Dense with forest and tucked away in the folds of the West Virginia mountains, the town of Davis is square in the middle of an influx of Washingtonians who flock to the mountains seeking respite and a resort hideaway. There’s a precedent deep in the history of Tucker County for second homes.

In fact, at a time when the forest was so dense that some early settlers recorded that they couldn’t see the sun, the first second-home buyer was James Parsons, after whom the county seat is named. Taken captive by Indians in 1762, Parsons soon returned with his brother Thomas to build a cabin they used as a base for enjoying and exploring the mountains and wildlife of Canaan Valley, north of nearby St. George.

Charles Ryan, CEO of Charles Ryan Associates based in Charleston and Richmond, also has roots that run deep into Canaan Valley. Raised in Keyser, West Virginia, his mother is from Tucker County. With one of the state’s most successful and highly visible businesses, the house he built in 1999 is a fine example of what a Canaan Valley retreat can be. In Old Timberline, where spectacular rooms pulled together by wife Becky Ryan and her interior designer Jan Mani, is one of the best examples of a property having entered the realm of a salon in the 18th-century French sense, where names often seen in bold-face print gather and regale.

“The area is spectacular, and it’s a quiet resort. Once you’re here, you love it. Timberline is a tremendous venue, and a well capitalized effort will make it a world-class operation,” says Ryan of one of the valley’s most perfectly planned, scaled and finelydecorated mountain retreats.

The New Generation of Settlers Mike and Debbie Lasher, a Hollywood, Maryland dentist and dental hygienist with four children, have made slope front property at Timberline their modern mountain base recently.

“With that highway they’re building into Davis, the value is going to go up quite a lot,” says Mike, referring to Corridor H, the last segment of the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System. “Being on a ski slope is like being on the ocean. There are only so many slots available. There’s going to be a limited amount of building altogether. We hiked into Table Rock last Saturday, hiked through the woods and drove our car along these little cliffs. It’s not like anything I’ve ever done before,” he says.

The Lashers consider every day they spend in the valley an adventure. Debbie says, “The summers are cool and I enjoy the skiing. I hadn’t even skied before we bought this house. Our particular house doesn’t even have air conditioning, and it was nice and cool. We went up in late May this year, and it was snowing. Oh! And a bear got in the trash! I hope I get to see one!” Besides, they both add, it is a great investment.

Propelled by national news reports about Canaan Valley and Timberline, second-home buyers looking for investment property are increasingly turning their attention to Canaan Valley. Associated Press reporter Vicki Smith’s feature on Timberline made its way around the country into dozens of media outlets including MSNBC, CNN, Sacramento Bee and USA Today. A recent New York Times article featured the upstate-New York doctor Jim Vaughan who, along with his three adult sons (two of whom live in Arlington, Virginia), chose Timberline over Vail.

The Lasher’s spacious second home in the Winterset development, the next-door neighbor of the recently completed up-mountain slope-side development of Winterhaven, easily sleeps 12 people and is in the $800,000 range. Houses at Timberline sleep eight to 20.

Back to the Land “The most undervalued property north of Florida is in West Virginia,” says Frederick Herz, a partner in Timberline Four Seasons Resort. “Davis has always attracted hipsters and cultural creatives because of its proximity to the nation’s nerve center.” The Valley’s accessibility to the East Coast’s major population centers also makes it an appealing choice for getting away from it all—from Lexington, Louisville, Cleveland, Richmond, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Columbus and Richmond as well.

By “cultural creatives” Herz refers to the educated, affluent, spiritually inclined and ecologically tuned-in Americans who number about 50 million and they tend to live in large urban centers. They are dedicated professionals with families, and as such they operate in a dead-run from daylight until well after dark growing businesses, tending to their children and seeking “balance,” also understood as sanity.

Steve Thaxton, a chiropractor who makes his own bio fuels, is a cultural creative. An entrepreneur, he is a competitive mountain biker and owns two houses on the slopes of Timberline. He toured with Guns n’ Roses as the band’s trainer, and you can often catch him at the airport in Charleston en route to New Jersey for a weekend with his friend Jon Bon Jovi. Just as often, you can catch up with him at Timber’s Pub & Fireside Grille in Canaan Valley.

“There’s a real lack of pretense up here, and I appreciate that,” says Thaxton. “It’s exceptionally great mountain biking, too. There have been times when I thought I might have heard the growl of a mountain lion. When I am in Canaan Valley, I am at peace. It is truly exciting to own a home in the heart of such beautiful country.”

The Washington Metro area with its traffic snarls, merciless commutes and congestion is full of cultural creatives and they long to escape into the less wired, less complex, more contemplative life on any given Friday during all four seasons.

Time is the new currency, after all, and after a fully wired week, urban dwellers are coming to roost and replenish their spirits in Canaan Valley, even though wired connections are still available.

Davis: The Best Kept Secret Men’s Journal magazine named Davis one of “America’s Top 10 Mountain Towns” and Timberline one of the coolest places in it.

An eclectic mix of restaurants exists on the Davis strip which the New York Times compared to an old-West movie set. The tasty Timbers Pub & Fireside Grille at Timberline is four miles down the road, and known for fresh and fine dining as well as Appalachian hospitality. Syriany’s Pizza in Davis is always abuzz, and gift shops like MountainMade in Thomas showcase West Virginia’s finest arts and crafts. A local microbrewery in Davis offers refreshment in the form of home-spun local brews after skiing and world-class mountain biking, climbing or hiking just down the road.

Don’t worry, you can’t get lost in Davis. “The locals are friendly, the snow is good and the mountain is the best south of New England,” writes one of the Timberline faithful who go to the DCSki.com, a site ubiquitous among the Washington D.C. ski community. Contributors brag, kvetch and rave on the place it calls “quirky and quaint” and a first rate skiers’ mountain—with a 1,000-foot vertical drop and a lateral scale as dramatic as Vail and Killington.

With the completion of Corridor H from Virginia to Davis estimated to take only five years, or possibly 10, depending on whom you ask and how optimistic they happen to be, planners, builders and the valley’s first visionaries are moving into high gear for sustainable development. A run on real estate is sure to follow.