Lost Marbles: Cairo, West Virginia

We went to Cairo looking for the haunted Silver Run tunnel on the North Bend Rail Trail, and yes, we found it. But we found something almost as interesting right there in Cairo.

Cairo is a small, quiet town in Ritchie county on the western side of West Virginia. The town was one of the turn-of-the century oil boom towns that sprang up in the area with the development of the oil fields in the 1890's-early 1900's. Oil and gas continued to be a source of revenue for the town for many years but that prosperity dwindled in the second half of the 1900's. The rail trail has brought a small boom in tourism to the town, although several businesses that tried to build on the bike and foot traffic passing on the trail have closed their doors. Off the beaten track, twenty miles or more from an interstate, it has to be a challenge to keep a business going. There seems to be a dedicated group of people who have restored many of the downtown buildings, and Cairo is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited.

We stopped in town after our trek to the tunnel, looking for some lunch. We found P&P Pastries open, and the after-church crowd there for Sunday dinner. As we were waiting for our food, we got into conversation with some of the people in the diner. One lady told us she had worked in the marble factory until it closed down, making boxes at first and then moving up to bagging the marbles.

Marbles! Of course! Cairo had once been a marble-making center, but I'd forgotten that part of its history. Another lady introduced us to her brother-in-law, Roydice Layfield, who filled us in on more of the town's history, and told us that the place we'd seen with mounds of dirt and an almost-destroyed building was where the marble plant was located. "You can dig marbles right out of the dirt," he said.

Roydice is a story in himself, a man who had had several careers in his lifetime. He worked at the DuPont plant, drove a school bus, and later on also drove a tour bus for the former Park Tours company. Mr Layfield pointed out several places in town of historical interest: the Bank of Cairo building, the post office, and the site of the former marble plant. (He told us about a train wreck too; more about that in another post.) He looked wistful when he said that he remembered the streets being so full of people you could hardly walk through. Time has certainly brought many changes to Cairo.

Being the glass-aholic that I am, I was drawn to the marble plant site like a moth to a flame. A man was there with a backhoe, tearing down what was left of what had been the company's office.

I watched for a while, hoping he wouldn't destroy two nice old wood doors in the building. After a bit he stopped his machine, and I asked him about the doors.

He smiled. "My mother-in-law wants them. She has a shop in Marietta, and she fixes 'em up and decorates them to sell." That was a relief. I told him I was also a seller, and that I loved glass so of course I wanted to see this place where so much glass had passed through.

"Oh yeah, there's glass everywhere around here. Marbles too, thousands I'd say. Some people came down from Michigan yesterday. You should have seen this place! They paid $100 each to dig marbles. You can see all the places they were digging."

Indeed I could. Dirt piles and holes were everywhere. "If you want some marbles, go ahead and see what you can find."

I couldn't believe my ears! I grabbed an empty coffee cup, the only container at hand, and began hunting marbles. He was right, too--they were everywhere, but many we broken. There were chunks and pieces of glass of all colors scattered on the ground all around me. Larry had stopped to talk with a young couple, and when he finally came over, he got right to work with me. He played marbles all the time as a child, and he loves them still.

Larry digs for gold.

 Everywhere in these mounds, there were marbles and glass.

Two old Jeeps sit rusting away in the woods nearby. These are not for sale (yet) so don't ask. Larry asked, of course, which is how we found out. They belong to the man on the backhoe.

I think this huge iron cauldron might have been used for melting the glass.

After almost an hour scrabbling in the dirt, me with my hands and Larry with the trenching tool we keep in the van, we decided we had enough, almost a grocery bag full of marbles and glass pieces. What fun it was, like digging for treasure.

When we got home last night Larry started washing up our finds. These are the ones that are clean. Accordinf to the marbles ID page, these are typical of the marbles of the area. I think there are quite a few of the Cairo Novelty marbles mixed in here with marbles made by the Heaton/Bogard plant, based on the colors and designs.

We still have these to sort and wash. Not all are perfect, and several are not round, but I was so attracted by the colors and shapes.

This morning I washed the shards, just to be able to photograph them. I have no idea what I will do with them, I was just so intrigued at all the pieces we saw at the site.

Glass shards. Top left is the moon &star pattern piece, lower left a cranberry hobnail fragment. Bottom center a piece of milk glass, and above it two pieces of cranberry glass, one with an intricate pattern that I believe is Fenton. On the right a large piece of what looks like Akro Agate glass.

 These chunks have yet to be washed up. What will I do with them? I have no idea! I just like them.

Another man at the glass plant site told us that trucks would come in loaded with scrap glass from other glass factories, and this glass was used in the marble-making. I recognized a moon &stars scrap probably from LE Smith glass, a cranberry hobnail piece probably from Fenton, a lamp piece that looks like Akro Agate or some similar company, some jadeite-like chunks, among others.

Here's what I have learned about the marble business in Cairo since then. There were two marble plants in the area. A plant was located out of town in a little community called Silver Run; this company was called Cairo Novelty Company, and operated between 1945 (or 1946, I found both dates) and 1950. This plant had only one marble-making machine, but could produce thousands of marbles a day. This plant was owned and operated by Oris Hanlon, who had formerly worked for the other marble maker in the area, Heaton. A terrible flood, on June 25th, 1950, destroyed this facility, although some people say marbles continued to be produced there until 1953. (The information in this paragraph was gleaned from several sources: Dean Six's book West Virginia Glass Towns, (pp12-13), Alan's Marble Collection website, a West Virginia Encyclopedia online article,

A friend's grandmother lived right beside this plant, and my friend recalls playing in the dirt in the yard and digging up marbles. What magic that must have been to a child! Or perhaps the children assumed that marbles grew in all soil since they were so plentiful in their grandmother's yard.

The other marble plant was in town, and was orginally called Heaton Agate Company. This company began business in 1946, according to Dean Six's book West Virginia Glass Towns. The site where we found marbles was where this plant was located. The company changed hands in 1971, becoming CE Bogard & Sons, Inc, and began making industrial glass as well as marbles. Later, in 1983, this company reorganized to become The Bogard Company, still making industrial glass and marbles. The Cairo location closed down in 1987. (Timeline from Dean Six's book West Virginia Glass Towns, and Alan's Marble Collection website.)

You can see examples of the marbles from both plants by clicking on the links in the above paragraphs. The marbles are exceptionally pretty and varied, unlike any that I ever played with as a child.

During the course of our short visit we met three people who had worked in these plants, all of them our age or older. I wonder how many townspeople worked in these businesses, and I can only imagine the impact of the plants' closures. For many years Cairo hosted a Marble Festival which drew hundreds of marble collectors to swap marbles, play in contests and tell tales.

My husband has fond memories of playing marbles in the schoolyard when he was a boy. His memories are echoed in an article in a 1993 edition of Goldenseal Magazine about marbles and marble-playing in West Virginia. (Champions with Dirty Knuckles: Marbles in the Mountain State  Summer 1994, 19:2;p35)

One of the ladies we spoke with said you could identify a Cairo marble by a line that went right through the marble. I believe she had worked at the Silver Run plant, so perhaps this characteristic was specific to marbles from that location. I noticed while we were digging that many of the marbles we found were split cleanly in two.

It was kind of sad to see the demolition of this piece of state history, although I am sure it was unsafe and an eyesore. I am glad to have been there when I was, to take a least a little bit of its history home with me.

Here are more photos of Cairo. For some good historical information, check out this application for historic preservation. Bank robbery? I need to do more research!

Some downtown views:

The old bus stop/filling station at the edge of town (it's for sale!)

A bike shop is probably busy in summer months.

A footbridge crossed the Hughes River.

This shop was a popular spot, and is now for sale.

The old high school is located high on a hill overlooking the town. It closed when a consolidated school was built in the county.

The Bank of Cairo is a real jewel of a building. It's open in the summer on Saturday mornings for tours.

Silver Run was a small community west of town. Today there are only a few scattered houses, and many abandoned and falling-down structures. The Silver Run Tunnel, oddly, is NOT located right on this road, but some distance away up the rail trail.

"Downtown" Silver Run.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.