Campbell's Choice | Big Stone Gap Publishing

George Washington’s map of the

Pittsburgh area drawn for the

Ohio Company, which was chart-ered by Virginia at the same time as the Loyal Company.

The French and Indian War

Geography was everything. The prize was the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. Both the French and English wanted and claimed it. The English had possession of the Atlantic Coast, and a massive over population of their own and of German people who were being driven out of Europe by the French. The French had a tortuously long canoe route into the interior of the continent over which they had to move people and armies. The English had the world’s largest navy with which to pour people and material onto the continent. However there was a chain of nearly impenetrable mountains separating the two aspiring combatants. There were two routes through the mountains connecting the two empires, and both lay through Virginia. One route was down the Ohio River, which has two heads, one (the Alleghany) on the Great Lakes, and the other in Virginia (the Monongahela). These two heads of the Ohio come together at present Pittsburgh. The second route into the Ohio Country is down the Great Valley of Virginia and on through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. It was inevitable that the conflict occur, and that it involve ... Continue to Page 12

CAMPBELL'S CHOICE	Page
INTRODUCTION	1
SALTVILLE GEOLOGY	1
SALTVILLE INDIANS	4
LEGAL MECHANISMS OF LAND TITLE OWNERSHIP IN VA.	6
THE SETTLEMENT OF SALTVILLE	13
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AROUND SALTVILLE BETWEEN THE PIONEER PERIOD AND THE CIVIL WAR	27
SALTVILLE IN THE CIVIL WAR	31
AFTER THE WAR	47
A MODERN CHEMICAL FACTORY	52
EPILOGUE	57
BIBLIOGRAPHY	61
INDEX	66

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