Including the region drained by Oil Creek and its tributaries Clover Fork, Three Lick, Road Run, Posey Run, McCauley Run, Dumpling Run & others
Orlando, the commercial center that grew at the confluence of Oil Creek and Clover Fork, was created by the railroad at the dawn of the 20th century, but for a hundred years before that, and on through today, there has been the community that has chosen this improbable area, Oil Creek, Clover Fork, Three Lick, Road Run, Posey Run, McCauley Run and Dumpling Run, as home. This community was shaped by the craggy hills and the nature of the people who chose to live there and it holds a dense story of more than two hundred years of American history.
My mother grew up along the banks of Oil Creek in the 1920s and '30s, at the time the railroad town of Orlando was winding down.
Her family had lived there since the early 1800s, and in large part still live there today. They built a home and a community in the wilderness. Many of their parents fought the Indians, the English and the French for the land west of the Appalchians; they hunted and cleared the land, built homes and roads, raised children, and hogs and chickens and sheep and cows, they planted corn and vegetables and did whatever they could to make a living.
In the Civil War they fought their neighbors; they bled and died for the Confederacy.
With the arrival and departure of the railroad from about 1890 until about 1940, the little community was bowled over by commerce and commercial interests.
The community dealt with the effects of the American melting pot with an influx of Irish immigrants in the mid and late 1800s, then with the challenge of unearned wealth with America�s need for gas and oil.
In the first half of the 1900s they were caught in a changing world view as their boys left to fight first in the World War, to End all Wars, and then in the Second World War.
And again, all this was filtered by the craggy hills and the nature of the people who chose to live there.
Today Orlando is one of hundreds of "wide spots in the road" deep in the hills of the Mountain State. Beyond the historical downtown that was at the confluence of Oil Creek and Clover Fork during the railroad days, Orlando is part suburb/exurb and part farmland, with numerous working and "gentleman" farms as well as a surprising number of mobile home communities.
Orlando
History
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Orlando
Genealogy
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Orlando
Arts & Culture
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Orlando's Neighbors
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Orlando
Stone Soup
a web log of misc. observations on
life & times in Orlando, WV
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Links
History & Genealogy
Hacker's Creek
Pioneer Descendents
West Virginia
Archives
Braxton County WV Pictures and People
Cousins' Genealogy Webpages
Elden & Rennie Johnson
Homer Heater's
Riffle Run
Skinner Family
of West Virginia
Orlando
People & Places
Sandy's Designs
Kilmarnock Farm
. . . to share stories, facts, thoughts & questions
about Orlando
and the world around it,
from yesterday and today.
Please e-mail me at
[email protected]
Edith (Skinner) Stutler
is created & maintained by
Donna Witzgall Gloff
All original material
is subject to copyright protection. 2006, 2007