Qualla: Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike

Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The road still climbs the ridges the way the surveyors laid it out in 1847. Modern engineering would have put it in the valley bottoms, taking the easier grade beside the river - and US-19, built in the 1920s and following much of the original alignment, did exactly that. But on the high ground above the Elk River near Burnsville, ten miles of the original Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike still trace the spine of the hills, unpaved and twenty feet wide, exactly as it ran before the highways came down off the ridges. The Army Corps of Engineers administers it now as a hiking trail. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

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

Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike: An Unusual North-South Route

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Most Virginia turnpikes ran east to west, carrying traffic between the Tidewater and the trans-Appalachian frontier. The Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike, chartered in the 1840s and built starting in 1847, was different: it was meant to run north and south through the mountains,...

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

Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike: Mismanagement and a Suspension Bridge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Trouble found this turnpike. Construction was delayed by repeated instances of mismanagement and conflicts of interest among the directors of the joint-stock company. Work proceeded in fits and starts through the late 1840s and into the 1850s. The largest single engineering featu...

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

Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike: A War Road

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The turnpike was barely complete when the Civil War transformed it from a commercial road into a military one. In 1861, Union troops used it to move into western Virginia and seize control of the loyalist counties that would shortly become West Virginia. Two years later, on Octob...

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

Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike: Bypassed and Preserved

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The turnpike soldiered on after the war as a working road, but the twentieth century pushed it aside. When US Route 19 was laid out across central West Virginia in the 1920s, planners followed the easier grades in the valley bottoms wherever possible. Long sections of the old tur...

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