1891 Map of Lewisburg

About this map

Lewisburg and the surrounding river valleys represent a critical corridor of late 19th-century Appalachia, where the Greenbrier River and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad dictated the flow of commerce and travelers. This reconnaissance work, surveyed by Morris Bien in the late 1880s, documents a landscape of established settlements and nascent mountain resorts. The railroad’s crossing of the Alleghany Mountain is marked by significant engineering feats like the Alleghany Tunnel and Lewis Tunnel, which facilitated access to the mineral waters at White Sulphur Springs and Sweet Spring. Away from the main lines, the map reveals a decentralized network of small community hubs such as Van Staverns Mill, Second Creek P.O., and Frankford. These locations, along with family-named features like O'Neils Knob and Nicholls Knob, provide a dense record of early West Virginia and Virginia borderland genealogy and settlement patterns.