Qualla: Watters Smith Memorial State Park

Watters Smith Memorial State Park: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photograph created by Brian M. Powell (bmpowell on en.wikipedia)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Watters Smith was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1767. Like a great many young men of his generation he chose to go west when the British presence relaxed after the Revolution, and in 1796 he and his wife Elizabeth Davisson Smith moved across the mountains to Harrison County, in what was then the far western edge of Virginia. They settled on a low ridge above Duck Creek. The homestead they built and the farm they worked stayed in the Smith family for six generations. In 1949 the family deeded the property to the state of West Virginia, and Watters Smith Memorial State Park has preserved its 532 acres ever since - a working interpretation of frontier settlement that is also, somewhat unexpectedly, one of central West Virginia's better mountain-biking destinations.

Image: Photograph created by Brian M. Powell (bmpowell on en.wikipedia). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Watters Smith Memorial State Park: From Trenton to Duck Creek

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The journey Watters Smith made in 1796 was the standard journey of his generation: down the wagon road from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, then southwest into the back country of western Virginia. Land was cheap; population was thin; the political situation, with the recent Treaty of ...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Watters Smith Memorial State Park: Six Generations on the Same Land

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes the Watters Smith site distinctive among West Virginia historic farms is that the Smith family stayed put. The land passed from Watters and Elizabeth to their children, then to grandchildren, then through six generations of descendants without ever leaving the family o...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Watters Smith Memorial State Park: An Open-Air Pioneer Museum

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The park interprets the homestead in two layers. The 1876 main house, restored as a museum, represents the later nineteenth-century version of the farm, with parlor furniture, kitchen, and tools of that era. A reconstructed log cabin (similar to the original 1796 cabin, which has...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Watters Smith Memorial State Park: Twelve Miles of Single-Track

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The park's surprising second life as a mountain-biking destination has developed since the 2000s. More than twelve miles of single-track trail thread the wooded ridges of the larger park acreage, with sections rated from beginner to expert. There are technical rock gardens, fast ...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0