A Lewis County community lies under 60 feet of a 1980s flood-control reservoir.
Stonewall Jackson Lake, West Fork River, Roanoke, WV
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The lake and Stonewall Resort State Park grounds are free to access; resort lodging, marina rentals, and recreation carry their own fees.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Lakeshore, paved resort grounds, and boat-access water; the submerged townsite is not reachable on foot
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1988 · Army Corps of Engineers Flood-Control Project · Submerged Community · West Fork River Reservoir
Roanoke is an unincorporated community in southern Lewis County, West Virginia, along the West Fork River. The river valley had a long record of flooding, and in the 1980s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District, advanced a flood-control project that would impound the West Fork behind a new dam near Weston.
The Corps purchased the town site during the 1980s. As the reservoir filled, most of the original community of Roanoke was submerged. The completed dam went into service in 1988, and the project protects downstream communities including Weston, Clarksburg, Shinnston, and Fairmont. The resulting reservoir, Stonewall Jackson Lake, covers about 2,630 acres at a surface elevation near 1,073 feet and is named for Thomas Jackson, the Confederate general who was born in Lewis County.
Most of the original town of Roanoke now sits under roughly 60 feet of water. Stonewall Resort State Park stands on the shoreline, and a display inside the resort lodge documents the history of the flooded community and the families relocated for the project. The drowned-town story is what draws visitors who come for more than the boating and golf: a settlement that still exists on old maps but can no longer be walked.
The site reads less as a haunting than as a record of displacement. The water is the monument. The lodge exhibit keeps the names and the timeline in front of the people who now vacation above the old streets.
Sources
Unlike many drowned-town sites, Stonewall Jackson Lake has not generated a body of ghost stories or reported phenomena that we could document. The interest here is the displacement: a community that was bought out, cleared, and flooded within living memory, now sitting under roughly 60 feet of water.
Visitors who learn the history tend to describe a quiet unease at the idea of boating, golfing, and dining above the streets, foundations, and former homesteads of Roanoke. The lodge display gives that feeling a factual anchor by laying out the history of the relocated families and the flood-control project that took the valley.
We treat this as a history-first site. No formal investigation, news account, or folklore tradition we located attaches apparitions or hauntings to the lake. The somberness is real and grounded in the documented record of a town deliberately put under water, and that is how we present it.
Walk the Stonewall Resort State Park grounds along the lake and view the lodge display that documents the history of Roanoke and the other communities relocated for the reservoir. The original townsite sits under roughly 60 feet of water and cannot be reached; the shoreline and resort are the public vantage point.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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