Preserving West Virginia: Northern Railroad Water Tower

Photo credit: Northern WV Brownfields Assistance Center

Built around 1900, Northern Railroad water tower in Kingwood was once an important stop on the rail lines that helped build our state.

“They hauled sand, they hauled glass, they hauled coal and a few other commodities,” said Lynn Stasick, Statewide Field Services Representative for the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia.

The water tower outside of Kingwood helped fuel and cool the engines of those trains. It doesn’t look like much now and was almost condemned until the Friends of the Cheat stepped in.

“We really wanted to come in and help,” said Amanda Pitzer, of Friends of the Cheat.

They nominated the site for the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia 2012 list of endangered properties.

The tower was one of the signposts from the turn of the century that are hard to find now.

“The B&O had plans for these so they were all built the same along the line,” Stasick said. “Almost all of them are gone so this is a wonderful representation of an industrial past.”

Since the Friends of the Cheat became involved, they’ve amassed a half a million dollars for the project.

“We are poised to purchase this corridor and start building the trail and we really see the tower as kind of the focal point, the image, the icon, that represents so much history for this county, and hopefully a new future for this corridor,” Pitzer said.

Right now, the tower has a dangerous-looking lean and the bands have slipped down and look more like forgotten hula hoops than essential support structures, but engineers say they can save the tower.

“It will be straightened, it’ll be sort of pulled over at one side with cables and then we will lift the bands and re-fasten the bands,” Stasick said.

The new Preston County Parks and Recreation Commission hopes the area will become a rail-trail and more, using land that one connected communities through industry to bring people together again.

“Farmers markets, a gazebo type of thing for community activities,” Stasick said. “We have all kinds of visions, it’s just the slow process of making it come together.”

Friends of the Cheat aim to buy the land by the end of this year and have the first stretch of trail ready by spring of 2016.

See WBOY article here.