By Rick Steelhammer
Charleston Gazette-Mail
Fayetteville — Like the iconic New River Gorge Bridge towering 850 feet above, the one-lane Tunney Hunsaker Bridge was a legend in its own time.
When it opened to traffic in 1889, the 420-foot wrought iron truss span, built by the Virginia Bridge and Iron Co. of Roanoke, offered travelers and freight haulers the first crossing of the New River in its 53-mile-long Gorge section that didn’t involve riding a ferry or crossing a railroad trestle.
Last week, a West Virginia Division of Highways crew had nearly completed replacing the wooden deck of the 137-year-old bridge, allowing the historic structure to continue its current role of providing public river access and a scenic drive through the canyon for New River Gorge National Park and Preserve visitors for decades to come.
In its early years, the bridge connected the 19th-century mining towns of Fayette and South Fayette, located on opposite shores of the New, serving coal mines operating from portals far up the steep canyon walls. Fayette, the largest and oldest of the two coal towns, according to “Ghost Towns of the New River Gorge,” produced by the history website Clio, was home to 23 miners and their families by the mid-1870s. At that time, the community consisted of a scattering of company-owned homes, a post office and a three-story building that included a company store, offices for the E.G. Blume Coal Co., living quarters for Blume and his family, a company- owned coffin-making shop and a basement saloon featuring pool tables and a slot machine.
Completion of the new bridge allowed occupants of the two communities to mingle freely, and — eventually, in 1894 — merge into a single town, Fayette Station, named in recognition of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad depot on the Fayette side of the river.
The new bridge also signaled the beginning of the end of the railroad’s domination of transportation in and around the Gorge. After the C&O line was completed through the Gorge in 1873, scores of mines and coal camps began springing up deep inside the canyon, virtually all of them relying on rail service to transport coal and people in and out.
Bridge allowed growth at Fayette Station
One of the first uses of the new bridge was to connect the town of Fayetteville to its nearest rail depot at Fayette Station.
Completion of the bridge allowed a wagon road, full of switchbacks, down the Gorge from Fayetteville to South Fayette to cross the river and reach the C&O depot without making a time-consuming and potentially dangerous crossing at nearby Townsend’s Ferry.
Soon after the bridge opened, work began on extending the wagon road, which at that time dead-ended at the Fayette Station C&O depot, up the canyon wall behind it. That project, authorized by the Fayette County Commission, relied on the efforts of county jail inmates to perform much of the work.
While the bridge and new road helped boost Fayette Station’s population to more than 400 by 1910, mines in the area soon began to play out. By the mid-1960s, the town was abandoned.
Its ruins can be seen in the brush on the lower hillsides surrounding the bridge.
By 1928, the road crossing the bridge and climbing both canyon walls became one of the first in its area to be paved. In 1933, it was officially named Fayette Station Road by the newly created State Road Commission, and it continued to serve as one of the main routes across the northern end of the Gorge until 1977, when the New River Gorge Bridge, carrying four lanes of U.S 19 traffic across the New, was completed.
At that time, the Fayette Station Bridge, obsolete and in need of major repairs, was closed. But a surge in tourism following federal acquisition of much of the Gorge in 1978, and designating it as New River Gorge National River, created a surge in tourism that prompted National Park Service and Division of Highways officials to rebuild and, in 1997, reopen the span.
Bridge is named for one of Muhammad Ali’s opponents
In 1998, the bridge was renamed in honor of longtime Fayetteville police chief and former pro boxer Tunney Hunsaker, best known for having fought Muhammed Ali during Ali’s first professional bout, which took place Oct. 29, 1960, in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Known as Cassius Clay at the time, Ali, then 18, had won an Olympic gold medal in boxing a few months earlier in Rome. He won his bout with Hunsaker by a unanimous decision after six rounds.
“He’s awfully good for an 18-year-old and as fast as a middleweight,” Hunsaker said of Ali after the fight.
Hunsaker became the youngest police chief in West Virginia history when he was named to the post at age 27. He remained on friendly terms with Ali long after his boxing career ended, with an 18-15 record, including nine knockouts.
Ali attended a retirement celebration held in Fayetteville for Hunsaker in 1992, during which the former police chief gave Ali a tour of the area, according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia. The tour included a stop at the New River Gorge Bridge, where traffic was paused briefly for Ali to walk out on the span and take in the view — which included the bridge that would later be named for his former opponent.
“I have fought better fighters, but none with a bigger heart,” Ali said of Hunsaker in a 2005 West Virginia Public Radio interview upon learning of Hunsaker’s death.
Special DOH crew doing the bridge work Work on replacing the wooden deck of the Tunney Hunsaker Bridge has taken place over the past two winters in an attempt to disrupt the travel of the fewest possible Fayette Station Road users.
The work is being done in-house by members of the “DisForce” crew of Division of Highways employees — in this case, from Lewisburg- based District 9 — who tackle special projects for the agency. While most of the project was completed last year, about 75 feet remained for this year’s five-person crew to complete.
While severe weather in January and early February disrupted their work, forcing them to divert to snow-removal duty, the crew has returned to the job, ripping out and replacing about 10 feet of the deck each day.
Each new board has to be cut to fit between support beams before being placed edge-down and nailed into place. More than 3,300 boards were needed to complete the task.
Doing the work in-house, rather than through a contractor, saves about 50% on project costs, according to the West Virginia Department of Transportation. In this case, the cost for the deck replacement will total about $180,000.
The project was tentatively scheduled to last until the end of March, but it likely will be completed several weeks sooner.
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