Out of the Blue: Photos Bring Early Fayette History Back to Life
By Susan Williams, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.
Feb. 14–FAYETTEVILLE — Around 1892, the young Willis W. Vail traveled across Fayette County and surveyed train lines for new coal mines.
As he traveled, he took pictures of what he saw: the New River in its raw power, houses and buildings where people lived and worked, families in their best clothes out for a social gathering.
To process his pictures, he used cyanotype. Called a quick “blueprint,” the work is rendered in icy blue and white tones. The photographer could then take the “blueprint” back to the studio and make a final print.
Last year, a Fayetteville man interested in the history of his home county first saw these images on the Internet trading post eBay.
Walter Caldwell has now written a book about the pictures and what they mean to him and to Fayette County history. Caldwell bid for some of the pictures, and he likes to think of them being back home in Fayette. He wants to see them installed in a suitable museum someday.
“Each time I looked at them, I saw so much detail. I find something I had not seen before. I thought they must come home to Fayette County,” he said.
Caldwell said he has printer’s ink in his blood. From the house where he grew up, he could go to sleep at night listening to the flatbed press run for The State Sentinel, one of the many local papers in Fayette County. In high school and college, he also took up writing for his school papers. He took up his pen again when he went into the military.
When he set out to write about how he discovered the pictures, Caldwell learned that Vail was born in Quakertown, N.J., on Valentine’s Day 1868. Caldwell believes that at age 24, Vail, who was a surveyor, got a job helping the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway find access to the newly discovered coalfields. In 1892, the C&O line was completed from Virginia to Ohio at Hawk’s Nest. The new rail lines would bring the coal to market.
Caldwell said Vail wrote brief notes on each picture, and many are numbered. For example, picture No. 35 is labeled “Above Shoo Fly Tunnel.” With help from his friend Kevin Andersen, Caldwell wrote that the picture is probably what Vail saw about a half mile above Gauley Bridge. “This would be only a short distance around the river bend, where the New River meets the Gauley River to form the Kanawha River,” Caldwell wrote.
No. 37 shows the New River below Cotton Hill without any human interference. But true to his mission, Vail in many pictures also shows how the rail lines cut through the immense rock structure of the gorge.
Vail also left some pictures of places that no longer exist — like some work camp shacks and even large sections of the community of Nuttallburg. The National Park Service hopes to preserve what is left of this now-ghost town, and Vail’s pictures might be a good place to start.
Caldwell scanned the pictures into the book he is now selling. He said the cyanotypes were developed by brushing paper with a solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide and then letting it dry in the dark. Then a negative is placed on the paper in direct sunlight for about 15 minutes. The parts exposed to the light turn blue and the other parts stay white. The paper is then washed in water, and this causes the white parts to turn a cyan or deep blue. Sir John Herschel developed the process in Scotland in 1842.
Caldwell has taken the originals he bought and stored them in acid-free folders. He can also make individual copies of the pictures in his book.
With one book under his belt, Caldwell is working on another. The working title is “Patton, Kilroy and I.”
Caldwell was a sergeant in the 71st Division of Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. He still has his uniform in his office. He is a self-proclaimed pack rat, and the uniform shares space with old pictures, a collection of hats, books and his famous collection of coal mine scrip — the tokens coal companies used instead of money.
One day as the soldiers moved through France, Caldwell discovered what he believes to be unpublished pictures of Adolf Hitler and some of his closest advisers, including Rudolph Hess. The slides were in a Leica camera box with German labels. “I liberated them,” he said slyly. “If my health holds, I want to start on my second book.” He also kept diaries during his time in service that he will draw on for the book.
The book, “Willis W. Vail and the Fayette County Cyanotypes” is available for $24.95 at several locations, but Caldwell can also mail copies to people who want them for an additional $4. He can be reached at 574-0105.
In the book, he also includes what he calls “bonus” pictures of other Fayette County places of interest. He has also put together a CD of 350 historic photographs.
He ends his book with his favorite Vail photograph. The scene is winter 1892, and a railroad track runs off into the distance at Nuttallburg in the New River Gorge. Caldwell said he could envision himself riding a train down the tracks in the picture.
“I can almost hear the steam train whistle as the engineer tugs, repeatedly, on the nearby cord.”
To contact staff writer Susan Williams, use e-mail or call 348-5112.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.
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