River Hopping 2017:
Warwick

Along the bank of the Ohio with the Fort Henry Bridge in the background. On the right is the Wheeling Heritage Trail that covers up the B&O Railroad line that used to run behind the plant.

The shards we saw were mostly inaccessible, down this steep bank to the Ohio.

We have no idea if any of the shards we found were Warwick. The heavy one, top, left, is backstamped for Royal Ironstone China in England. The pieces at top, right, are glass.

This memorial, "dedicated to employees of the Warwick China Co. ..." is placed farther down the Wheeling Heritage Trail, toward the Fort Henry Bridge, and because of that, we missed it. Thanks to waymarking.com, we found this photo of it. Below, a photo of Warwick from the Library of Congress archives.

The site is located at Lane A (formerly Water Street) and between 21st and 22nd streets. Latitude and longitude:40.061843, -80.725498. Click the photo for a larger view of the area.

The week of our trip the weather was warm and overcast, and these photos of Wheeling along the bank of the Ohio really show how cloudy it was.

It took a long time to orient ourselves and find any shards because the area is so built up and beautifully landscaped. We knew to look between 21st and 22nd streets at Water Street, but Water Street now appears to be Lane A, which ends at 22nd Street.

And of course we were looking for the B&O Railroad tracks that ran between the river and the plant (and there are almost always shards next to the tracks), but that's now the paved-over Wheeling Heritage Trails.

A curious older man who looked to be a down-on-his-luck local evidently got tired of seeing us walking in circles, muttering, and staring at the ground, and asked us what we were looking for. He then pointed us to a spot on the bank, shown at right, where he had found many mostly intact shards.

He looked to be agile enough to have been able to inch his way down to bring back up some treasures, but we didn't see any that seemed to be worth falling backside over tea kettle for. So what we got we scrounged from the first three or four feet down.

And sadly, because we wasted so much time searching in the wrong places and were on a tight schedule, we didn't wander far enough along the Heritage Trail to find the monument erected in honor of the Warwick employees (below right). We had no idea it existed until we got back.

Next, on to Sterling in Wellsville.

CLICK HERE FOR NAVIGATION
TO ALL THE DIGS

BACK TO TOP