Ona and Surround country

   HISTORY OF ONA AND SURROUNDING COUNTRY, PAST AND PRESENT

                            By F. L. Burdette

Location

To the careful observer the location of the Ona and Blue Sulphur section

in Mud River Valley is of striking interest.

Extending from Scary in Kanawha County to Barboursville in Cabell County

is a stretch of country considered in pioneer days especially inviting for

farm settlements. This section, commonly called Teays Valley, is a region

composed of gently rolling lands, has an abundance of constantly flowing

springs, and once had a heavy growth of fine timber. At the time of

settlement the forests were full of all kinds of native game, and the

valley was always considered comparatively free from Indian attacks.

Judged from the lay of the country, the formation of the soil and other

surface indications, the whole region seems to have once been the bed of

an ancient lake, or else the course of some large river like the Kanawha.

Mud River enters this old valley at Mud Bridge about one mile above Milton

and follows its sluggish course through the lowest part of the old valley

till it plunges over the Great Falls less than a mile above Blue Sulphur.

In an inviting part of this river stretch, in the largest bend of the

river's course, the Ona and Howell's Mill neighborhood is located.

Roads

All the main thoroughfares for travel built in this section of Virginia

and West Virginia have left the Kanawha River near Scary and followed the

shorter route through Teays Valley and the lower Mud River country to the

Ohio at the mouth of the Guyandotte River, or of the Big Sandy at

Catlettsburg. The Old Virginia State Road, sometimes called the Greenbrier

Road, the James River and Kanawha turnpike, the contemplated Covington and

Ohio Railroad, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and the present Midland

Trail have all followed this route. In this way the lower Mud River

country has long been on one of the main routes of travel between the east

and the western country. The eastern section of the Old Virginia State

Road was begun in the year 1785, and extended from the upper waters of

James River to Lewisburg (then Fort Union) in Greenbrier County. In 1786

the road was extended to the mouth of Gauley River on the Kanawha, and

sometime during the summer of 1787 it seems that some kind of a road was

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