One hundred years ago, the extreme upper reaches of main Elk River were known by local residents as “Upper River.” The designation has a certain romantic appeal, and even a musical quality about it, hence the title chosen for this book. The sub-title, “Elk’s Origins and Beyond,” reflects the fact that the book also explores the headwater origins of Elk, plus the remainder of the river on to Charleston.

In the strictest sense, Upper River refers only to the first ten miles of Elk from its official start at Slatyfork down to Elk Springs, or Cowger’s Mill as it was formerly called. This section, known by fishermen as the Slaty Section, includes the celebrated Dry Bed, which begins in the vicinity of Blackhole Run. The Dry Bed is actually dry only part of the year, and in those periods resurfaces at Elk Springs.

A somewhat more liberal definition would carry Upper River two miles farther downstream to Whittaker Falls, a well-known scenic and fishing spot. The biota of the river gradually changes below there from a trout stream to a mixture of trout and smallmouth bass for a considerable distance. Therefore, nature seems to have chosen Whittaker Falls as the ending of Upper River.

For purposes of this book, and in keeping with local tradition, all of the river from Webster Springs upstream to its Slatyfork beginning is referred to under the general umbrella of Upper Elk, an umbrella that covers the first thirty-two miles of the river.
In the Slaty Section
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Accepting the more liberal definition of Upper River as ending at Whittaker Falls, the next natural geographic segment is from Whittaker Falls to Webster Springs, a distance of twenty miles. One of the two classic canyons of Elk occurs in this stretch. From the overlook on Point Mountain, the route of Elk can be traced through mountains that rise to twenty nine hundred feet on the south side and exceed thirty five hundred feet on the north, or Point Mountain, side.

This segment also includes the Church Barn, where the first formal religious services on Upper Elk were held starting in 1833, as well as the village of Bergoo, where typical mountaineer Rimfire Hamrick was born in 1868.

Webster Springs, the county seat of Webster County, was first known as Elk Lick because of the salt sulfur spring that seeped out from a rocky bar and attracted large numbers of elk, buffalo, and deer. Later it was called Fork Lick because the Back Fork enters Elk there. Then it was called Addison, which is still its official name, although the post office became Webster Springs in 1902, and that has been the town‘s de facto name ever since.
Ghostly mill walls at Bergoo
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Immediately below Webster Springs, or “Down Elk” as the locals say, the river enters a rugged canyon that basically extends all the way to Centralia in Braxton County, a distance of twenty three miles. Centralia is noted as being the community nearest to the geographic center of West Virginia, and also near where, according to legend, Solomon Carpenter was born under a rock cliff on Camp Run of Laurel Creek. Solomon’s father, Jeremiah Carpenter, was the first permanent white settler on Elk in what is now Braxton County. Solomon’s birth under the rock occurred in what is now Webster County.

The untamed first fifty-five miles of Elk ends at Centralia, where the river merges with the backwater of Sutton Lake. Fifteen miles farther down is Sutton Dam, completed in 1961 to curb the floods that periodically plagued communities along Elk.
The Sutton Dam straddles Elk
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Elk’s personality changes below Sutton as it flows through Braxton, Clay, and Kanawha Counties. Compared to the more frolicsome Upper Elk, the average fall from Sutton to Charleston is only twelve feet per mile and it takes on a “muskie personality,” a reference to the large fish that inhabit Elk below Sutton.

Apocalyptic literature that forecasts the world’s doom may have inspired imaginative log rafters to name a stretch of Elk in Clay County “The End of the World.” As they approached a bend in the river, they could see only a sheer rock cliff on the left descending side, and to them it represented the apocalypse, or end. Bill Byrne, whose enduring book, Tale of the Elk, came out in hardback form in 1940, had a camp at the End of the World. Byrne is the subject of a chapter in Upper River.

Elk enters Kanawha County seven miles above Clendenin, and approaches Charleston through the “Up Elk” communities of Clendenin, Elkview, and Big Chimney. In Charleston, the capital city of West Virginia, Elk joins the Kanawha River, thus completing a journey that begins in the mountains of Pocahontas County one hundred and seventy two miles away.
Evening in the Big Chimney area
©2005 Elk River Book