Chapter 2: Potts Creek and Jonestown (excerpts)

Mid the green fields of Virginia
Stands an old mill by the stream
I once wondered to that spot to sing and play
And how often I would throw the stone
Into the pebbling brook
I would dream someday it'd carry me away

Mid The Green Fields of Virginia by The Carter Family

As Covington and its mills expanded, smaller communities began to spring up further down the valley: Potts Creek, Jordan Mines, Boiling Springs and Jonestown, to name a few.  Many were sited near new grain mills and small iron ore mines, most of which ran along Potts Creek and the adjacent Potts Creek Road.  The rushing waters of Potts Creek provided natural power needed for the mills, and the nearby road transported minerals and grain to Covington.  Potts Creek Road's history dated back to the first native American settlements, and over the years it transformed from a simple path to heavily rutted wagon track called “Indian Road."  Although eventually paved, the road remained treacherous at best with many figure S and 90 degree turns ... with the creek sittin’ on your right or left.

Jonestown itself was small, real small.  There were, and still are, perhaps seven hand-built houses situated on a patch of land carved through by a long-gone glacier leaving a geographic depression called a hollow.  Austin and his kin preferred to say 'holler.'  Since Jonestown was so tiny, the United States Postal Service created Jordan Mines.  Actually, the real Jordan Mines has been lost to history.  There really wasn’t a village or town called Jordan Mines in the 1940s.  It was just an official Post Office designation because the government needed a place to mail your tax bill so the Post Office came up with the name Jordan Mines.  Bill Bess ran a little country store at the intersection of the Mill Branch and Potts Creek Roads so they decided to make that the official Jordan Mines Post Office.  Hellfire, Bill Bess’s store was pretty much all of Jordan Mines!  

It was a hardscrabble life in Jonestown and you needed family to survive.  "I was lucky, I guess, since most folks living in or near Jonestown were related to me," Austin recalled, "but they were all good folks there, even the ones we weren’t actually related to."  Electricity was rare in the Valley.  It was either not available or not affordable to most.  It would be a few more years before Jonestown residents had access.  Root cellars and cool streams, nature’s refrigerators, kept food safe from spoiling  Very few homes had running water or indoor bathrooms.  Instead, fresh spring water and outhouses had to do.  There were fewer automobiles, more horses, and simply less people back then.  Despite the difficulties and hardships, Austin forever regretted leaving the country.  The folks in Jonestown were land rich and cash poor.  They were hard-working people who didn’t think of themselves as heroes.  Those folks had to be resourceful ‘cause no one was going to help them.  

Grandpa Manuel and the elder Austin were the strongest male influences in little Austin's life.  They earned reputations as hard working men, and were well-liked and respected by all.  As parents, both men ruled with a soft hand.  Their word was their bond, and as sure as the sun would rise and set each day, one could count on them.  They, and many women too for that matter, took jobs whenever and wherever they could be found.  When necessary, Austin Senior traveled far from home to find work.  Pressed for money, Manuel found work at the newly built Westvaco paper mill in nearby Covington, but in his heart, Manuel was a man of the land.  He lived on it, worked it, and understood it.  And any story of Jonestown, Potts Creek and the Shenandoah Valley is really one of the people and their relationships to each other, and to the land.