It contains one hundred and twenty houses of all descriptions from middling downwards, in a street about half a mile long, parallel to the river, on a bank of about one hundred feet perpendicular, which the face of the cliff almost literally is, of course the avenues to the landings are very steep and inconvenient. The court-house of stone with a small belfry, has nothing in beauty to boast of. The gaol joins it in the rear.
It is probable that Mr. Zanes, the original proprietor, now regrets that he had not placed the town on the flat below, at the conflux of the Wheeling and Ohio, where Spriggs’s inn and the ship-yards now are, instead of cultivating it as a farm until lately, when a resolve of congress to open a new publick state road from the metropolis through the western country, which will come to the Ohio near the mouth of Wheeling creek, induced him to lay it out in town lots, but I fear he is too late to see it become a considerable town to the prejudice of the old one, notwithstanding its more advantageous situation.—The present town does not seem to thrive, if one may judge by the state of new buildings, two only of which I saw going forward in it. The stores also appeared rather thinly stocked with goods, and the retail prices are high. When the new road is finished, it will doubtless be of great use to Wheeling, as it will be a more direct route to the western states, {96} than any of the others hitherto used, and besides there are no material impediments to the navigation of the Ohio with the usual craft, below that town in the driest seasons, when the river is at the lowest.
The surrounding country in sight is hilly and broken, but I am informed that it is very rich and plentiful at a short distance from the river.
Wheeling island in front of the town, is about a mile long, and half a mile wide in its broadest part. It is very fertile, and is all cultivated as a farm by Mr. Zanes. The post and stage road to Chilicothe in Ohio, goes across it, which occasions two ferries, an inconvenience which will be remedied by the new state road crossing by one ferry below the island.
Indian Wheeling creek, a fine mill stream joins the Ohio from the N. W. opposite the middle of the island, and Mr. Zanes has lately laid out a new town there named Canton, which has now thirteen houses, but from its proximity to Wheeling, it never can become considerable.[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[73] On the early history of Wheeling and its importance as a terminus for overland travel from Redstone and Fort Pitt, see Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. 33, note 15; also Thwaites, On the Storied Ohio.—Ed.
[74] The use of the terms Indian Wheeling Creek, Indian Kentucky, etc. for streams flowing into the Ohio from its northern and western side is a reminiscence of the days when the Ohio was a boundary between the white settlements and Indian territory. The Indian title to these lands was not extinguished, and the danger of attack from this side of the river was not removed until after the Treaty of Greenville (1795).
The town laid out opposite Wheeling was not the nucleus of the well-known Canton (Stark County), Ohio; but a place that perished, according to Cuming’s prediction.—Ed.