Little Kanawha Railroad stock certificate c1897 (West Virginia)

WV short line railroad. Plain certificate but a lot of WV history servicing coal mines. Unissued and not cancelled. Dated 189_ but circa 1897 from corporate records. Measures approximately 11 by 8 inches.

The Little Kanawha Railroad ran from Parkersburg, WV to Palestine, WV, about 29 miles in length. Construction began in 1897, and reached Palestine the next year. Operated by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) until 1920.

Although, the road was intended to run southeast to Burnsville, WV, and while some grading took place, the rails never ran farther south than Palestine. At the north end near Parkersburg, it paralleled the Little Kanawha River to the immediate south.

The Little Kanawha Railroad turned out to be a $5 million dollar disaster, a railroad that was to have been built through Calhoun. However, the railroad was built into Wirt County and grading and some bridge building was completed in Calhoun in the early 1900s, with plans to connect to rail lines in Randolph County.

The railroad had its principal office in Pittsburgh, records indicate it was controlled by the Little Kanawha Syndicate, which was composed of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania Company, and The Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Company. The Little Kanawha Railroad project was between March 1897 to April 11, 1908. The line was completed from South Parkersburg to Owensport in Wirt County (29.377 miles), during 1897 and 1898. The company also began the construction of an extension from Sandy Bend to Burnsville about 70 miles, but the work was discontinued in 1903. By 1912 the federal government was investigating what went wrong.

Although the project was a failure, a small bit of the line exists today as a short-line operator wholly in Parkersburg, WV, but much of the line was abandoned in 1933, while most other sections were abandoned by the B&O Railroad in the 1980's, who ultimately owned much of the right of way.

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