Buffaloskins

West Virginia Waterways finds its source at the highland watersheds of the Allegheny Mountains. These watersheds supply drainage to the creeks often passing through deep and narrow hollows. From the hollows, rushing highland streams collect in bottom land brooks and rivers. more...

People have lived along and boated on the Mountain State's waterways from the time of antiquity.

On July 13, 1709, Louis Michel, George Ritter, and Baron Christopher De Graffenreid petitioned the King of England for a land grant in the Harpers Ferry, Shepherdstown area, Jefferson County, in order to establish a Swiss colony. Neither the land grant or the Swiss colony ever materialized. The Treaty of Albany, 1720, designated the Blue Ridge Mountains as the western boundary of white settlement. Orange County, Virginia was formed in 1734. It included all areas west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, constituting all of present West Virginia. By 1739, Thomas Shepherd had constructed a flour mill powered by water from the Town Run or the Falling Springs Branch of the Potomac River. Shepherd along with Isaac Garrison, and John Welton established the presant town of Shepherdstown in todays Jefferson County. October, 1748, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act establishing a ferry across the Potomac River from the landing of Evan Watkin near the mouth of Conococheague Creek in present-day Berkeley County to the property of Edmund Wade in Maryland. Robert Harper obtained a permit to operate a ferry across the Shenandoah River at present-day Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County on March of 1761. Thus, these two ferry crossings became the earliest locations of government authorized civilian commercial crafts on what would become a part of the West Virginia Waterways.

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