This town cleverly disguises itself as a refuge for city dwellers and a place to enjoy the hospitality a rural town has to offer. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
By Abby Slaughter
Davis, West Virginia is a small town located 70 miles south of Morgantown, the only large small town in West Virginia that anyone has ever heard of. I always arrive moderately carsick each time I turn onto the bridge over the Blackwater River into the “town”—of approximately 631 people. Even if I was blindfolded, I would still know that familiar freefall feeling in the pit of my stomach, so specific that it could only be the town bridge’s downward slope into the Shop-n-Save.
Just north of the whopping four restaurants on Main Street is the Alpine Lodge and Sawmill Restaurant that has somehow survived after too many fires to count. The lack of cell service in that place only seems to affect visitors. Despite the familiar sights, the local economy has slowly been changing and on the decline since I was little, which wasn’t obvious to me in the slightest until February of 2016, when my life and the lives of my brother and father were put in jeopardy.
I was one of the ski lifts at Timberline Resort the moment it collapsed, as the sheaves—the small wheels through which the main cable holding passengers is pushed through—burned and failed, causing the support beam to collapse, like a capital “T” losing its top arm. People were hurled out of their seats from 30 feet up in the air, landing on their necks and snow gear on the ground below. It was a miracle no one died.
The reason for this accident was unclear to me, but after the former ownership was charged with several federal drug charges and tax evasion in 2019, I realized that one of my favorite places wasn’t as perfect as I imagined, but was in fact kind of a disaster. The owner was not only preying on innocent people in the area by illegally prescribing opioids to local citizens and perpetuating the opioid epidemic that has ravaged so many other small towns in the country, but a mechanism he was in charge of nearly killed me, my brother and my father.
* * *
Looking back, I can the dysfunction in Davis was always there.
The financial struggles that people in this town face became visible to me way back in elementary school. My family and I would frequent Sirianni’s Café, a cramped pizza restaurant down at the end of the Main Street drag just before the final turn that heads out of town. Its rickety, painted wooden door carved to resemble pizza-holding angel babies among lush greenery never failed to slam a bit too hard on the way in.
It was always loud and crowded, with the smell of pizza crust and old wooden chairs filling the space. We seemed to always be seated at the same table by a poster of Glen Plake, the famous skier whose mohawk climbs over a foot off of the top of his head, on the back wall, frozen in time in his descent down a steep mountain peak. I don’t even remember if the food was good, but there were always the fun pizza-themed kids’ toys crammed onto a shelf by the bathroom in case the food ever let me down or I got bored waiting for our pizza to be ready.
Despite this somewhat mundane excursion that seemed to turn out the same way every time—with a lot of leftovers and pizza grease ending up on the car seat—I vividly remember eating pizza there one day and seeing a heavily pregnant waitress waiting a table. I must have been 9 or 10 years old, but I began to think about what her life must be like. This small town didn’t and still doesn’t have many places to work, and even though she was struggling to walk around the restaurant, I realized that she may have no choice but to work in order to survive. It was perhaps the first time that I noticed that this place that I considered a refuge from normal life was a place where people struggled to get by, but it didn’t fully rid me of the myth of Davis.
Those who live there lead extremely simple lives, knowing thy neighbor and thy neighbor’s extended family. To me, coming from a larger town, it was a way to escape the hustle and bustle. The quiet seemed to trick me into thinking that this place was a tourist’s oasis that made people forget about all their problems, when really, you only need to people-watch for a little while to realize that this place has deeply-rooted problems that the people of this town have to face: poverty, drug addiction and very few jobs.
The average second home purchaser will see that although the outskirts of Davis have the mountain views and the fresh air, it may be difficult to come by a good investment in a second home—most prospective real estate developments in the valley are vacant and desolate. I’ve heard my dad mutter “How is that place still open?” about a business almost every time we went downtown. I always laughed and chimed in about how this store and that restaurant will be closed before we came back the following year, but many of them survived. Davis is really resilient.
It’s clear that structural problems at the ski resort caused this accident, and those structural problems were likely caused by the owner’s negligence and immoral and illegal use of resort funds.
The owner took advantage of people in Davis who likely did not have an education and faced poverty, and he not only destroyed lives by harboring addiction, but he also was responsible for the injury of many people.
My family and I got lucky; we weren’t launched into the air like the other riders came down to the speed in which the motor pushed us up the mountain and the rate at which the sheaves away. We also got to leave; we had the luxury of coming and going when we pleased, but those who lived in Davis never even got the chance.
_
Tourism makes up a large part of Davis’ economy, and skiing is the major draw. However, revenue from visiting skiers and snowboarders came to a halt in February of 2016. After the accident, the resort shut down for a period of time and only just recently opened under new management.
I haven’t been back skiing since. I miss being able to glide down mountains and silently sail through a slick dusting of snow, but I can’t bring myself to put back on my snow boots. However, there may come a time where strapping into skis again is not even a possibility in Davis.
The county went years without tourism from this resort. Though it’s open now, it may be too late for Davis. The town’s population has been slowly declining over the past decade, which has not helped the local economy, The two dilapidated mini golf courses just south of Davis are not going to sustain the same tourism revenue—not by a long shot. Also, the antique store “Your Grandpa’s Attic” on Main Street is now permanently closed, although, come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen anyone in there. Also, Golf Express, a golf cart dealer, is temporarily closed as well.
I don’t want the town to disappear; it was a place I always looked forward to going to when I was young. Davis and the Canaan Valley area were a part of my life for 16 years. We had a townhouse we called Unit 67 that we would visit for a couple days every summer and winter for many years of my life. The breathtaking views of the mountains out of my parents’ bedroom window, the homey smell of Unit 67 that bombarded my senses when I swung open the off-brown front door, the pitter patter of my dog Manny’s footsteps across the kitchen tiles—it’s a place that is embedded in my senses, refusing to let me forget it.
Although I love Davis very much, I’m not sure the idea I had of it in my head ever really existed. Part of me wants to preserve those memories that I have, leaving me with something in my life that has not at all changed—neither the town nor the memories I have of it. However, change is inevitable, and I think I’m coming to terms with my perception of Davis changing.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. I want it to stay exactly the way I remember, like a photograph: unchanged.