I was born in the late 1930s and my father, Theodore Burdette, was a lifelong railroad man and locomotive engineer, so I got to see a lot of steam locomotives and ride in their cabs.
In the mid-1950s, railroads were doing away with steam power. As diesels appeared on the major railroads, my father followed steam to a short line in Clay County, W.Va., known as the Buffalo Creek & Gauley Railroad.
90,000 acres and a dream
J.G. Bradley, one of the last old-time timber and coal barons, owned a 90,000-acre wilderness that was rich with coal and timber in Clay County. This private empire was called the Elk River Coal & Lumber Co.
When I was a boy, I enjoyed listening to stories told by John Lanham and Pat Butler,…
