First printing (Stated first edition). Reprinting 2020 in soft-cover. Tight, clean, flat, square, sharp and crisp book in pristine DJ. The Birch River area of West Virginia was first settled in an organized fashion at the turn of the 19th century, mostly by Revolutionary War Pensioners. Veterans of the War were granted a small plot of land up along this river and that, the Birch River and its tributaries being a major landmark in the area. The history of the counties: Braxton and Calhoun and Nicholas, is told here. The roads built, not by a Government entity, but by neighbors with their own axes and saws and shovels and chains; the Natives, the bears, and the hollers: always the hills and valleys and the game and the fish that still make central West Virginia the "Wild and Wonderful" place that it always has been. This book has been in our possession since the year it was published, being purchased as part of a genealogy project.