The Salt Valley: How the Kanawha Kept Changing Hands

To understand why armies kept fighting over the Kanawha Valley of western Virginia, you have to understand salt. In eighteen sixty-two, before refrigeration, salt was essential for preserving meat. The Kanawha Valley sat on one of the most productive salt-brine deposits in the Confederacy. Whoever held the valley held a critical artery of Confederate logistics.

Union forces had seized the valley in the fall of eighteen sixty-one, and by the summer of eighteen sixty-two they controlled the river town of Charleston and its surrounding salt works. But in August of that year, the Union Army stripped the valley of most of its defenders, pulling General Jacob Cox's Kanawha Division east to reinforce the main army near Washington. That left Colonel Joseph Lightburn holding the valley with a reduced force of around five thousand men.

Confederate General William Loring saw the opening. He led roughly five thousand Confederate soldiers northwest from the Virginia mountains and drove Lightburn's force from Charleston on September thirteenth, eighteen sixty-two. The Confederates moved back in, reclaimed the salt works, and held the valley.

The occupation lasted six weeks. Cox organized replacement troops, the Confederate position proved difficult to hold logistically, and Loring eventually evacuated rather than face a counterattack. Union forces re-entered Charleston on October thirtieth.

The campaign perfectly illustrates the nature of the war in western Virginia: a mountainous landscape with few roads, contested by forces too small to deliver a decisive blow, fighting over resources that mattered more to armies than to the civilians caught between them. The salt works changed hands. The valley survived. And when West Virginia entered the Union in June of eighteen sixty-three, the Kanawha became the new state's industrial heartland.