Opinion ID: 1323824
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 21

Heading: office in charleston

Text: Whereas the New York charter application showed the principal office of the firm as being in New York City, the West Virginia document shows the principal office as 700 Terminal Building, Charleston, where Sprouse has his law firm. Three months after qualifying to do business here, Selmet sold a tract for $28,000 in a deed dated Nov. 26 and signed by Sprouse as president of Selmet. That brought Selmet's take to $95,932 and was the last deed signed by Sprouse as president. All other deeds from that day to the present have been signed by Hedrick as president. In January, 1967, Olliver said the Forest Service was approached by Smith, offering to sell a tract of 1,385 acres, and the service recommended in May that it be purchased. Because the Forest Service did not have the money for the purchase at that time, Olliver said his office approached Nature Conservancy, Inc., of Washington to buy the tract and hold it for the service. Nature Conservancy is a non-profit corporation of dedicated conservationists who buy land for public agencies and hold it until the agency involved is prepared to buy it. Selmet sold the acreage to Nature Conservancy on Oct. 2, 1968 for $81,364. That made Selmet's total gross income $182,796.75 more than it paid the Regnerys for its entire holdings. Olliver said the only person he ever talked to about the deal was Smith, that he never knew who owned Selmet, and that he couldn't find out because at the time he inquired the firm was not incorporated in West Virginia. There is no precise way to measure how much land Selmet has left out of the original Regnery tract because of the inaccuracy of deeds in the mountainous territory. However, by deducting all of the land sold by Selmet, and using the Pendleton County land books as a guide, you come up with a total remaining of 404 acres. Much of this appears to be in the bottomland and includes very flat property on the highway that will be attractive to developers of motels, service stations, etc., when the Forest Service completes the great tourist complex. The Selmet property lies a few miles south of Mouth of Seneca, where the great rocks come in full view of the tourists. It is between Riverton and Secondary 13, a hard-base road that now leads up to Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia, 4,862 feet. All of the area lies within the Monongahela National Forest where a 100,000-acre tract has been designated as the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Ara [sic].