The Kanawha River is a prominent natural feature running through West Virginia's Putnam County. Beginning in the 19th century, small, permanent towns began to appear along the river's banks. The waterway served as a vital mode of transportation for these burgeoning communities. Buffalo has a rich agricultural history and a historic town center with several buildings in the National Register of Historic Places. Eleanor was one of three New Deal settlements established by Eleanor Roosevelt. Winfield, the county seat, was named after Gen. Winfield Scott. Nitro was seemingly built overnight as a US ammunition facility during World War I. While each town has its own identity, it shares a common link--the Kanawha River. Along the Kanawha River chronicles Civil War-era residents, floods in the early 1900s, and economic hard times in the 1930s. This pictorial history captures the diversity of these communities and the ways in which they flourished along the Kanawha River.

An award-winning author chronicles the settling of the Ohio River Valley, home to the defiant Shawnee Indians, who vow to defend their land against the seemingly unstoppable. They came on foot and by horseback, in wagons and on rafts, singly and by the score, restless, adventurous, enterprising, relentless, seeking a foothold on the future. European immigrants and American colonists, settlers and speculators, soldiers and missionaries, fugitives from justice and from despair—pioneers all, in the great and inexorable westward expansion defined at its heart by the majestic flow of the Ohio River. This is their story, a chronicle of monumental dimension, of resounding drama and impact set during a pivotal era in our history: the birth and growth of a nation. Drawing on a wealth of research, both scholarly and anecdotal—including letters, diaries, and journals of the era—Allan W. Eckert has delivered a landmark of historical authenticity, unprecedented in scope and detail.