The Scope of Our Project

One of the few flat spots on our land

Way back in 1992 Kathryn and I bought 25 undeveloped acres in Morgan County, West Virginia.  We didn't have a firm idea what we wanted to do with the land other than to hold it as an investment and occasionally go camping on it.  About two years ago, however, we started to think about using the land in a more productive way.  I have long wanted to own and operate a fabrication shop where we could perform custom machining and welding.  This remained a future goal for some years until my son graduated from college and indicated that he would be very interested in working on such a business.  One of the problems with such an endeavor is to find a location where we could do it. We live in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC.  There are many things to like about Northern Virginia, but I would not really describe it as an area where it is easy to start a small manufacturing business.  You need very deep pockets indeed to afford commercial real estate in this area.  Also, there are a lot of zoning restrictions in Fairfax County.  Basically, Fairfax County and the rest of the Northern Virginia area really just want to be bedroom communities for DC with office parks catering to government contracting and finance.  We started to look further west for a suitable location.  We looked in the Berryville and Winchester areas but didn't find any industrial bays we could rent or buy that really met our requirements.  We gradually came to the conclusion that we should develop our land 120 miles to the west of DC in Morgan County, WV.  It is rather further out than we wanted to be, but we already owned the land, and all we had to do was develop it.  Develop it from scratch.  There was no water, electricity, septic, or even a good road onto the hilly wooded bit of "Almost Heaven" that we own.  However, as we are not the type to shy away from a challenge, that is to say we are crazy enough to try, we set about to build our business on land that neither the European pioneers nor the Native Americans felt was worth bothering with.  This blog is the story of our attempt to conquer the West Virginia hill country.