Fellow VA-Hist list subscribers:

Martin's Station is a recently-built, palisaded pioneer fort with its 
associated structures and enclosures, located at Virginia's Wilderness 
Road State Park near Ewing in Lee County, about six miles east of the 
Cumberland Gap. The station is a rather wonderful recreation that 
powerfully evokes a short-lived but important part of Virginia's 
history: the great western migration.

Many list subscribers will be familiar with David Hackett Fischer and 
James C. Kelly's _Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement_ 
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000),  which was 
published in connection with an exhibition at the Virginia Historical 
Society, marking the centenary of Frederick Jackson Turner's work on the 
theme of frontier in American History. That book discusses the 
Cumberland Gap, Daniel Boone, and the Wilderness Road, though not Joseph 
Martin. Martin's fort was reconstructed after the book's publication.

Earlier this week, both Daniel Boone (in the person of Scott New) and 
Captain Joseph Martin (in the person of Billy Heck) were at the fort and 
regaled this visitor with deep historical insights.

Martin's Station is, however, almost as far west in Virginia as one can 
travel. It's 240 road miles from Blacksburg, well over 400 miles from 
the State Library in Richmond, and a long way for most Virginians to 
reach. On line information and pictures can be found at 
www.martinsstation.com.

My visits to the station and the nearby Cumberland Gap National Park 
were illuminating and rewarding. Highly recommended.

Jim Glanville
Retired Chemist
201 Graves Avenue
Blacksburg, Virginia 24060

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