Cheat River

About

Cheat River — First Settlement, Timber, and Recovery. The Cheat's headwaters lie in the Allegheny Highlands, historically within the territory of the Seneca Nation, the westernmost of the Haudenosaunee. The river's name likely derives from an early settler term for its erratic character—appearing calm, then turning violent without warning. That reputation was earned honestly in the canyon, where the river drops through the state-designated Scenic Area that anchors the Tucker County Recreation Corridor.

European-American settlement followed the valley early. The watershed's first documented community was a Dunkard, or German Baptist Brethren, settlement near Kingwood, established in the third quarter of the 18th century. Industry came next: iron furnaces at Cheat Neck and Ices Ferry supported a population of roughly 3,000 in the early 19th century. In 1870 the Cheat was declared a public highway, but the designation arrived too late—railroads had already replaced river transport, and the current would soon carry logs instead of freight.

From the 1880s through 1920, the Cheat watershed was intensively logged. Railroad spurs penetrated the canyon, and the river carried timber downstream to mills at Rowlesburg. The clear-cutting stripped the slopes and set off severe flooding and erosion that took decades to recover. The 20th century then bent the river toward power. In 1952 the Albright Power Station Dam rose to feed an adjacent plant; that facility was permanently closed in 2012 and is now flagged as a significant safety hazard.

Coal proved the most corrosive legacy of all. By the 1950s, coal and timber pollution had destroyed the fishery. The 1994 blowout of mine water from a sealed underground mine turned the Cheat orange and dropped Cheat Lake's pH to 4.5, killing much of the aquatic life that remained. By the mid-1990s, American Rivers named the Cheat the eighth most endangered river in the United States. The disaster galvanized a recovery movement that still defines the river.

The Friends of the Cheat organization spent more than two decades recovering the river from acid mine drainage. Their remediation and restoration work slowly drew life back to a waterway long marked by coal, and the effort is now regarded as one of the most successful in Appalachia. Today the river's story runs in two directions at once: an ongoing cleanup, and a whitewater rafting industry that has made the Cheat Canyon a significant regional draw. The run itself has three faces—Rowlesburg to Albright offers flatwater grading into a Class II–III canyon entry; Albright to Lake Lynn Dam is the 12-mile Class III–IV heart of the trip; and below Lake Lynn the river eases to Class II on its lower reaches. Optimal flows run roughly 1,000 to 4,000 CFS, though most who paddle it still trust the height gauge over the discharge number.