Appalachian Community Histories – Cleveland, Russell County: Mills, Railroads, Fire, Banking, and Life Along the Clinch River
Cleveland sits beside the Clinch River in Russell County, surrounded by steep ridges, narrow valleys, and the remnants of an economy once closely tied to farms, mills, railroads, coal, and local commerce. It is a small town, but its surviving records tell a larger story than its size might suggest.
The history of Cleveland can be found in an 1889 town plan, the machinery of an old water-powered mill, railroad records, newspaper accounts of a devastating fire, a Virginia Supreme Court case involving a failed bank, and the 1946 court order that formally incorporated the community.
Together, these sources reveal that Cleveland was never simply an isolated mountain settlement. It was a planned railroad town, an agricultural trading place, a point of communication between Russell County and the outside world, and a community that repeatedly rebuilt itself after economic and physical disaster. The attached Cleveland research guide provided the foundation for identifying many of these records and collections.
Before Cleveland Became a Town
Long before Cleveland appeared on a town map, families were settling the lands surrounding Mill Creek, Reeds Valley, and the Clinch River. Farms occupied the more open valley ground, while creeks supplied water for livestock, households, blacksmiths, and mills.
One of the most thoroughly documented pieces of this earlier history is Jessees Mill, located on Mill Creek near Cleveland. Russell County land records show that John Jessee Sr. owned hundreds of acres in the area by the end of the eighteenth century. A county road order from 1801 referred to a road passing to “John Jessee’s Mill,” although later research concluded that this early mill was not the same structure that survives today. Another order from 1814 gave Jessee permission to construct a mill and abutment, suggesting that milling locations and structures changed as families developed their land.
These early references matter because mills were among the most important institutions in rural Appalachian communities. Grain had to be processed into meal and flour, and a dependable mill could serve families from miles around. Roads were often laid out in relation to mills, churches, river crossings, and the homes of prominent landowners.
The Cleveland area was therefore developing as a working landscape long before anyone attempted to organize it as a formal town.
Jessees Mill and the Agricultural Community
The surviving Jessees Mill began around 1851 as a comparatively simple log structure powered by the waters of Mill Creek. Research using Russell County land books and federal census records indicates that Archer Jessee operated a mill in Reeds Valley during the 1850s. His son, Andrew Jackson Jessee, inherited the property in 1861.
The mill changed considerably near the end of the nineteenth century. Between approximately 1889 and 1900, Andrew Jackson Jessee incorporated the earlier gristmill into a much larger roller-process mill. The addition allowed grain to pass through a more elaborate system of belts, gears, elevators, sifters, and rollers. Much of that equipment remained inside the building when the property was studied for the National Register of Historic Places. The stone dam, waterwheel, wooden gearing, and portions of the earlier mill also survived.
The mill stood near more than farms. The surrounding community eventually included a general store, blacksmith shop, schoolhouse, church, miller’s cottage, barn, and the large brick home associated with Andrew Jackson Jessee. This was not an incorporated town, but it functioned as a neighborhood center where work, trade, education, religion, and family life came together.
Andrew Jackson Jessee operated the mill until his death in 1922. His son, Wiley E. Jackson, continued operating it until the mill closed in 1932. Its long period of activity connected the subsistence farming economy of the mid-nineteenth century with the railroad and commercial economy that emerged around Cleveland during the decades that followed.
The Railroad Comes to the Clinch Valley
The event that most directly shaped Cleveland as a recognizable town was the arrival of the railroad.
The Norfolk and Western Railway began constructing its Clinch Valley Extension in 1887. The route was intended to connect the railroad with the timber, mineral, agricultural, and coal resources of southwestern Virginia and the neighboring Appalachian coalfields. Construction reached the Honaker area in 1889, the first passenger train traveled through Russell County to St. Paul in August 1890, and the line was completed to Norton in 1891.
Cleveland became one of the communities positioned along this new transportation corridor. The railroad offered farmers, merchants, timber operators, and manufacturers a faster route to regional markets. It also provided passengers with a connection to communities that had once required hours or days of difficult travel by wagon or horseback.
Railroad construction brought more than tracks. Depots, sidings, telegraph lines, water facilities, warehouses, agent houses, and roads developed near the line. A later architectural survey identified a railroad station agent’s house at Cleveland dating to approximately 1890. Like similar houses at Finney and Honaker, it was a local interpretation of a Gothic Revival cottage. The Cleveland house was demolished shortly after it was surveyed in 2008, demonstrating how quickly the physical evidence of railroad history can disappear.
By 1931, Cleveland was one of seven Russell County railroad stations where Western Union telegraph service was available. Messages could be sent from the Cleveland station to destinations throughout the United States and beyond, connecting the small Clinch River community to a much larger network of business and communication.
The 1889 Plan of Cleveland
As the railroad entered Russell County, investors and property owners began imagining new towns along its route. One of the most important surviving Cleveland records is the “Map of Town of Cleveland,” prepared in 1889 in association with William E. Burns.
The plan represented an effort to arrange Cleveland as more than a scattered settlement. It showed proposed lots, streets, transportation features, nearby properties, and the relationship between the community and the surrounding landscape. The Library of Virginia preserves the map on Russell County microfilm reel 69. Its date closely corresponds with the railroad’s arrival in the Cleveland and Honaker area.
Such maps were both practical and promotional. They divided land into lots that could be sold, marked streets through which commerce could move, and presented a vision of future growth. The Cleveland shown on the plan was therefore partly a real community and partly an expectation of what the railroad might make possible.
Not every street, lot, or development imagined by town planners necessarily became reality. Nevertheless, the plan demonstrates that Cleveland’s development was intentional. Local landowners understood that a railroad stop on the Clinch River could become a commercial center for the surrounding countryside.
A Growing Railroad Business District
During the years after the railroad arrived, Cleveland developed stores, lodging places, transportation businesses, financial institutions, and other services. Residents from surrounding farms and hollows could travel into town to purchase manufactured goods, conduct banking, collect mail, ship products, or board a train.
Cleveland’s position along the Norfolk and Western line made it especially important to people living north of the Clinch River and in neighboring areas without direct rail access. Wagons and later motor vehicles carried goods between the railroad and the interior. Stores supplied tools, groceries, clothing, animal feed, hardware, and household necessities that had once been difficult to obtain.
The town’s early commercial buildings were vulnerable, however. Many were constructed from wood and stood close together near the railroad. Cleveland had no modern municipal fire department, extensive water system, or professional firefighting equipment. That combination created the conditions for one of the most destructive events in the community’s history.
The Great Cleveland Fire of 1910
In April 1910, a fire began in the feed store of G. W. Thompson and Company. The available firefighting force consisted primarily of local residents forming a bucket brigade. The flames moved quickly through the dry wooden buildings, spreading from one business to the next.
A transcription of the April 22, 1910, Lebanon News account described the entire business section of Cleveland as having been reduced to ashes. The destroyed properties included the J. B. Branson and Company hardware store, the G. W. Thompson feed store, M. P. Artrip’s store and livery stable, the G. W. Price general store, the People’s Bank, Dotson’s Hotel, the Purcell Brothers general store, the Norfolk and Western depot, a lumberyard, and the home and grocery stock of William L. Jessee.
The newspaper estimated the loss at approximately $100,000, while insurance covered only about $25,000. For a small Appalachian railroad community in 1910, the destruction represented an enormous concentration of private wealth, merchandise, transportation infrastructure, and public services.
Reports of the fire circulated beyond Russell County. Virginia newspapers described Cleveland as having been nearly wiped from the map. Such language was dramatic, but it reflected the importance of the business district to the community. The fire destroyed not merely buildings, but the places where residents banked, purchased food, stayed overnight, boarded trains, kept horses, collected freight, and received mail.
Cleveland did not disappear. Businesses reopened, property was rebuilt, and the railroad continued to bring people and commerce through the town. The survival of the community after the fire became one of the clearest examples of Cleveland’s resilience.
The People’s Bank of Cleveland
Among the businesses rebuilt or reestablished after the fire was the People’s Bank of Cleveland. The bank had been organized in 1907, only three years before the disaster, and it continued operating until May 1928.
The existence of a locally based bank demonstrates the level of commercial confidence that Cleveland possessed during the early twentieth century. Banks provided credit for farms, homes, stores, vehicles, livestock, equipment, and business expansion. They also held the savings of residents who might otherwise have kept their money at home or traveled to Lebanon, Honaker, or another town.
Financial records show that the People’s Bank had $10,000 in paid capital and reported a growing surplus during much of the 1920s. It paid dividends in several years, although its recorded profits declined as the decade progressed. By 1927, the bank reported a small annual loss.
When state authorities closed the institution in May 1928, contemporary reporting placed its combined capital and surplus at $20,000. Deposits at the end of the previous year were reported at $158,522, while total resources were estimated at approximately $200,000. These figures show that the bank’s influence extended well beyond the money invested by its founders. The savings and financial security of many local depositors were involved.
The bank’s failure occurred before the national stock market crash of 1929. Cleveland was therefore dealing with a serious local financial crisis before the Great Depression reached its worst years.
Cleveland’s Remarkably Diverse Business World
The litigation that followed the collapse of the People’s Bank eventually reached the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. The resulting 1933 decision, Anderson v. Bundy, preserved an unusually detailed description of Cleveland’s commercial community during the 1920s.
The court record mentioned the Jessee Department Store, a drugstore, poolrooms, a barber shop, the Cleveland Bottling Company, several poultry ventures, the Cleveland Motor Company, the Jessee Furniture Company, and the Jewell Theatre. These enterprises reveal a town moving beyond the older economy of gristmills, general stores, horses, and wagons. Cleveland residents were buying automobiles, bottled drinks, furniture, entertainment, and specialized retail services.
The Jewell Theatre is particularly revealing. A motion-picture theater required a paying audience large enough to support regular entertainment. It also placed Cleveland within the cultural changes occurring across the United States as silent films and later sound pictures reached small communities.
The Cleveland Motor Company likewise reflected the transition from railroad and horse transportation to the automobile. Poolrooms and barber shops served as social spaces, while the bottling company suggests an effort to manufacture and distribute consumer products locally.
The court case recorded these businesses because many were connected to E. F. Jessee, cashier of the People’s Bank. The court heard allegations that he used the bank to support enterprises involving himself, relatives, and associates without adequate supervision from the directors. Several businesses failed, members of the Jessee family entered bankruptcy, and Jessee later confessed to criminal misconduct connected with the bank.
The case should not be read only as a story of wrongdoing. It is also one of the best surviving records of Cleveland’s period of commercial ambition. The town supported, or attempted to support, a variety of businesses that would seem more typical of a substantially larger community.
The Bank Failure and Its Aftermath
When the People’s Bank suspended operations, depositors and creditors sought to recover what they could. The legal dispute centered partly on whether the bank’s directors had provided proper supervision and whether they could be held responsible for the institution’s losses.
The Virginia court found evidence of questionable minutes, unusually large lines of credit, weak oversight, and loans that contributed to the collapse. The final ruling affirmed portions of the lower court decision, reversed others, and returned the matter for additional proceedings. More important for Cleveland’s history, the opinion placed the bank’s internal affairs and the town’s business relationships into the public record.
The bank’s failure must have been deeply personal for the people of Cleveland. Deposits represented farm earnings, wages, inheritances, business receipts, and family savings. The closing of a local bank could restrict credit across the entire community and make it difficult for surviving businesses to purchase stock or continue operating.
Yet Cleveland remained an active community. A 1930 industrial survey counted 32 retail and wholesale concerns in the wider Cleveland Magisterial District. The figure should not be interpreted as 32 businesses within the incorporated town, which did not yet exist, but it confirms that Cleveland remained part of a functioning commercial district even after the bank failure.
Agriculture, Coal, and the Railroad Economy
Cleveland occupied a transitional position within Russell County. Much of the land south of the Clinch River belonged to the county’s limestone and agricultural region, while the lands north of the river led toward coal-bearing areas and the mountains beyond.
Farms and livestock remained central to the county economy. Grain mills, feed stores, blacksmiths, general stores, and agricultural instruction continued to serve rural residents. The 1931 county survey noted that an agricultural instructor taught at Cleveland High School as well as at Lebanon, showing the continued importance of farming to local education.
At the same time, railroads carried coal, lumber, manufactured goods, mail, passengers, and agricultural products. Cleveland did not become a company-built coal camp like Dante, but its railroad station allowed it to participate in the wider coalfield economy. Miners, merchants, farmers, railroad workers, tradesmen, and their families all moved through the community.
Cleveland’s economy was therefore not based upon a single industry. It was shaped by the interaction of agriculture, transportation, small manufacturing, coalfield commerce, and local retail business.
Schools, Churches, and Community Life
Commercial records can reveal what people bought and sold, but they do not tell the entire story of a town. Cleveland was also held together by its schools, churches, families, civic organizations, and informal neighborhood connections.
Cleveland High School yearbooks preserve photographs of students, teachers, athletic teams, clubs, school buildings, and local advertisers. The advertisements are valuable historical evidence because they identify businesses that supported school activities and expected students and their families to recognize their names.
Church registers, cemetery records, funeral notices, marriage licenses, and local newspapers can be used to reconstruct the networks that connected Cleveland families across generations. These sources record baptisms, marriages, deaths, military service, community celebrations, revivals, school events, and moments of public mourning.
The history of Cleveland is therefore not limited to a railroad timetable, mill, or bank case. It is also the history of children attending school, congregations gathering for worship, families visiting stores on Saturdays, and neighbors responding together when fire, flood, illness, or death entered the community.
Cleveland Becomes an Incorporated Town
Although Cleveland had appeared on a town plan in 1889 and had functioned as a community for decades, it did not become an incorporated Virginia town until 1946.
Twenty qualified voters petitioned the Russell County Circuit Court to incorporate the “thickly settled community” under the name Town of Cleveland. The petitioners included Mrs. D. M. Deskins, J. B. Cook, R. D. Arrington, F. H. Price, Utah Counts, Sherman Wallace, Maynard Wallace, W. E. Fraley, and other residents.
The petition was published in full in the Lebanon News for four successive weeks beginning on April 5, 1946. After hearing testimony, the court determined that incorporation was reasonable, would promote the general good of the community, and was in the best interest of the inhabitants. The court also found that Cleveland had more than 200 but fewer than 5,000 residents.
The official boundary description shows how Cleveland’s geography and infrastructure had become intertwined. The boundary began at a Tennessee Valley Authority river gauge on the Clinch River and referred to Counts Cemetery, private property lines, Tank Hollow Branch, the Norfolk and Western right-of-way, the highway between Lebanon and Cleveland, the town reservoir, and the municipal sewage system.
These landmarks tell their own story. By 1946, Cleveland had a railroad, highway, water reservoir, sewage facilities, cemetery, settled neighborhoods, and enough residents to support municipal government. At the same time, its legal boundaries continued to follow rivers, branches, hollows, and old property lines.
The court ordered Cleveland’s first municipal election for July 11, 1946. Residents were to elect a mayor and five councilmen at the G. Rasnake Garage Building. A garage, one of the businesses representing Cleveland’s automobile age, became the place where the town’s first formal government was chosen.
The Clinch River and the Shape of Cleveland
The Clinch River has always been one of Cleveland’s defining features. It helped determine where farms, mills, roads, railroad tracks, homes, and businesses could be built. It supplied water, created fertile bottomland, and provided a natural passage through the surrounding mountains.
The river also brought danger. Floodwaters could threaten homes, rail lines, bridges, roads, and businesses built close to the banks. Cleveland’s incorporation boundary began at a river gauge, demonstrating that measuring and understanding the Clinch was already part of local life by 1946.
The United States Geological Survey continues to maintain monitoring location 03524000, officially identified as the Clinch River at Cleveland. The gauge forms a modern continuation of the long relationship between the community and the river beside which it developed.
The river was not simply beside Cleveland. It was one of the forces that created Cleveland, limited its growth, supported its economy, and periodically reminded residents of the power of the Appalachian landscape.
What Remains of Historic Cleveland
Much of the Cleveland that existed during the railroad boom has disappeared. The original depot burned in the 1910 fire, later railroad buildings have been removed, and the circa 1890 station agent’s house was demolished after being documented in 2008. Commercial structures changed as businesses closed, highways replaced passenger trains, and new buildings occupied older lots.
Other pieces of the community’s history survive in less obvious forms. The 1889 town plan remains available through the Library of Virginia. The incorporation order preserves the names of residents who sought municipal government. Anderson v. Bundy records businesses that would otherwise be little more than fading family memories. Newspapers preserve the destruction caused by the 1910 fire. Census schedules, deeds, tax books, wills, and marriage registers record the ordinary people who lived in and around the town.
Jessees Mill remains one of the Cleveland area’s most important physical links to the past. Its surviving waterwheel, dam, machinery, log construction, and later roller equipment connect the agricultural settlements of the nineteenth century with the commercial changes of the railroad era. The property was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register in 2004 and the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Preserving Cleveland’s story therefore requires more than saving one building. It requires bringing together town records, court files, railroad maps, newspapers, school yearbooks, family collections, photographs, and the physical landscape.
Why Cleveland’s Story Matters
Cleveland represents a kind of Appalachian community that is often overlooked. It was neither a county seat nor a large company coal town. It did not become a major industrial city. Its importance came from the way it connected the surrounding countryside to the railroad, the river, nearby coalfields, and regional markets.
The community grew from an older landscape of farms and water-powered mills. The railroad inspired a formal town plan and encouraged new businesses. A catastrophic fire destroyed much of the commercial district, but Cleveland rebuilt. A local bank financed a remarkable period of business experimentation before collapsing in scandal and litigation. Residents later sought incorporation and established a municipal government with boundaries following both modern infrastructure and ancient waterways.
Cleveland’s history challenges the belief that small Appalachian towns were static or isolated. Its residents adopted roller milling, railroad transportation, telegraph service, banking, automobiles, bottled drinks, motion pictures, municipal utilities, and elected town government. They also endured fire, financial failure, floods, disappearing industries, and the loss of historic buildings.
The Cleveland visible today is only one layer of the community. Beneath it remains the town imagined on an 1889 map, the railroad settlement rebuilt after the flames of 1910, the business center recorded in a 1933 court opinion, and the river community incorporated by its residents in 1946.
Sources & Further Reading
Circuit Court of Russell County, Virginia. “In re: Incorporation of the Town of Cleveland.” 1946. Reproduced in Virginia Law, “Charter: Cleveland, Town of, County of Russell.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/charters/cleveland/
Library of Virginia. “Russell County Microfilm.” County and City Records on Microfilm. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA253
Pulice, Michael J., and John R. Kern. “Jessees Mill.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2004. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/083-5152-0001_Jessees_Mill_2005_Final_Nomination.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Jessees Mill, DHR ID 083-5152-0001.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/083-5152-0001/
André, Elizabeth M. Survey of Architectural Resources in Russell County, Virginia. Williamsburg: William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research, 2009. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/RU-045_PowerPointScript.pdf
William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research. Comprehensive Survey Report: Survey of Architectural Resources in Russell County. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2009. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/RU-045_AH_survey_Russell_County_2009_WMCAR_report.pdf
Anderson v. Bundy, 161 Va. 1, 171 S.E. 501 (1933). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/6922506/anderson-v-bundy/
Commercial and Financial Chronicle. May 26, 1928. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/commercial-financial-chronicle-1339/may-26-1928-517010/fulltext
“Fire at Cleveland: Entire Business Section of Little Town Reduced to Ashes.” Lebanon News, April 22, 1910. Transcribed in “Fires in Russell County, 1855-1925.” https://russellvets.blogspot.com/2017/11/fires-in-russell-county-1855-1925.html
Humbert, Reuben Lee. Industrial Survey, Russell County, Virginia. Blacksburg: Engineering Extension Division, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1930. https://books.google.com/books/about/Industrial_Survey_Russell_County_Virgini.html?id=iCK-IkS36OkC
Tate, Leland Burdine. An Economic and Social Survey of Russell County. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1931. https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Economic_and_Social_Survey_of_Russell.html?id=GqbXAAAAMAAJ
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/chancery
Library of Virginia. “A Guide to the Russell County (Va.) Chancery Causes, 1840-1960.” Virginia Heritage. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=lva%2Fvi03183.xml
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837-1950.” National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “ICC Railroad Valuation Records.” Records of the Interstate Commerce Commission, Record Group 134. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/transportation/railroad-valuation
National Archives and Records Administration. “Railroad Maps, 1828-1900.” Cartographic Records. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/cartographic/railroad-maps
Library of Congress. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/
Library of Virginia. Virginia Chronicle: Digital Newspaper Archive. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Russell County Public Library. “Local History.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://russell.lib.va.us/local-history/
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Yearbook Digitization Project.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://vpl.lib.va.us/yearbooks/
United States Census Bureau. “Decennial Census Official Publications: 1950.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.1950.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “1950 Census.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://1950census.archives.gov/
United States Geological Survey. “Clinch River at Cleveland, Virginia, Monitoring Location 03524000.” National Water Information System. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/03524000/
Virginia Department of Energy. “Virginia Topographic Map Index.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://energy.virginia.gov/geology/topoindex.shtml
Virginia Department of Energy. “Mineral Mining Web Map.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://energy.virginia.gov/webmaps/MineralMining/
Virginia Department of Elections and Virginia Humanities. Virginia Elections Database. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/
Pratt, D. C. Russell County: Virginia’s Bluegrass Empire. Lebanon, VA: Russell County Historical Society, 1968. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Russell+County+Virginia%27s+Bluegrass+Empire
Russell County Heritage Book Committee. The Heritage of Russell County, Virginia, 1786-1986. Lebanon, VA: Russell County Heritage Book Committee, 1987. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=The+Heritage+of+Russell+County+Virginia+1786-1986
Hamilton, Emory L. Old Mills of Far Southwest Virginia. Abingdon, VA: Historical Society of Southwest Virginia, 1973. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=Old+Mills+of+Far+Southwest+Virginia
Summers, Lewis Preston. History of Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786, Washington County, 1777-1870. Richmond: J. L. Hill Printing Company, 1903. https://archive.org/details/historyofsouthwe00summ
Author Note: Cleveland’s history survives in scattered court files, maps, newspapers, railroad records, and the machinery of Jessees Mill. This article brings those fragments together to preserve the story of a Clinch River community shaped by work, disaster, transportation, and persistence.