In the early 1740’s, James Skaggs (Skeggs) Sr. lived in southwestern Virginia and, along with his sons, hunted and explored the area around the Breaks. James’ father was Thomas Richard Skaggs and his grandfather Russell Skaggs. The Russell Fork River was named after him. The Russell Fork River is nearly 52 miles long and is a tributary of the Levisa Fork in Southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. Now, it is famous for its whitewater rafting, although the settlers and hunters in those days probably weren’t overly happy with its choppy waters that made traversing difficult. It travels through the Haysi, Virginia and on into the Breaks Interstate Park, including Elkhorn City, Kentucky. The Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, in eastern Buchanan County, near Grundy is a town called Skeggs Virginia.The Levisa Fork flows west into Pike County, Kentucky, where it receives the Russell Fork and is impounded to form Fishtrap Lake reservoir, then northwest past Pikeville and Prestonsburg. The natural course of the river formed a loop surrounding downtown Pikeville, but a massive earthmoving project completed in 1987 rerouted the river to bypass the city. At Paintsville it turns to the north-northeast, flowing through Johnson and Lawrence counties. It joins the Tug Fork from the southwest at Louisa on the West Virginia state line to form the Big Sandy. The Levisa Fork was historically an important river for log driving. The river is partly navigable for commercial purposes through a series of locks. In the early 1900s the river was navigable as far as Pikeville. Variant names include Louisa River, Louisa Fork, Lavisa Fork, and West Fork, in addition to Levisa Fork River and Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. The official name is Levisa Fork. In 18th-century explorer Dr. Thomas Walker had named the nearby Kentucky River the Louisa River, after Princess Louisa, sister of Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (Walker had just named the Cumberland River a month or two earlier). According to George R. Stewart, frontiersmen forgot who it was named for and it changed over time to Levisa. Russell Skaggs, sometimes called Busel and who the river is named for, came from Derry in Ulster, Ireland. Dr. Thomas Walker got credit for naming the Levisa {Louisa} River, but according to Skaggs’ family history, it was actually named after Mathias Harman’s mother, Louisa Katrina Harman. Dr. Thomas Walker, known for being one of the first to come into Kentucky, also makes mention of stopping at the Harman home in southwestern Virginia near Skeggs during his 1750 trip. Heinrich Adam Harman was married to Louisa Katrina Harman. Mathias, son of Heinrich Adam, help located and constructed a log cabin on Louisa River, which later became known as Harman Station. in 1755 near Paintsville Ky.This was the foundation of the first permanent English speaking settlement made in Eastern Kentucky. Mathias Harman was an brother-in-law to th Skaggs Family. Mathias Harman married Lydia Skaggs whom the Indians was really looking for when they captured Jenny Wiley. Lydia Skaggs brother Henry Skaggs got credit for resuing Jenny Wiley back from the Indians. On Walkers Creek ,Matias and Lydia and their eight children live a half of a mile past the Wiley cabin.The Indians made a mistake and attacked the wrong cabin . In the early days of the Big Sandy Region, the Levisa River was called the Louisa River. It was called this until as late as 1855. Over time, the word “Louisa” became “Levisa” although the town name is still referred to as “Louisa.” This corruption of a name is not an oddity in Eastern Kentucky, or anywhere else really, and several town names took on different pronunciations as new people with new dialects came into the region and pronounced words in different ways. An 1856 map still shows the river under the name Louisa. Settlement attempts began as early as 1790 but did not take hold until 1818. Louisa became the county seat in 1822 and a city in The Levisa Fork (also known as the Levisa Fork River or the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River) is a tributary of the Big Sandy River, approximately 164 miles in southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky in the United States. The Big Sandy River, a tributary of the Ohio River, is formed between Louisa, Kentucky and Fort Gay, West Virginia. The bridge that connects the two is something that’s a little unique since is spans two forks of the river and connects two states. The bridge from Louisa, in eastern Lawrence County, to Fort Gay, West Virginia is something of a geographic and architectural oddity. The quarter-mile concrete span spans two forks of the Big Sandy River, connects two states and has a right turn at its halfway point, which connects traffic to the Point Section neighborhood of Louisa. When the County of Lawrence was established, and the Town of Louisa was founded by an act of the General Assembly of Kentucky, it is found that much of the property south of Main Street was claimed by various people who occupied the same and who were without legal title to it. When the site was located for the Lawrence County Court House, the County was unable to secure a legal title to it. It seems that Frederick Moore, a pioneer settler who located in and around Louisa and Fort Gay, had purchased the property and disposed of a lot of it in small parcles making the proper deeds for the same, which were recorded in Prestonsburg, which was the County Seat at that time for all the land south of Main Street in Louisa, Main Street of Louisa being the line between Floyd and Greenup Counties. Lawrence County was established in 1821 from land given by Floyd and Greenup Counties. Three courthouses have served Lawrence County; the first was completed in 1823 and the third was completed in 1964. The late fiddler Ed Haley played a tune called ‘‘Three Forks of Sandy’’ that had three parts to it, one each for the Tug Fork, the Levisa Fork, and the Big Sandy main stream. The Tug Fork originates in McDowell County, while the Levisa and its tributaries rise no more than 20 miles away in southwest Virginia. The two forks flow generally northwestward and parallel to each other. They join at Louisa, Kentucky, to form the Big Sandy River, which then flows to the Ohio River at Catlettsburg. The valley is about 190 miles long and 80 miles wide, with the Tug Fork and then the Big Sandy forming the entire length of the West Virginia-Kentucky state line. Major towns on the Big Sandy watershed include Williamson and Kenova, West Virginia, as well as Pikeville, Louisa, and Catlettsburg, Kentucky. This is an area of thick forest, rugged terrain, and bituminous coal mining, and a hotbed of Scotch-Irish, English, and German culture. Roads came slowly. For generations the most practical means of transportation and the main contact with the rest of the world was by river. The Big Sandy Valley saw some of the Civil War, with the battles of Middle Creek and John’s Creek probably being the most memorable. The most famous event in the valleys’ history was the Hatfield-McCoy feud, which raged along Tug Fork in the 1880s. Steamboat traffic proliferated roughly from the 1830s to the eve of World War II, bringing needed things to isolated areas, moving passengers and mail back and forth, and carrying out produce to be sold. Some were sternwheelers, and some had exposed sidewheels and were called ‘‘bat wings.’’ Steamboats traveled the entire length of Big Sandy and up the Levisa as far as Pikeville. When the water was too low, poled wooden flats called ‘‘pushboats’’ took over and went as far upstream as Williamson, on the Tug Fork. Temporary splash dams were built on the Russell Fork of Levisa and other tributaries, to form pools to collect logs so that they could be floated out when the dams were dynamited and the waters released. The logs were collected downstream. The late Capt. Jesse P. Hughes said he remembered being almost able to walk across the mouth of the Big Sandy entirely on log rafts at Catlettsburg. Many of these rafts were towed down the Ohio, some as far down as Cincinnati, where much of the lumber went into the building of the palatial steamboats that graced the Mississippi and Ohio during this period. Twenty-five steamboats were based up the Big Sandy before the railroads arrived. Both banks were lined with landings, wharfboats, and warehouses to handle the upriver commerce all the way to Pikeville, mile 88.5 above Louisa. In 1885 Lock at Louisa, Ky was built.In later years there were three locks and dams on the Big Sandy and one each on the Tug and Levisa. The last log raft down the Big Sandy originated on the Levisa in about 1942 or ’43 and actually passed through Lock 1 on that stream. Today, nine miles of the Big Sandy are commercially navigated. The Norfolk & Western Railroad was built down the Tug Fork and Big Sandy in the late 1880s, connecting the valley by rail to the Midwest and to the coal-shipping docks of Norfolk. Thereafter, mining the region’s rich deposits of bituminous coal became the main economic activity of the Big Sandy watershed, and it remains so today. Rail and highway transportation gradually displaced the riverboats.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:32:23 +0000
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