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The BrazenHead Inn is located in Big Mountain Country,
near Snowshoe Resort in the Potomac Highlands region
of West Virginia. This is the home of the best skiing
and snowboarding in the Mid-Atlantic and South,
best mountain biking in the
East, excellent trout fishing, stunning
scenic drives,
hiking, caving,
rock
climbing, paragliding,
superb championship golf and scenic
golf courses, civil war battlefields,
antique mountain train tours,
exceptional traditional
music, mountain
music workshops, and many remnants
of early America that are very much a part of
life here today.
So if it's something more than relaxation you're
after, you're also in good company at the Inn. We're
ideally situated for sampling the very best of the
spectacular Potomac Highlands — past, present
and future.
The BrazenHead Inn is in Randolph County, very near
the northern border of Pocahontas County. And though
the fun around here knows no boundaries, each of these
counties offers its own guide to local attractions.
You can explore them here:
... and here:
As you'll see, the Potomac Highlands can accomodate
devotees of all sorts of activities — including
downhill and crosscountry skiing, hunting, fishing,
mountain biking, horseback riding, railroading and
a lot more. Below are links to some of our favorite
examples, and to some people you can trust to help
you get where you want to go.
You may want to explore some of the virtual links
here as you prepare for your real explorations of
the region.
skiing, snowboarding, golf and more
interpreters of our mountain heritage,
including fine traditional music and other arts
live music, food and more at Thomas, WV
at Seneca Rocks
paragliding adventure from several nearby sites
at Green Bank
Patch Adams' life work in nearby Hillsboro
Shenandoah National Park Hotels offers great rates at more than 50 hotels near Shenandoah (about two hours east of us)
Atop scenic Miller Mountain just outside Webster
Springs, WV
a taste of Switzerland in America
ski gear, outerwear and more
in nearby Slatyfork
bike rentals, canoe/kayak rentals
and river shuttle service
good information about trout fishing
in these mountains
our frequent seasonal guests
because someday you may find yourself in Wyoming
The Early American Frontier
U.S. 219 is part of the Seneca Trail complex which,
according to West Virginia historian Otis Rice in
The Allegheny Frontier, may have been a part
of the old Catawba War Path. The native Americans’
highway from upstate New York south through the mountains
to the Carolinas and beyond, traced the South Branch
of the Potomac, crossed Cheat Mountain to Shaver’s
Fork of Cheat River, and turned toward the present-day
location of Elkins. Several spokes of the trail system
radiated from that area. The branch that goes by The
BrazenHead connected to the Little Kanawha River and
the Ohio toward the west, and to the south, to regions
where the towns of Lewisburg and Bluefield now stand.
The village of Mingo takes its name from a tribe
that was at least at times associated with the Seneca
Nation of Iroquois. Many of the Mingos,
Shawnees and Delawares allied with the French to wreak
havoc on this Virginia backcountry from the 1750s
through the 1770s; others cooperated with the settlers,
helping them against marauding Shawnees. Local legend
says the Mingos lived here in a permanent village
of log houses. Although they and their chieftains
were important in the French & Indian Wars, written
records of their descendants are rare. Their culture,
similar to that of the northern Iroquois, survived
somewhat in small, remote mountain communities of
West Virginia well into the 1950s. Many residents
of Randolph and Webster Counties have Mingo blood
in their veins, and Mingo lifeways emphasizing self-rule
remain influential in much of mountaineer culture.
Their name lives on in this village and in the county
of southern West Virginia which is named for them.
David Tygart, for whom the Tygart Valley and river
are named, established the first permanent English
settlement in this region in 1754. The Hutton family
of Revolutionary War officers was granted a huge tract
of land that includes the present-day village of Huttonsville.
Two tourism properties associated with The Hutton
family are the fine 1910 Cardinal Inn with its nearby
1806 barn, and the 1886 Hutton House. If you were
to remove the clapboard covering from the substantial
old farmhouses set far back in the fields of this
region, you would often find the sturdy hand-hewn
log cabins the early settlers built.
The section of US 219 where the BrazenHead stands
was known at one time as the Old Marlinton Pike. Connecting
the road built by engineering genius Claude Crozet
as the Staunton to Parkersburg Turnpike with the old
James River & Kanawha Turnpike (now US Route 60,
the Midland Trail Scenic Byway), it passes by Cheat
Mountain, home of Snowshoe Mountain Resort; near Marlinton,
settled in 1749; and on to Lewisburg, which had its
beginnings in Fort Savannah in 1755.
In July, 1861, Union Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of
Ohio wrote to his wife, “You will think me insane,
writing so often and always with the same story, ‘delighted
with scenery and pleasant excitement.’”
Although General Robert E. Lee wasn’t having
so fine a time, with his troops suffering defeat on
Cheat Mountain above the village of Beverly that month,
he wrote from Huntersville in August, 1861, “the
views are magnificent, the valleys so beautiful, the
scenery so peaceful. What a glorious world Almighty
God has given us. How thankless and ungrateful we
are, and how we labor to mar his gifts.” (from
West Virginia: A History, by John Alexander
Williams, p. 62.)
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