West Virginia, Hampshire County

Cacapon Mountain (which crosses into Morgan County). A complex local legend of strangers from another shore, an enchanted gold mine and rival magic systems was paraphrased in 1888 from the version told by “a mountaineer some years ago.” 

A lot of foreign men, who acted very queerly, and kept to themselves, and who spoke a language which nobody about them could understand, had settled along that mountain [Cacapon], and dug into it, and found gold there. They worked at night mostly; and at last left suddenly, and covered the hole with a stone, and put a spell on it. 

For a long time nobody could find the spot; but a man out hunting came on it in a thicket and tried to raise the stone, but failed. He went for help, but could not lead them back to where it was. Afterward a man looking for sheep or cattle discovered it; but he could not lift it either, and proved a bad pilot likewise.  

These men had described it as marked with very strange letters. 

More successful was a third man, who set out to find the runestone using what today we would term African-American Hoodoo, but which our white author, writing in 1888, dismisses as “Vaudos or other heathen rites.” This seeker, our white author tells us, was Black; by implication the two previous finders, blunderers both, were white. Interestingly for the time, the Black man bests the white men—to a point. 

He … succeeded not only in finding the stone but in partly lifting it also. Then there was a sudden rush of enemies whom he could not see, and he felt blows falling all over him as he was fleeing headlong down the mountain-side.  

Nobody has ever found the magically-anchored stone since that day. 

Our author, W.H. Babcock, calls this story “like something fresh from the old world,” which is true, but that Hoodoo worker is uniquely American. One of Babcock’s book-length works, incidentally, was titled Early Norse Visits to North America. Might he have claimed as evidence this Cacapon Mountain legend?  See Babcock, W.H. “Folk-Tales and Folk-Lore Collected In and Near Washington, D.C.” The Folk-Lore Journal 6.2 (1888): 85-94. Specifically “The Treasure of Cacapan,” 88-89. Accessed via Ort Library’s online databases. 

Ice Mountain. An age-old natural effect gave this North River landmark its name and its centuries-long reputation as a “huge sandstone refrigerator.” Generations of sightseers gathered ice year-round from the sloping rockpile at the mountain’s base, a formation known to geologists as a talus.  

“In cooler months, dense, cold air sinks deep into the talus, and ice masses form inside,” explains the Nature Conservancy, which tightly controls access to the area. “As the weather warms up, the cooler air flows out of vents among the rocks at the bottom of the slope.”  

Historically this process was helped by the deep shade of the native hemlocks, but alas, climate change and a sap-sucking invasive insect threaten the cycle. On her visit, Jeanne Mozier wrote in 2014, “I found the ice to be non-existent and the chill to be far less dramatic when I stuck my hand into one of these vents. … Allegedly 38 degrees, it felt no colder than good air conditioning.”  

The cold rocks support a sensitive sub-Arctic pocket ecosystem, into which the Nature Conservancy leads small tours, generally on Saturdays, with reservations required weeks in advance. Details are at https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/ice-mountain-preserve/. See also Mozier, Jeanne. Way Out in West Virginia: A Must-Have Guide to the Oddities and Wonders of the Mountain State. 4th ed. Charleston WV: Quarrier P, 2014. Pages 167-168 and 349.