ABSTRACT

The Salt Lick District of Braxton County was created as one of four magisterial districts in the fashion inherited from Virginia. There were many Salt Lick communities of various sizes, some created in the preindustrial era and some created and then lost during boom industrial cycles. Most commerce and information networks for population centers in the Salt Lick District like Orlando, Falls Mill, Burnsville, and Bower lay downriver to the west in the counties of Gilmer, Calhoun, Wirt, and Wood. In 1908 a coal mine was opened at Bower, Braxton County. In the early 1920s, Bower had grown into a sprawling community of around 2,500 people. It was a hustling, bustling town whose whole life was centered on coal; its very existence depended upon coal. If Falls Mill represented the typical preindustrial community in the mountains of Appalachia, Bower much more clearly represented the sort of community created by external monied interests primarily concerned with resource extraction.