West Virginia Incorporated: Religion and the Railroad in the Timber Counties

Abstract

Just as natural resources attracted industrialists, people attracted Protestant missionaries. By the mid-1880s, the idea of West Virginia as a backward region confined completely within an otherwise advanced and modern country became accepted fact among mainline Protestant denominations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, these denominations established systematic and well-funded missionary endeavors into the southern mountains. The railroads themselves played no small part in the effectiveness of these efforts, allowing proselytizers to penetrate deep into the backcountry and high into the mountains, planting new churches, and growing existing ones. But this straightforward link between industry and religion hides a more complex and nuanced relationship between the secular and the sacred. 4 JOSEPH SUPER / WEST VIRGINIA INCORPORATED