Chester, WV, Weather
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Chester, West Virginia: Blue Lake ("Little Blue")
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This was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.
Chester, WV, is known for its teapot. Right in the middle of the small town is what claims to be the world's largest teapot. If that was all Chester had to see, I wouldn't be writing about it. If you drive up into the hills a bit, there is this strange lake. It's like a cross between the Bahamas and a nuclear winter. The water is crystal clear, but everything in the water is dead. Vegetation and insects and such are abundant beyond the shoreline, but nothing in the water is living. I absent-mindedly forgot to note what road this was on, but it is in or just outside of Chester, somewhere off Route 30, and part of it borders a place called Conkle Farm. The water smelled of something that I couldn't quite describe. It was a heavy salt smell, so heavy that it almost smelled like pure dirt. The bottom of the lake is covered with white powdery-looking sediment. I'm calling it Blue Lake, but I don't know that that is really the name of it, or if it even has a name. When I was there I met 4 people from the area. One of them had driven by the night before. They had no idea what the story was, but one of them theorized that someone was pouring cobalt into the water. The person who had seen the lake at night said that when the moon was out the lake glowed like dim neon. It seemed evident that some kind of artificial process was at work. Much of the sand right along the waterline had turned to a sticky, thick sludge. I stepped in a hole full of this gunk, covering my shoe and getting it onto my skin. But within a few hours the sludge on my shoe had dried up completely, and I couldn't find a trace of it except for a white powder on the floor of my car. Later that day I asked a local store owner if he knew anything about it. He said that this wasn't always a lake, and that a while back some company bought all the houses in this little valley, then filled the valley with water. They didn't tear down the houses, though. He said if you had an image sensor you could actually see the houses still standing under the water. I actually thought the guy was repeating some exaggerated local lore, but the pictures seem to support some of what he said. The tall trees in the middle of the lake -- how did they get there? Wouldn't they have to have grown above water?
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Now, here are just a few the excellent e-mails that were sent to me. Thank you to *everybody* who wrote in. Please contact me again with any further information, corrections, photos, or whatever.
Here is an aerial photo of the lake and surrounding area, illustrating the size of the lake:
Don't like black and white? Jeana sent me this link to a color picture of the Blue Lake. This picture was taken from the International Space Station:
Click here to see the picture.
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Jeff writes:
Lately the lake water level is being lowered a little to try to cover the surface with dirt and horse manure from local farms to try to get grass to grow
and it is working a little. I've seen geese on the lake around some of the fingers around the lake. The lake doesn't look so blue near the road that passes near it, but it is still
blue close to the dam, where the water is still deep.The trees in the lake were some that weren't cut down before the water level rose too high to get to them. Houses belonging to
people that lived in the valley were mostly torn down. Several familes moved elsewhere after being bought out. A lot of nice farmland was lost to the lake over the years, including
dairy farms, orchards and other nice lands. Sometimes progress "SUCKS", but you can't stop it. In a few years the lake will be full. I'm not sure what will be done with the land
consumed by the lake. I've heard several stories. What will they do with the fly ash once the lake is full? Well, they'll send it down the street to "NGC", the gypsem plant that
makes drywall board to make walls in your houses. How about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Shirley writes:
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Steve writes:
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Dennis writes:
Links
(added 6/17/2003)
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Blue 2?
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Sharon writes:
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The area, oddly enough, was known as "Blue" long before the valley was filled with blue water. A stream named Little Blue Run ran through the bottom of the valley:
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Anonymous writes:
When I was growing up it wasn't there - the area was farm land and apple orchards - the area was known as "Little Blue".
The
road was called Little Blue Road and ran from Chester - starting out as Lawrenceville Hill Road - to Hookstown PA. Conkle's
farm was part of that area as was a farm named Hillyard's. The fly ash is a by product of the Bruce Mansfield Plant in
Shippingport, PA. The company did buy up the property so they
could build the lake to dump the ash from the plant. In order to make their lake, the company had to build another road
that people could use to get back onto Route 30 outside of Chester.
I have seen spots of the "lake" from the road on visits back home, but I am very impressed by your photos.
The building of that lake had great impact of many families in both West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
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Notice how the above correspondent put the word "lake" is in quotes, signifying that this is not a real lake, but a "Frankenlake"!
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Anonymous writes:
Lawrenceville Road cut through this area from Lawrenceville to Hookstown
or Georgetown, I'm not sure of the town lines. A family friend had a
cabin located in the woods in Little Blue, and I remember my uncle
telling me that someone was taking his land. I spent many fun days at
this little cabin in the woods when I was a kid.
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Sharon writes again:
OK..if you were to stand on the road at the end of the lane going up
into Conkle Farm property and stand so that you were facing the log home of
my nephew, then what would be off to your right would have been the log road
(I always called it Lawrenceville road). It swept down the hill following
the curves of the original lay of the land and the old entrance to the
Conkle farm was probably 1/3 mile or so from where the entrance is now. The
new entrance was created for them when Penn Power bought their property for
the lake thus cutting off access to the old lane. Anyhow, down the road as
it once was lived the following familes: Parkers, Yulbrights, Chevraunts,
Streets, Jordans and then on to Elliotts farm. Up a small lane near Mert's farm lived a black family named Crooms...I can
recall Dan Crooms -- Terrific people and like most farm families always ready to help or be helped when problems arose.
Down the
road past Elliott's farm, heading toward Hookstown PA was a farm owned by
the Glenns and then another owned by Soissons. This was very hilly country;
I can recall cattle grazing on I believe it was Glenns; nothing but hills
and valleys. All of which was pretty much relandscaped and leveled to
create a basin effect.
One house, the one belonging to the Yulbrights still exists because it
was moved out of the valley and back up to the current road area.
It was a beautiful little valley, tree lined almost right up to the roadside, blue birds (real ones, not just jays) and
gold
finches flitting all around etc. the stream, Little Blue, ran along the road. I was only in my teens but remember it for
its beauty and
tranquility. Too, it used to be the back way into Hookstown, PA...home of
the old Melody Lane Skating rink.
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Here are links to sites with more information about fly ash:
>> Click here for the first Blue Lake picture >>
 Chester, WV. Blue Lake
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