In Pocahontas County on this day 95 years ago, Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park was dedicated.
Which was an appropriate date, as many will say.
That’s because the intense, 1863 skirmish for which the park is named was also West Virginia’s Revolutionary War, of sorts.
Even with West Virginia entering the Union that June, the Confederacy still maintained a strong military presence within the new, squiggly borders of the only state in the U.S. born of the Civil War.
The ink was barely dry on West Virginia’s statehood papers when everything spilled over the cold morning of Nov. 6.
Some 5,000 soldiers in blue uniforms dug in at the summit of Droop Mountain against 1,700 soldiers wearing gray. The town of Lewisburg and the Virginia-Tennessee railroad line were both at stake.
The first shots were fired at 11 a.m. — and by 1:45 p.m., the enemies were staring one another dead in the face.
Brutal, hand-to-hand fighting ensued.
By 3 p.m., the Confederate troops began pulling back, reporting that were being overrun by the soldiers from the Union.
An hour later, they were in full retreat. It was over. Some 275 soldiers in gray were dead on the battlefield, according to estimates. Another 119 Union soldiers were casualties of war.
Southern forces never took a stab at the new West Virginia after that.
“Well, they were tenacious, for sure,” author and archivist Stan B. Cohen said by telephone, two days before the Fourth of July, from his home in Montana.
“I always saw that as kind of a West Virginia thing,” the longtime Missoula resident said.
It was a mostly sunny day on July 4, 1929, when Droop Mountain became the first state park in West Virginia.
According to newspaper accounts, as many as 10,000 poured into the place, to see the handiwork of it all.
There were speeches and proclamations. More poignantly, a handful of elderly Civil War veterans on both sides of the fighting were there to shake hands.
The logo — and the Last Frontier
Missoula is where Cohen, a Charleston native and WVU graduate, started making his name.
He enjoys taking in all that Big Sky and the western range of the Rockies he can regard from his window, but if you ask him – he’ll still proudly proclaim his Mountain State pedigree.
“Everybody out here knows I’m from there,” he said.
“I was talking about Jerry West with a guy at my bank just now. I tell everyone I’m a West Virginian who just happens to live in Montana.”
Cohen earned a geology degree in 1960 from WVU.
As an undergrad, he thrilled to the basketball conquests of the aforementioned West, a cool, steely counterpart to Hot Rod Hundley, who paired his own prowess in the game with glorious clowning and comedic flair.
It was a good time to be a fan of WVU’s basketball Mountaineers, he said.
People would pack the now-gone Stansbury Field House on Beechurst Avenue, where the seats went right down to the court.
Dust would rain from the rafters when fans would stomp their feet in appreciation. (So too would colorful language and creative insults, when they weren’t pleased).
Cohen was born in the Mountain State’s capital city in 1938, a son of Benjamin Franklin Cohen and Ruth Lieberman Cohen.
He worked in the oil and gas industry here briefly after WVU, before opportunities in the U.S. Forest Service took him to Montana and Alaska.
The West Virginian has been a small business owner and publishing house founder and proprietor.
His 1976 book, “A Pictorial Guide to West Virginia’s Civil War Sites,” carries the imprint of his Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., in his Charleston hometown. He later sold the business to a friend.
Out west, he’s primarily regarded as a writer and historian.
“I might be a little more known in Alaska than I am in Montana,” he said.
He’s penned more than 70 books on everything from wildlife to military history, while publishing close to 400.
He’s authored at least 15 books on America’s Last Frontier and is a recipient of the state’s Alaska History Award.
At 86, he has no plans of slowing down, as he’s currently writing a historical study of America’s monorail and alternate transportation systems — “I’m guessing the PRT is still going in Morgantown?” he asked.
Wars are just as much about real estate as they are ideologies, and the Mountain State is a revolution of place regarding both, Cohen said.
It’s home.
“I haven’t been back to West Virginia in six years. And that’s starting to bug me.”
