A Peek into Summers County’s Past: The Greenbrier River

This week I will give a bit of a science lesson with my piece on local history Haha. The Greenbrier River is a tributary of the New River, which is also in Summers County. It is 162 miles in length making it one of the longest rivers in the state of West Virginia.

It has a drainage area in West Virginia of 1,656 square miles. The river starts in Pocahontas County in Dublin, West Virginia by the convergence of the East Fork Greenbrier River and the West Fork Greenbrier River which are both tiny streams and are just the length of Pocahontas County.

Through its 162-mile journey, it travels through the aforementioned Pocahontas County, parts of Greenbrier and Monroe Counties. Making its final stop in Summers County where it joins the New River in Bellepoint.

Some other towns that the Greenbrier River passes through before coming to its end are Cass, Marlington, Hillsboro, Ronceverte, Fort Spring and Alderson. What makes the name “Greenbrier River” is that it is an onomatopoeia, meaning “the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests what it is.”

Filamentous algae are what make the Greenbrier River appear “green.” The algae is often so thick that it doesn’t just give a green color to the water it clogs sections of the river. Filamentous is caused by nutrient-rich wastewater. Howards Creek which drains into the Greenbrier River is a prime example of this. It drains all of the White Sulphur Springs area, causing filamentous algae to develop and clogging the hydrilla beds.

This was most recently verified again by a study by the Department of Agriculture in 2006. It was found by “nutrient source tracking.” This led to the Greenbrier River being deemed the most algae-affected river in West Virginia.

If you are a “local” when you think of the “Greenbrier” you remember and think of the historic floods, especially the ones from the last 50 years or so. Alderson is the point of reference for the river flood stage of 14 feet, even though Alderson is in Greenbrier County. The great flood of 1996 is the worst on record with a crest of 24.33 feet. Then the flood of 1985 comes in a few inches less with a crest at 23.95 feet. Then the most recent 1000-year flash flooding event in 2016 with a crest of 22 feet. Lastly is the flood of 1973 with a crest of 20.30 feet. There were some other substantial crests in the 60s and 70s between 18 feet and 19 feet or so.

Now for a bit of the history side of this story. The photo you see is from 1930 at the mouth of Griffith Creek, across the river you can faintly see The Glenray Lumber Company. The piers in the river are for a railroad bridge being constructed to haul timber from far up the mountain in the Clayton/Kennys Knob area. Remember in one of my previous pieces I told how the name of Griffiths Creek used to be Santafee, West Virginia.