By 1835, the tide was turning for Virginia slate. By 1851, the slate was receiving "honorable mention" at the London World’s Fair in England, followed in 1876 by a gold medal at the Philadelphia Exposition, and yet another medal in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Perhaps the greatest factor involved in getting Virginia’s slate industry moving was the Welsh influence. In 1867, as Virginia still smoldered from the Civil War, immigrants from North Wales began to move into central Virginia in search of opportunity in the slate quarries. Some of the Welsh people came down from Vermont where they had settled for the same purposes. By 1881, one Virginia Welsh quarry employed 100 mostly Welsh workers, when a week’s shipment of roofing slate may have equaled a hundred tons in weight and traveled as far as San Francisco by rail. The advent of the railroad into the Virginia slate district in 1885 opened the final door to the markets, and the slate industry flourished, booming between 1900 and 1910, approximately the same time slate production peaked in Pennsylvania. Once again, World War One had an impact on the slate industry, and of eight Virginia slate quarrying companies existing before the war, only four continued afterward. By 1928, there were only three companies in operation, but with the introduction of earth-moving equipment, production actually rose to new highs. Still, the Great Depression caused quarry operations to virtually cease in the early 1930s, when, in 1932, slate production was as low as it had been in 50 years. By 1940, the three companies had recovered sufficiently to employ about 420 workers, but then along came World War Two, grinding operations to a halt, after which operations resumed at one third the pre-war level.
By 1962, however, 100,000 tons of finished slate products were being shipped from Buckingham County, Virginia, to all parts of the United States. Today, the immense deposits of roof replacement slate in Virginia have hardly been touched. Sources of Virginia’s high quality slate are listed in the back of this book.
