Poking Around in Morgantown
The Hogback and the Peninsula
Monongalia County - West Virginia
by Craig Mains
Poking Around in Morgantown
The Hogback and the Peninsula
by Craig Mains
On one of my walks around town many years ago I found myself somewhat puzzled by a street named Peninsula Boulevard. How, I wondered, did such a landlocked city end up with a street with that name?
It wasn't until some years later when I saw an old map of Morgantown and noticed that at one time there was a good-sized meander in Deckers Creek in that area. Then it made sense to me. The area inside the meander bend did form a sort of peninsula. The clues that the course of the creek had changed since then were there---I had just missed them.
This segment of the 1902 USGS topo map of Morgantown shows the meander bend in the middle of the image. The bend was at the foot of a rather sharp descending ridge known as the Hogback [1]. Because the early USGS maps were rather small scale (1:62,500) it doesn't show much detail about the topography of the area within the bend.
Click/tap map for a larger image
This street map is from the title page and index of the 1906 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Morgantown. It shows the area enclosed by the meander loop as being without streets.
Compared to the previous image, the Sanborn map shows a more bulb-shaped loop that is typical of many meanders. This shape results because stream velocity is faster and more erosive along the outside edges of the bends in streams. With meanders, the narrow part or neck of the "peninsula" is eroded simultaneously from two sides leading to a gradual narrowing of the neck and an increasingly bulbous or teardrop shape. Given enough time the stream can erode completely through the neck resulting in a change in the course of the stream. The stream creates its own shortcut, in the process leaving behind a U-shaped, abandoned streambed. These abandoned channels can continue to hold water and are referred to as oxbow lakes.
That's not what happened here though.
Click/tap map for a larger image
This image is from the title page and index of the 1911 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. There are now streets on the peninsula but apparently not that many houses. The colored sections with numbers are references to other pages of the publication that show those areas in more detail. There were probably not yet enough houses on the peninsula to warrant a more detailed page for that area.
This is the only photo I could find that gives an indication of the former course of Deckers Creek. The view is looking south from near Powell Avenue. The factory is the Marilla Window Glass Company, whose location is shown on the previous image. The houses on the hill in the background are on White Avenue. The date of the photo is unknown. If a photo were taken from this location today the creek would be shown flowing straight across the bottom of the photo.
Click/tap map for a larger image
By 1921 the were enough houses on the peninsula to make it worthwhile for the Sanborn Company to include a more detailed map of the neighborhood. There were approximately 40 houses and one school inside the bend. Note that some of the street names have changed since 1921. What is today Peninsula Boulevard was then Deckers or Deckers Creek Boulevard. Hackney Street is now Beech Street and Austin Avenue is now East Brockway.
Note also that there are houses on only one side of Deckers Boulevard. There was not enough room on the creek side for houses, which would have also been vulnerable to flooding. It wouldn't have taken much of a rise in the creek level for water to come up on the street. Even the houses on the upper side of the street were still in the flood plain and were probably subject to wet basements and occasional flooding.
Earl Core, in his history of Monongalia County, noted that in 1929 a new Hogback Bridge was completed following "a change in the course of Deckers Creek." That almost makes it sound like it may have happened naturally but that was clearly not the case. There is a substantial block wall along the creek in that area that cuts off flow to the meander. The wall was almost certainly built around that time in response to problems with flooding in the area.[2]
The arc of Peninsula Boulevard is an echo of the former path of Deckers Creek. There is a slight depression between the street and the hillside but not much that would make one think that a stream once flowed there. It is possible that many people who live on Peninsula Boulevard are unaware that there was once a stream across the street from their homes. A person would have to be almost 100 years old to remember it.
I couldn't find any information on when Deckers Boulevard was renamed Peninsula Boulevard. After 1929 perhaps someone decided that Deckers Creek Boulevard made no sense since the creek no longer flowed alongside it. However, the choice of Peninsula Boulevard as a replacement name would seem equally illogical since, once the course of the creek was changed, there was also no longer anything that could be called a peninsula. It does, however, serve as a faint reminder of where the stream formerly flowed.
Above is another view of the former streambed along Peninsula Boulevard. Just constructing a block wall to redirect the course of Deckers Creek would not have solved all of the water problems along Peninsula Boulevard. Since it was a topographically low spot it would have still been prone to pooled water---potentially a sort of mini oxbow lake. This partially exposed pipe looks like part of an early effort to drain water off of the the former creek bed. The pipe is approximately four feet in diameter.
Above is a view of the block wall that cut off the former meander of Deckers Creek. This photo was taken about where the downstream part of the loop would have been---where the former course of the stream meets the present course of the stream. The pipe coming out of the wall is about the same diameter and composition as the partially exposed pipe in the previous photo and is probably part of the system intended to help drain the area along Peninsula Boulevard. I suspect that there would have to be some sort of a back-flow-prevention device inside it somewhere to keep water from traveling up the pipe during times of high water in Deckers Creek.
This exposure of broken rock at the corner of Valley Crossing and Powell Avenue (WV Rt. 7) is what some Morgantown residents think of as the terminus of the Hogback. (Many others, I've been told, just think of the Hogback as nothing more than a sharp curve on Rt. 7.) However, the ridge would have at one time continued further. The rock is exposed here because of road construction long ago. Construction of the railroad track and rerouting of Deckers Creek removed more of the lower end of the Hogback so that now it is difficult to visualize that the ridge very likely once continued unbroken into part of the peninsula.
Shown above is a Google Earth view of the Hogback and the former meander of Deckers Creek. The solid red line is the current approximate course of Deckers Creek and the dotted red line is the approximate location of the former course of the stream. (with allowances for shaky use of the mouse)
Due to road, railroad, and building construction, plus the rechanneling of Deckers Creek it is hard to imagine what the topography of the area once was. However, it is likely that the spine of the Hogback at one time extended across the neck and into the peninsula. The Hogback and the peninsula were, in essence, two parts of one continuous topographic formation. The continuation of the Hogback into the peninsula was the reason for the meander---the stream was forced to flow around the obstacle that was the tail end of the Hogback.
That raises the question of whether early residents of Morgantown considered the Hogback as something different than we do today. Earl Core wrote that in the early 1800s Michael Kerns was operating a paper mill "on the Hogback." Where would that have been? It doesn't seem likely that it would be on the steep hillside we usually think of as the Hogback today. Is it possible that earlier residents recognized the peninsula as part of the Hogback? There is no way we'll ever know. The former course of the creek, however, has left its mark in the crescent shape and the name of one of the city's streets.
Footnotes
[1] A "hogback" is a fairly common term in many places for a narrow, steep-sided ridge. It is named for the prominent spine that is present on some wild pigs. Many male wild pigs also have a winter mane that runs down their spine, further adding to their ridge-back appearance.
Back to Main Text
[2] Rerouting Deckers Creek would have involved considerable excavation, even though it would have occurred at the narrow neck of the peninsula . That raises the question of where did the excavated material end up? At the time, Forest Avenue connected to Powell Avenue by way of what is the now the dead end Valley Crossing. It would have been a short trip to haul the excavated material up Forest Avenue, when it could have been used to fill Deep Hollow, which I wrote about elsewhere.
Back to Main Text
Sources
Core, Earl L., The Monongalia Story: A Bicentennial History, Vol. II, The Pioneers, McClain Printing, 1977.
Core, Earl L., The Monongalia Story: A Bicentennial History, Vol. IV, Industrialization, McClain Printing, 1982.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Morgantown, Monongalia County, West Virginia. Sanborn Map Company, 1906. Map.
Source: Library of CongressSanborn Fire Insurance Map from Morgantown, Monongalia County, West Virginia. Sanborn Map Company, Nov, 1911. Map.
Source: Library of CongressSanborn Fire Insurance Map from Morgantown, Monongalia County, West Virginia. Sanborn Map Company, May, 1921. Map.
Source: Library of CongressUnited States Geological Survey. Morgantown, WV. USGS, 1902. Map.
Source: USGS Topo ViewWest Virginia History OnView. Factory at Marilla, Morgantown, W.Va., West Virginia History OnView, WVU Libraries. date unknown. Photograph.
Source:West Virginia History OnViewSource: WikiPedia