10 Years Ago
Week of September 25, 2014
Gran Fondo Cyclists To Pass Through Franklin
The 107-mile Alpine Loop Gran Fondo cycling event will pass through the county seat and parts of the county on Sunday.
The event was founded three years ago by a professional mountain bike racer, Jeremiah Bishop, who lives in Harrisonburg, VA.
“Gran Fondo” is Italian for “great finish,” and is used to signify an outstanding accomplishment, as crossing the finish line of the Alpine Loop Gran Fondo certainly is.
This event, which technically is not a race but retains elements of competition and timed runs and challenges, is unique in its allure and authenticity. It blends elements of a long-distance bicycle group ride, a traditional bicycle race and a festival. Unlike a race, rest stations along the route welcome and encourage riders to linger and enjoy refreshments. The festival atmosphere is encouraged along the route as communities come out to welcome the riders and cheer them along. At the finish line, participants celebrate their achievement, relax and enjoy the festivities.
Indeed, participants choose among the 107-mile Alpine Loop, the 78-mile Shenandoah Mountain Adventure and the 36-mile Valley View Challenge.
The “big route” is one of Bishop’s “great eight” training routes, and its final climb is “insane”—going up and over Shenandoah Mountain on an unpaved, rocky National Forest road. Event promoters say Gran Fondos have surged in popularity in recent years.
The route begins in Harrisonburg and, in its 107 miles, features over 11,000 cumulative feet of climb and two dirt-road climbs, making it the toughest and most challenging Gran Fondo in the U.S.
Janet Burgoyne, executive director of the Pendleton County Chamber of Commerce and Convention/Visitors Bureau says, “This is a great group of folks who come to us each year, and we love having them! We want folks to know who all these bicyclists are that are coming through town and resting at our town park.”
The premier routes are celebrated for their heritage, difficulty or scenery, if not also for their potential use as a professional race course.
SUGAR GROVE
The Transformation
Of Summer to Fall
Is Upon Us
Monday marked the official date for fall, and summer is looking as though it is dying. Orange butterfly weed flames amidst the Queen Anne’s Lace, and the blue Chicory weed still abounds. Lady Fall will pack and take the green from the meadows and fields, the wildflowers along the roadsides and the garden crops that still remain.
Balmy, quiet evenings will allow one to sit on the porch swing and notice the signs of her leaving. The mountains are still dressed in green garb, but here and there are tinges of yellow showing at the border of summer’s garb. Crickets play their tiny fiddles, but the music is so lonely and melancholy. Birds, butterflies and hummingbirds are preparing to migrate as the earth’s laws are being set in motion.
The laws of the universe are perfect. Autumn follows summer, and spring will follow winter. The sun rises and sets, the moon and stars appear, and day follows night. All move under the command. Were mankind to be this obedient to the commands of law, as nature is, this would be a perfect world.
20 Years Ago
Week of September 23, 2004
Area Turkey Co-Op Buys Hinton Processing Plant
The Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative closed last Wednesday on the purchase of the Pilgrim’s Pride turkey processing facility in Hinton, VA, and on a feed mill in nearby Broadway, VA.
Of the plant’s approximately 1,000 employees, 120 are West Virginians. In addition, 19 turkey growers from this immediate area supply the plant through the VPGC and are former Pilgrim’s Pride producers.
The VPGC was incorporated on May 26 in response to the decision by Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation to close its Hinton, VA, turkey processing plant and to terminate its contracts with growers who supplied the birds.
That decision severely impacted the livelihood of more than 180 turkey growers and approximately 1,300 jobs related to the poultry industry in both West Virginia and Virginia.
Had the Pilgrim’s Pride plant closed, the adverse economic impact on West Virginia would have been an estimated $14 million. In Virginia, the impact would have been an estimated $225 million.
SUGAR GROVE
Derivation of County Places Told by Writer
Storytelling at the Pendleton Community Building in Franklin brought out many folk, the Saturday of the Treasure Mountain Festival.
The writer spoke about the derivation of names of places around the county. Pendleton County received its name from Edmund Pendleton, who was a Virginia jurist. Within the county, there were many names that evidently pertained to nature, such as Spruce Knob, Possum Trot, Deer Run, Timber Ridge, Cow Pasture, Cave, Bull Pasture, Buffalo Hills, Brushy Fork, Oak Flat (from a piece of flat land across the river that had oak trees on it) and Cave Mountain. This mountain had a cave.
Eagle Rock could have had two possibilities for its derivation. Nearby lived a man named William Eagle, who was born in 1761 and died in 1848. He joined the Revolutionary Army when he was fifteen years old. He served with Washington, Cpt. Kirkpatrick and was present at the Yorktown surrender of Cornwallis. He lived in a log house beside the Potomac River near where the large projection of rocks are. A marked grave for William Eagle lies across the river from these rocks. Bald eagles nested on the cliff. They were known to have been killing Mr. Eagle’s chickens. Mr. Eagle tried in vain to take care of the eagle problem.
Millions of years ago, when all the land was under water, limestone formed. As the land was thrust upward to form mountains and valleys, the water flowed over and around the limestone to form caves and crevices.
Over a period of a million years, the Smoke Hole Cave was formed. The Indians long ago discovered a room in this cave. It was round and had a hole in the top. They used this cavern room to smoke game and named it the Smoke Hole Cave because smoke rose from a hole in the top.
The Sugar Grove community got its name from a large grove of sugar maple trees which stood where the village stands today. The first known resident was a family by the name of Pickle who came around 1775. Several years later, more pioneers began moving in, the larger percent being of German descent migrating from Pennsylvania.
The common language spoken in and around Sugar Grove until 1900 was German, commonly known as Pennsylvania Dutch. Today, this language is almost extinct with a few folk able to speak or understand it.
40 Years Ago
Week of September 22, 1984
SUGAR GROVE
Country Life
Is Having Time
To See Surroundings
Country life is taking time to admire deer and wild turkeys, contentedly walking in the fields, while in the backyard rabbits nibble tufts of grass until a cat streaks by.
It’s knowing your neighbors, not just those who live down the road, but those five to 10 miles or more from your home. It’s knowing when your neighbors need help and giving it without being asked!
It’s also ambling down to the pond or river to catch fish for dinner. It’s running out of gas, getting stuck in the mud or having a flat tire several miles from home and knowing that the next person to come by will stop to help you. This country life is all these things plus fresh air, friendly folks and freedom!
60 Years Ago
Week of September 24, 1964
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Hood Moves North,
Heads for Tennessee
Napoleon had marched into Russia in the Nineteenth Century and had captured Moscow, the nation’s capitol. But once in Moscow, his army was ravaged by cold and hunger until it was nearly destroyed before it could get back to western Europe.
Confederate Gen. John B. Hood figured there was a lesson for the Confederacy in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Federal Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had invaded Georgia and had captured Atlanta, the state’s most important city.
Hood’s idea: to make it as disastrous for Sherman to get out of Georgia as it was for Napoleon to get out of Russia.
Therefore, 100 years ago this week, Hood began a new Civil War campaign. He set out with his army of 40,000 for Tennessee, hoping to get behind Sherman’s army and cut it off from the North.
Hood’s plan had emerged from necessity. When Sherman captured Atlanta early in September, Hood had retreated down the Macon Road where, he hoped, he could prevent Sherman from moving farther into the state.
But as he waited, he realized that Sherman was in some trouble, himself. Sherman was deep in Confederate territory with a huge army, at the end of a long, thin supply line.
Hood knew he could not defeat Sherman in open battle because of Sherman’s superiority in numbers. But, he reasoned, if he could circle behind Sherman’s army, he could cut the Federal supply line and leave the Federal army alone, without supplies, in a hostile state. It would be a matter of time, he hoped, before Sherman would have to get out of Georgia or watch his army fall apart around him.
On the morning of September 18, Hood’s army began moving to the northwest. By the 20th, his headquarters were at Palmetto, just southwest of Atlanta. He then began preparing to cross the Chattahoochee River and head for Alabama and Tennessee.
On September 28, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, showed up at Palmetto and made a speech to Hood’s army, announcing the plans of the coming campaign. In the crowd that heard him was a Federal spy, who quickly reported Davis’ speech to Sherman. Now Sherman was no longer in doubt. The Confederate plan was known by both sides.
It took several weeks for Sherman to find his solution to this new problem. The solution would come in one of the Civil War’s most famous campaigns—Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea.
Next week: St. Louis Threatened.
Byrd Predicts
New Timber Industry
- S. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) recently dedicated the new $175,000 United States Forest Service Laboratory at Parsons by predicting that West Virginia’s timber resources “are now ready to support a new and prosperous forest products industry.
“As our farms decline in number and mining employment is reduced, we look to our timber resources to provide jobs and income for more people as it once did,” said Byrd in the principal address.
Reviewing West Virginia’s past activities in the field, he noted that the state had a booming lumber industry 50 years ago, but said hardwood lumber production today is about one-fourth of that in 1910.
“We know that part of this decline can be attributed to the depletion and degeneration of the national resources,” he explained.
“But we also know that this timber resource is now coming back strongly, ready to support a new and prosperous forest products industry.”
To back up his prediction of a revitalized timber industry, Byrd cited these findings from a recently-completed survey of commercial lumber supplies available in West Virginia as compared to those in 1949:
- Commercial forest land in West Virginia has increased by 1.5 million acres.
- Net volume in trees 5 inches and larger in diameter is now 11 billion cubic feet, an increase of almost 5 billion cubic feet over 1949.
- The volume of timber of sufficient size and quality to be harvested commercially showed an increase of almost 65 percent.
- The new annual growth of saw timber with a commercial value is 1 billion board feet. In 1960, this was more than twice the saw timber actually cut.
- About 60 per cent of the current usable saw timber volume is in trees 15 inches in diameter and larger.
“This summary is evidence of an amazing improvement in our timber supply,” Byrd told the audience.
However, Byrd was quick to add that this “explosion” in new resources is only a comparison to what existed in 1949. Still to be considered, he added, is the marketable values of the new supplies.
“I think our conclusion must be that, pleased as we are with the increased volume of our timber resources, there is much to be done in increasing the productivity of our lands and in improving the quality of our trees,” Byrd concluded.
“We must have more knowledge on how we can increase our timber growth, and on what lands the economic return will be greatest.
“Through laboratories such as this, we shall make great strides and make full use of the economic potential offered by our timber resources.
