T E A Y S   V A L L E Y

I must have been a junior or senior in at Northridge when I had a chance to flirt with some young ladies from Teays Valley High School.  I thought it was cool that they had 'TV' on their uniforms and they were Vikings - Teays Valley Vikings - but Vikings none-the-less!  I have long since forgotten the names and faces of these young ladies, but from time to time I wondered why Teays Valley is Teays Valley.  I always thought, 'Well, why is anything named what we name it?'  English is a quirky language;  we park on driveways and drive on parkways.  Maybe some guy named Teays owned a valley...

Teays Valley Vikings

Northridge Vikings

Then I found out it is called Teays Valley because Teays River used to flow through there.  A long, long time ago, the Teays drained the western side of the Alleghanies through Ohio as it flowed to the Mississippi River.  For our purposes, the Teays River ran through Chilicothe on its way to London, then west into Indiana.  An ancient tributary, the Groveport River, drained Licking County.  The Groveport ran south somewhere between here and Newark.  Geologists tell us no human ever laid eyes on this ancient river system, but it must have been something to behold.  In some parts, it flowed slowly through broad, flat plains.  In other places, the Teays cut through huge limestone cliffs.  Then the glaciers came.

The glaciers stopped around Alexandria.  When they did, they dammed up the Teays causing water to drain southwards to the newly formed Ohio River.  Geologists tell us that when the glaciers melted, they deposited thousands of tons of gravel scoured from the north as the weight of the ice cap traveled south.  This formed the aquifer on which Alexandria sits.  Over time, soil covered this gravel and the Raccoon Creek formed to drain these soils.  Other experts say the the aquifer was formed from buried portions of the Teays and the Groveport.  Trees grew and covered Ohio in a thick forest.  Wildlife inhabited this forest and freely populated it so that game was plentiful.  This is the Ohio that the Moundbuiders would know.

The Moundbuilders had a path through here.  Today, the Bike Path follows the approximate route the Moundbuilders took on their way to and from the Newark Earthworks and Flint Ridge.  St Albans had a few mounds, some of which have been excavated and others plowed down over the years.  Indian implements and arrowheads are still found around.  On a personal level, some ten years ago, I found a stone hammer left behind by Indians over a thousand years earlier.  Some local residents have a fine arrowhead collecion found in the fields and yards of Alexandria and St. Albans.

The Seneca Indians called it  Ohiːyo'.  Then, French and Dutch explorers found the Ohio River.  Dutch fur traders called it 'de Cubach.'  In 1669, the French explorer LaSalle took an expedition from Quebec to somewhere above Pittsburgh and followed the Alleghany River as far as the falls (Louisville) before returning to Quebec.  LaSalle claimed La Belle Riviere for the French.  The British came along, the French and Indian War was fought with the result that the Old Northwest Territory was ceded to the British while the French retreated to Canada.  The American Revolution was fought and the British more-or-less expected the United States would stay east of the Alleghanies.  That did not happen.

Thanks to ancient rivers and glaciers, there have always been gravel pits around here.  In the early 1900s, there was a gravel pit on the west side of Alexandria just south of where Jersey Mill Road branches off State Route 37.  This gravel pit supplied Alexandria with gravel for making cement and as material for foundations and sidewalks during the housing boom of the early 1900s.  I have also heard that the run-off from this gravel pit produced such fine and perfect mud that area children were able to make thes best mud pies.  This gravel pit remained in operation until their tools wore out.

As a child, the gravel pit was located along State Route 37.  I recall in the early 1960s when a large shovel was moved through town.  The tracked shovel was accompanied by about ten men, four or five on a side, who would lay an old tire in front of the tracks, then hurry back to behind the tracks to pick up a tire the shovel had just passed over and move it to the front.  This was done to protect the asphalt from the steel tracks.  Traveling at just 2 or 3 MPH, the shovel eventually made its way to the gravel pit west of town.

Why is Teays Valley is called Teays Valley?  Now you know.  Who were those young ladies?  Can't remember...   nothing personal.  Still, there are times when I would like to time travel and take a scenic cruise down the Teays and see herds of Wooly Mammoths roaming the land.