I
I Love this P l a ce
confess – the only time I’d ever stopped in Point Marion before writing this story was to eat some excellent homemade pie at Apple Annie’s with several co-workers and I wasn’t driving. Definitely not on my beaten path! So imagine my surprise and delight when I finally crossed the bridge from State Route 88 South to the Fayette County side of the Monongahela River and found myself greeted by a mural on the side of a building facing the Mon, painted by artist Eddie “Spaghetti” Maier of Morgantown. “Welcome to Point Marion” it reads, every line a cheerful mix of stylized trees, water and sky, bicyclists, paddlers, musicians and even the magical albino deer that I would learn was once the town mascot. The town spreads out behind it, streets of well-kept houses from many eras, a back-to-the-1940s downtown with open stores and historic signage, then left to another bridge that crosses the Cheat on its way to Friendship Hill Historical Park, three scenic miles away. Tucked between these two rivers lies a tiny triangle of history lovingly preserved by many of its original settler families. Point Marion! What took me so long to find you? This little town at the confluence of the Cheat and Monongahela rivers has been keeping a low profile for centuries, sandwiched as it is between bigger towns and industrial hubs up and down the Mon from Morgantown to Pittsburgh. For thousands of years it was the hunting grounds of Eastern Woodland indigenous tribes, rich with game - more than enough for all to share. That would change in 1723 when Jaques Cheathe, a French Huguenot from Quebec made a deal “with the Cherokee Elk Clan to hunt, fish and trade here.” The next year he would set up a trading post, becoming the first European resident on that triangle and while he was at it, keep an eye out for “English frontiersmen making settlement.” The superpowers of their day were sparring in the wilderness over possession of these lands, settlers eager for their share of the new world were moving in and trading posts became forts as the tension and bloodshed grew. By 1763, when the French relinquished claim to the land, what remained of those early years were “Mehmonananagehelak” the Shawnee name for “falling in river bank” and “Cheathe”, names that morphed into Monongahela and Cheat. Mason and Dixon crossed the Cheat in October, 1767, met with Chief Catfish and his wife, stashed some supplies, then hewed their way through virgin timber to Core before their Lenape guides warned them to go no further. The line
The community, along with artist-educator Debra Palmer, created this glass mural, partially funded through a River Towns grant.
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POINT MARION, PA
by Colleen Nelson they surveyed, separating the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania, passes through the Cheat near the hydroelectric dam that holds back Lake Lynn, a scant few miles from town. Nearly every long time resident has a relative that harkens back to these early years. The 400-some page book Point Marion – from the beginning, published in 2000, is full of these great historical tidbits and family histories, compiled by “eight citizens of Point Marion who felt that the history of our area be preserved for future generations.” “My mother helped write that book!” Dave Callahan unfolds himself from The McClain Sand Company circa 1930. This is the famous point, where the Cheat and Monongahela Rivers meet. the center of his universe person to buy one would have naming rights to the town. For of newspaper clippings and photos on the wall and couches, recliners and refrigerators in the many old Revolutionary War veterans who lived here, the the storefront of the family business Clar-Mac Sales on Penn choice was easy. The Life of General Francis Marion was the Street. Some of his own published history hangs on the wall – most widely circulated book in the neighborhood and so the “My ancestors came as farmers to the Monongahela River in “Swamp Fox” general who never set foot here had his name added to the point and a town was born. 1771.” Attempts were now being made to control water levels on Dave’s family tells the story of Point Marion’s first big cash this first super highway of the region. Pittsburgh built the first crop – lumber, taken from the steep hills channeling the Cheat. lock in 1841 and by 1856 there were locks to New Genevia, During spring and fall high waters, the family would “cut timDenbo and Rices Landing. ber and float logs downstream to sawmills in Point Marion.” The approaching Civil War brought a bit of crisis identity When George Washington visited the point in 1784, the to the politics of the time – Virginia was just on the other side land Colonel George Wilson now owned was not yet a town of the Mason Dixon Line. In 1862 “the town ladies made the but it did have Morgan’s Tavern, built by Zackwell Morgan, first American flag and it was hauled to the river bank on a founder of Morgantown. Pennsylvania had already designated sled and raised on freshly cut pole. ” A year later, West Virginia the Monongahela River a public highway, ferries were in opwas carved out of the northern reaches of the Confederacy and eration and packet boats were moving lumber, goods and serby 1867 Point Marion was beginning to bustle, with “eleven vices up and down the river. dwellings, a store and a circular sawmill. ” In 1871 Dave CalWhen Jacob Sadler bought Wilson’s land in 1801, this area lahan’s relative, John A. Clarke built his first sawmill “at the was still little more than farm country, but the river was about head of Hope Hollow”. A flash flood took it out the next year, to change all that. Steamboats arrived in 1823, and by 1842, so operations were moved to Crow’s Ferry, a mile from town. John Sadler had 28 lots facing the river laid out and the first
Eddie & Larry working on the Welcome to Point Marion mural in 2012.
Another mural on the VFW building is a backdrop to the historic plaque celebrating first secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin’s National Park home on Friendship Hill. GreeneScene Magazine •
FEBRUARY
2019
