RIDERS OF THE FLOOD April 1, 1954

The shining steel of railroad track winds by the dashing stream, and mountainside hurls back the sound of locomotive scream. Where trod the logger o’er the deep, the river flows alone, while rolling waves recall the past with sad, regretful tone. The ways of the past grow faint; the Old Men’s eyes grow dim. The sun of a great, heroic day stands at its western rim. As the coals burn low on the ancient hearths, and the crumbling ash grows cold, may my story keep, for a future time, the tales that the Old Men told.

                      The last word of the Riders of the Flood

Warren E. Blackhurst, of the Green Bank High School, has done wrote a book for the Greenbrier Valley in particular and the reading world in general. “Riders of the Flood” is a historical novel. The background is the cutting of the white pine of the upper reaches of the Greenbrier Valley with resultant log drives to the mill at Ronceverte. The era is the 1880’s and the 1890’s.
Mr. Blackhurst writes like he talks, and so his book makes interesting reading.

I find many a familiar old tale and funny happing in the book and a lot I had never heard or had forgotten.

Anyway, Twierd Blackhurst has done himself proud a writing of Riders of the Flood. I can do no better than to quote this comment on the book: “The authentic background for the novel and the period photographs which illustrate it, make this exciting book a genuine piece of Americana.”
A writer more fancy than this hack of a country editor, says of the book: “Action, romance, humor, drama – these are all here; from the fascinating details that made up a woodsman life, to the sensational manifestation of nature, in a long awaited ice break of spring released a wild spectacle of her angry power. This is a significant hovel; a paean to the making of America.”

It is good reading for any body – a must for us Greenbrier Valley folk.