Posted on: Jackson County, WV Bios Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/WV/JacksonBios/164 Surname: REYNOLDS, WRIGHT ------------------------- This sketch taken from "Pioneers of Jackson County", by John House, it is called "Introductory". Big Mill Creek empties into the Ohio River eleven miles (by railroad) below Ravenswood and thirty-three miles above the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, though the railroad follows the river, the distance by water would be greater. Four miles above the mouth of Mill Creek, at the Post Office of Willow Grove, commences a fertile bottom land, about a half mile wide, and extending to the mouth of Mill Creek. This is know for an indefinite distance below Willow Grove as Warth's Bottom. Mill Creek at the mouth is a sluggish stream with low sloping shores, several rods wide covered with a heavy growth of brush and weeds, willows, elm, river maple and other trees, which carry in their tops driftwood left by floods from the up-country, or backwater at time of freshets in the Ohio River. Back of this are the real banks of the creek, some sixteen or twenty feet high, and from which stretch away wide and fertile fields of bottom land, reaching up the creek to the "falls", and down the Ohio to the mouth of Little Mill Creek, and probably to the county line. It was on these bottoms vaguely referred to as "The Mouth of Mill Creek" and "Warth's Bottom", that the first pioneers of Jackson County planted their homes in the unbroken wilderness. The hills are low, and go up very gradually, bing intersected occasionally by small streams and hollows. Mill Creek is about thirty miles long, and has two main branches. These were known to the early settlers as Tug and Trace Forks, but the latter is now known as Main Mill Creek. They rise in the high range of hills which form the watershed, dividing the waters flowing into the Ohio River from those which discharge into the Great and Little Kanawhas. Before uniting, the Tug Fork flows for twenty-two miles through a very mountain like and broken country, for tht most part, though toward the head of its right hand branch lies some of the finest uplands of Jackson County; and the Trace Fork flows sixteen miles through a section with wider bottoms and with hills less precipitous. The two units, as stated above, about thirty miles from the Ohio, making the total longest length fifty-two miles. The surface of the Mill Creek country is quite diversified, with many wide bottoms along the main watercourses, narrowing as the streams grow smaller. Some of the hills are low, with gently sloping sides, while others are rugged and lofty. In some places, there are wide stretches of table lands nearly level, or smoothly rolling, and again, the high mountain tops (as they were called by the pioneers) are narrow and rocky, with steep sides, or overhanging cliffs, coming down to the water's edge, cleft and scarred by the deep fissures and gulches. In the early days, there was everywhere a heavy growth of timber, sycamore, water elm, river maple, birch, beech, sugar, poplar, walnut, lynn and white oaf, along the streams, in the bottoms and up the rich, loamy, north and east hillsides, sometimes to the tops of the hills. Shellbark hickory, wild cherry, buckeye, and red oak also were common, while several varieties of oak and hickory, red maple, black gum, white walnut, ash, locust, and cucumber abounded on hill slopes, banks and flats. In places, the tops of the ridges were crowned with pine forests, or chestnuts of giant girth. The soil was for the most part fertile, especially in the bottom lands, which were often of sandy loam, in northeast coves, northern and eastern slopes, and the red clay of the hill tops. Southern and western exposures, oak and hickory flats and white clay summits were less fertile, and chestnuts and pine lands were generally thin. Three miles from the river, Mill Creek falls from a plateau which extends up the stream about eight miles, and was known as the "Flats of Mill Creek". This plateau had good bottoms along the streams with a sort of second bottom of white clay, in many places apparently sour, crawfish land. Some places, this section is gently rolling and frequently cut by deep ravines, but commonly it is almost a dead level, sometimes a half mile or more in width. The principal tributaries of Mill Creek are Cow Run, Parchment, Tug Fork, Elk Fork, and Frozen Camp, on the south side, and Lick Run, Log Lick, Mud Run, Sycamore Station Camp, Joe's Run, Big Run, Little Creek, and Buffalo, from the north. The general course of the stream is northwest. >From the forks of Mill Creek, five miles down the stream, or one mile below the mouth of Sycamore, is probably the best farming land in Jackson County, saving only along the Ohio River bottoms. It has been styled the "Heart of Jackson County". On the right side of this stretch of bottom, which will probably average more than an quarter of a mile wide, rises a high range of hills, in many places, of abrupt ascent, culminating at the upper end in a towering height, known as Salt Lick Hill, of Reynold's Knob, while across a saddleback depression is a twin peak, scarcely inferior (now known as Reynold's Hill). The United States Geological Survey places the elevation where the pike crosses it as 947 feet, and the summit of Salt Hill as 1,080, Smith Hill near Garfield 1,180, Stalnaker Hill, North Peak, 1,080, and South Peak 1,120. The same authorities place the altitude of the mouth of Mill Creek at 570 feet, and at Ripley 615 feet. The lowest point in the valley of Big Mill Creek is at the mouth of the creek, probably the highest point is at a knob at the head of Frozen Camp, a difference of about 630 feet. Little Mill Creek has its rise in the upper edge of Mason County, and flows north into the Ohio River, perhaps a half mile below the mouth of Mill Creek. Mill Creek was so named from a water mill built at the falls, now Cottageville, by Benjamin Wright, in 1802.