A crew of six "woodhicks," as the lumberjacks were known, could cut 200 trees in a day. Whole mountain sides were shaved clean and the logs taken to a band sawmill, where 17 acres of forest were processed every day.

Woodhicks hit the nearest town on Saturday night.

Those on top of Cheat Mountain descended on Cass, a clean orderly village on the Greenbrier River. Directly across the river from downtown was Brooklyn, a raucous collection of saloons and cheap hotels, reachable only by a swinging bridge. Everyone called it "the Brooklyn Bridge."

Despite a local prohibition on the sale of alcohol, woodhicks found plenty of beer and bootleg whiskey in Brooklyn saloons. Drunken brawls spilled out of doorways onto what was known as Dirty Street.

Schoolteacher Emma Burner made repeated efforts to clean up Brooklyn. She disguised herself as a man, bought booze in saloons, then returned with police deputies to raid the place. One raid seized 90 cases of whiskey. The bootlegger turned out to be the town's deputy sheriff.