The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1899-10-11
The building of the Ohio River
RailrOad.

IThe building of the OHIO River
RAILROAD.
We take the following extract,
regarding the building of the
Ohio River Railroad, from the
speech of Senator j. N Camden,
delivered at the Centennial of
Wood county, which was celebrated
at Parkersburg. last week. No
speech delivered during the festiy-
tiles was listened to with more inter-
est or received more favorable com
ment than did this speech of SEN
ator Camden. Had we space we
would like to publish the whole
speech as compliment to the man
who has done SO much for this
State, and for the Ohio valley, from
the Big Sandy to Wheeling. We
knowIour readers will be delight
ed to read what their old friend and
ex-senator says about the Ohio
River Railroad-a road in which
Mason county people are SO much
interested:
EXTRACT.
at may be stated in a general
way, following the line of personal
"reminiscences, that Parkersburg's
first marked stimulus, was the oil
wells at Burning Springs, in 1860,
but that development was short
lived and of comparatively small
magnitude; but it produced the
slack watering of the Little Kama
wha for about 80 miles and the
building of oil refneries at Park
ersburg, and when the oil supply
failed at Burning Springs, great
quantities of oil was boated from
Pittsburg to be manufactured and
shipped from hore, the Camden oil
works alone employing from 500 to
800 men from about 1870 to the
present day.
Next came the building of the
Ohio River road, which, in my
Judgment, has done more than any
one thing, leaving out the B. & o.,
for the permanent prosperity of
Parkersburg, by bringing it into
easy and speedy communication
with all the neighboring towns on
the Ohio river, from Wheeling to
Huntington, and establishing an
interchange of business and bank
ing facilities that did not exist, and
could not exist under the slow
methods of transportation prior to
that time, which kept most of the
river towns strangers to each other.
81 remember that in getting up
the syndicate to join me in build
ing the Ohio River road, L charter
ed little boat to carry party from
Wheeling to Point Pleasant 10 look
over the line from the river stand
point,-amongst the party was my
old friend and colleague, Senator
Fair, of Nevada. The river towns
certainly did at that day present a
ragged and dilapidated appearance.
Fair remarked, from the deck of
the little boat, in front of then
struggling, seedy-looking little
town, which is now orc of the
brightest, busiest towns on the
river: "Camden, you may be all
right, and the country may be all
right, but the towns are very bad;
you must put on now shingles, and
paint the boards" But Fair put
his million dollars in the enterprise,
all the same, and every cent of his
securities has been held as an in
vestment by him and by his estate
to this day; and what is remarkable,
of the men who joined in furnish
ing the money to build that road,
very few have parted with any of
their holdings. Every time 1 go
up or down the road since, l invol-
UNFAIRLY mark the great contrast
between then and now. The hand
soonest succession of towns on the
Ohio river is to be found to-day
along the line of the Ohio River
Railroad"
The Republican bosses try to
laugh down the county debt, but
they can't do it. 1t is there to
plague them, and they cannot get
rid of it, except by the most rigid
economy. The tax is now up to
the limit of the law to meet our
rent expenses.
A bonoh, legged cur could get up