once inside the museum, Kathy recreated her stop at the scenic overlook. As the name implies, the history of the Saltville Valley revolves around its vast salt deposits – evaporated residue from an ancient inland sea. 

For millions of years, cycles of compression, uplift, and erosion have worked to create a complex system of ridges that are among the oldest in North America. The Middle Appalachians have four geographic regions: Appalachian Plateau, Valley and Ridge, Blue Ridge, and Piedmont. Saltville is located in the Valley and Ridge Province and was once covered by a sea. The climate changed and the seawater evaporated, leaving deposits of salt and gypsum buried under layers of shale and limestone.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of rock types found in the Middle Appalachians.

For over 220 years, Ice Age fossils have been recovered from the lake beds lying under Saltville’s marshes. The first written record was in a 1782 letter from Arthur Campbell to Thomas Jefferson describing “bones of an uncommon size”. Jefferson referred to the “salines” in his 1787 Notes on Virginia. The Saltville Valley represents one of the earliest localities on record from which fossils of the Pleistocene Age have been recovered in North America. The Ice Age Exhibit features full-sized casts of a mastodon and woolly mammoth skull. 

However, it was the dire wolf skull that caught our eye. The dire wolf was a formidable predator, measuring almost five feet from head to tail and weighing in the vicinity of 150 to 200 pounds—about 25 percent bigger than the biggest dog alive today, and 25 percent heavier than the largest gray wolves. Winter is Coming!

Based on excavations in the Saltville Valley, it is believed that both pre-Clovis (13,000) and Clovis People (11,500) lived and hunted in the area. During the Late Woodland Period (900-1600 AD), a well developed native culture arose along the North Fork of the Holston River. Native Americans of the western Virginia frontier lived in small, dome-shaped houses often called ‘wigwams’. The wooden frame could be covered with hides, bark, or woven grass mats. A hearth inside the dwelling provided light and heat for cooking and warmth. Animal hides or woven mats were sometimes used on the tamped dirt floor. 

The region is nationally renowned for its marine shell artifacts, called gorgets. Approximately 80 percent of Virginia gorgets have been found in Smyth County. There were several shell gorgets on display, but the carving were hard to photograph. Here is an artist copy of the Saltville Style Rattlesnake Gorget.

Commercial production of salt in the valley began in the 1780s. Arthur Campbell, the families of two of Patrick Henry’s sisters (Suzannah Madison and Elizabeth Russell), and an Irish immigrant named William King were early producers. Wells were hand-dug or bored as deep as 200 feet to salt deposits. Groundwater dissolved the salt. Brine drawn from wells was evaporated in iron kettles in wood-fired furnaces. By 1850 hundreds of thousands of bushels of salt were being produced annually at the Salt Works.

Saltville played an important role in the Civil War. With the Union blockade of Southern ports and the fall of Charleston, WV early in the war, Saltville became the only significant source of salt for the Confederate States. Southern states from the Mississippi River east scrambled to secure a supply of Saltville salt, and the Confederacy spent large sums and effort to fortify the Saltville Valley against Union attack. From a pre-war production of 250,000 bushels per year, the Salt Works were expanded to produce over four million bushels per year by 1864. In 1864, two different battles were fought in Saltville.  The Union Army finally defeated the defenders in December and destroyed the salt production facilities. It was such an important victory for the North that it made headlines in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

After the Civil War, Saltville became one of the nation's biggest chemical producers. The Saltville Works grew to a complex of plants that spread across 300 acres. It employed 1300 people, had its own steam plant, and owned 14 miles of railroad. Hydrazine was manufactured for the Air Force during the 1960s. It was used in the space program as fuel for the Titan II rocket and the Apollo lunar module that helped to put man on the moon. Due to environmental concerns, much of the chemical production was shut down. On a positive note, the salt marshes in the valley have seen a recovery in wildlife.

The United Salt Corporation still operates a plant in Saltville and produces food-grade salt from brine pumped from a local well nearly one mile deep. At a production rate of 23 tons per hour, Saltville’s salt is now marketed in the food and chemical industries throughout the Southeast. It is used in processed meats and vegetables, agriculture, textiles, water treatment, and other commercial products.

There were lots of exhibits about life in Saltville through the years. We stopped to listen to the recordings of Hobart Smith (1897 - 1965). This seminal mountain musician who was prodigious on banjo and fiddle was born near Saltville in 1897, the oldest son of eight children born to Louvine and Alexander King Smith. Hobart believed the ballad-singing tradition in his family dated back at least seven generations to when the Smiths immigrated from England. Both of Hobart's grandfathers were fiddle players, and his parents were banjo players. He was most notable for his appearance with his sister Texas Gladden on a series of Library of Congress recordings in the 1940s and his later appearances at various festivals during the folk music revival of the 1960s. While Smith is often remembered for his virtuosic performances on the banjo and fiddle, as noted above, he also mastered the guitar, piano, harmonica, accordion and organ. We were so impressed with his music that we bought the Smithsonial Folkways recordings of his songs. 

In our ten years of RVing, we have toured dozens of small town museums. We fthought this museum was one of the best curated (along with the Hammer Museum in Haines). 

By the time we finished, we had built up a powerful thirst. It was time to head back to Wytheville for lunch at 7 Dogs Brewpub.

On our way to the brew pub, we had to stop and check out the worlds largest pencil. The late John Campbell Findlay (the original owner of Wytheville Office Supply) had the "Big Pencil" constructed in the early 60's. Made of metal, it is approximately 30 feet long. Over the years it has had a number of facelifts to keep it in pristine condition.

We thought 7 Dogs Brewpub was an unusual name. At various times in his life, the owner has rescued seven dogs and a cat. The brewpub was named in their honor.

Dave relaxed over his banana stout, while Kathy enjoyed a Scotch ale.

After lunching on cobb salad and fish tacos, we decided to bring a couple beers home with us to save for after our hike tomorrow. This is the first time we have ever encountered these small plastic take-away bottles. Covid has forced many businesses to think outside the box (or in this case the can). The picture behind the beer, is Sadie the dappled dachshund, one of the seven dogs whose portraits decorate the interior of the pub.

We hope to hike another section of the Appalachian Trail tomorrow. Stay tuned.