Qualla: Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area

Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Shawnee leader the area is named for fought a battle 30 miles north of this forest in 1774 and was murdered by Virginia militiamen in a Point Pleasant stockade three years later. Naming an 11,772-acre West Virginia wildlife area after Cornstalk was a 20th-century gesture - one of the slow corrections by which place names try to make peace with the past they erased. The forest covers the rolling hills near Southside in Mason County, second growth that has come back since the timber operations of the early 1900s. Deer move through it now. Turkeys roost in the oaks. Whatever the chief would have thought of being commemorated by a hunting ground, the land at least carries his name in the part of the state where his people once hunted freely.

Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area: Forest That Came Back

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of West Virginia was timbered out at least once between 1880 and 1930. Loggers cut the old-growth hardwoods for railroad ties, mine timbers, and barrel staves, then moved on. What grew back was second-growth oak-hickory forest - the same mix of species, but younger and dense...

Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area: What the Land Holds

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The wildlife management area is, in practical terms, a hunting and fishing ground managed by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. White-tailed deer are the marquee species, with archery and rifle seasons drawing hunters from across the state and beyond. Gray squirrels...

Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area: The Name and What It Carries

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cornstalk was a Shawnee leader who led warriors against Andrew Lewis's Virginia militia at the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant, on the Ohio River 30 miles north of this forest. After signing the treaty that ended Dunmore's War, Cornstalk visited Fort Randolph at Point Pleasant in 1...

Chief Cornstalk Wildlife Management Area: Access and Use

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Chief Cornstalk WMA can be reached on Nine Mile Creek Road off US 35 near Southside, or by Crab Creek Road from State Route 2 south of Gallipolis Ferry. The roads through the area are gravel and unmaintained in winter. Primitive campsites scatter through the forest for hunters du...