Ronceverte, WV

Ronceverte is a Greenbrier County city on the Greenbrier River, where the river, railroad, and lumber industry all leave visible traces. The name comes from the French phrase for green brier, and the place was first known as St. Lawrence Ford. Cecil Clay laid out the town in 1871 for the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company, whose sawmill and river log drives made Ronceverte a timber center.

The C&O Railway turned the river town into a regional junction, and the company’s softwood mill operated from 1882 to 1908. The old depot, downtown streets, Island Park, and the riverfront festival keep different eras in the same frame. The river is still the reason the city’s older pieces line up so clearly. Every June, the Ronceverte River Festival sends numbered yellow ducks into the Greenbrier for its signature race. That detail is as local as it gets, but the larger picture is timber and transport: logs came down the river, trains ran through town, and the city grew where those systems met.