Travellers Repose on the Turnpike
An American Civil War Landmark in Greenbrier Valley of West Virginia
This historic home and property was a battleground during the Civil War, a place of inspiration after the war, and today is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Travellers Repose sits at the bottom of Cheat Mountain in the Greenbrier Valley of West Virginia and used to be a stagecoach stop on the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike.
It used to be a bustling inn, mill and farm that became a campground and battlefield during the American Civil War. Stonewall Jackson stayed here and Ambrose Bierce camped here as a soldier during the War. After the conflict, Bierce came back to the Inn to relax, write, and presumably eat the legendary meals of mutton, bacon, pancakes, and of course fresh trout from the river. Jessie claims that Bierce wrote some short stories here, inspired by the ghosts and shadows that still inhabit this remote part of the United States. (You can read Bivouac of the Dead here, which is indeed about Travellers Repose.)
Today, Travellers Repose is kept immaculately by 92-year-young Jessie Powell, a descendant of the original owner, Andrew Yeager. Civil War memories were passed down to Jessie Powell from her Grandmother who was a little girl who lived on the Summit of Cheat Mountain and remembered the War Between the States. This once bustling country Inn languishes in a remote part of West Virginia where it's hard to find a gas station that actually has gasoline, and there's not even a restaurant. It's ironic that this Inn was once prominent on a major thoroughfare and now, in another century and milennium the Inn has wallowed into obscurity.
Even though Travellers Repose was captured and occupied by the Confederacy during the Civil War, the framed portraits that hang on Jessie's front porch are of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson who were the great leaders of the southern Confederate Army. The Confederate flag hangs by the front entrance along with the American flag.
Travellers Repose has become an unofficial Civil War site. Jessie Powell says that even today, Civil War reenactors and descendants of the battles that took place there, come to spend the night on the battlefield that their ancestors once trod. There are still tangible remnants of the soldiers that once occupied this property by way of trenches (or earthworks) and tent sites. There is also an unmarked, mass grave of between 80 and 100 Confederate soldiers who died here from disease and battle.
This beautiful country home is on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States and will hopefully have a preservation easement of sorts applied to it, so that the building of Travellers Repose and the 200+ acres that round out the property will always be as they have been preserved for almost 150 years, a charming and beautiful piece of history with many stories to tell.
You can find Travellers Repose in Pocahontas County, West Virginia off of Route 250 near Durbin. This site is not really open to the public, but if you plan on making a stop here, give Jessie a call first, she's in the book. Find out more about the historic Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike here.
