BElow Both a lawman and saloonkeeper, Harrison Ash was Thurmond’s fearless police chief, chasing down outlaws on the rough mountainous terrain of the New River Gorge.
56 explore • 2015
Men worked hard in the mines—these were the days when miners still dug and loaded coal by hand—so they began looking for ways to occupy their time above-ground. While most towns had their own watering holes, anyone looking for a really good time only had to take the train to Thurmond and cross the walking bridge across Dunloup Creek to Southside. Thomas McKell opened a luxury hotel in Southside called The Dunglen, a place for high rollers looking for quality liquor and high-stakes gambling. But the swanky hotel didn’t appeal to the working men, who were only making about $2 a day in the mines. So other businesses began springing up in Southside, taking advantage of the town’s freewheeling liquor laws. As George details in Window to the Past—an anthology of local legends he wrote with his wife, Melody—the region of the early 1900s was soon dotted with all kinds of saloons, gambling parlors, brothels, and dance halls. “If you wanted to have a crazy ol’ time, all you had to do was cross the bridge,” he says. “Believe me, they had everything.” It wasn’t all good times, however. George says nearly every edition of the local newspapers contained reports of people drowning or being hit by trains—curiously, most of the victims were found with empty pockets. The growing crime rates didn’t sit well with Captain William Thurmond, a devout Baptist teetotaler who ran the town that bore his name. There wasn’t much he could do
to change the wild living going on in Southside, however, so Captain Thurmond decided he needed a way to protect his citizens from the lawlessness across Dunloup Creek. And he knew the perfect man for the job: Harrison Ash. Standing 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 275 pounds, Ash looked like a super-sized version of Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp from the movie Tombstone. A portrait of the lawman shows a steely-eyed gaze, a long handlebar mustache, and a broad, imposing frame. There are no accounts of Ash’s arrival in the gorge, but local legend says he came to the area as a detective with the C&O Railroad, where he earned a reputation as a highly effective lawman who could easily hunt down convicts in the rough mountainous terrain. After Thurmond hired Ash as his town’s chief of police, he began wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson hat emblazoned with the word “chief ” and a pistol marked with seven notches—one for each of the men he had killed, although George says Ash would later confess to killing at least twice as many. Window to the Past details some of Ash’s more unconventional policing techniques. Former C&O conductor Billy Mills told George he once saw Ash chasing a man on the railroad tracks. Apparently tired of the foot race, Ash stopped, drew his weapon, and fired. The alleged criminal fell face-first into the tracks. When the lawman eventually spotted Mills and a friend watching the episode, he said, “Well, boys, I’ll be danged if I don’t believe I stumped my toe and shot that feller.” Ash was able to keep a close eye on local ruffians because he also owned a saloon in Southside. He was a regular player at local poker tables, too. While his methods were less than conventional, George says Ash became known for his ability to always get his man. The small-town police chief would get calls from all over the state, asking him to help find outlaws. “He was known as ‘the Manhunter,’” George says. “He was described by the Cincinnati Enquirer as the most fearless law enforcement officer in West Virginia.” In researching his book, George came across a firsthand account of Ash from former West Virginia Attorney General Howard B. Lee. Fresh out of college and looking for a job as a school principal, Lee visited Thurmond in 1905. As soon as he arrived in town, he headed for dinner at The Dunglen. It wasn’t long before he encountered Ash. The lawman told Lee all about the crime in the area and left him with these parting words: “Son, you are a likely looking young man, trying to get a start in the world, and my advice to you is stay away from this hellhole,” Lee recalled. Lee returned to Huntington the next morning. Ash would remain Thurmond’s police chief for less than a decade. He eventually moved downriver to Deep Water, where he was shot by his wife. George says Ash survived the shooting, but died a short time later of “mental illness”—probably suicide, although the actual cause of death remains unclear.