The rail line that defines much of the Sheepskin Trail was built in the 1890s as the Fairmont, Morgantown, and Pittsburgh branch of the B&O Railroad to serve a booming coal and coke industry, opening the southern end of the Connellsville Coke Region. Along the route are remnants of coke ovens, including Cheat River Coke Works, Ada's Bottom Coke Works, Atchison Coke Works, and Shoaf. Railroaders called it the Sheepskin Line after early trains scattered sheep for miles and angry herders shouted “Darn Sheepskinners!” The Sheepskin rail-trail project cuts through central Fayette County and, when completed, will connect the Great Allegheny Passage and the West Virginia Rail-Trail System while linking the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, and Cheat River watersheds. At Point Marion, where the Monongahela and Cheat Rivers meet, the French established a trading post in 1724. Colonel George Wilson later received 108 acres there, and after the Revolutionary War the Mason-Dixon Line settlement placed the site in Pennsylvania rather than Virginia. Fayette County was formed in 1783, and in 1784 George Washington crossed the Cheat River at its mouth during a six-week journey to inspect his western Pennsylvania property. The Wilson family sold the point to Jacob Sadler in 1801, and the land was divided into lots and auctioned on March 15, 1842, when Seth Stafford bought the first lot for $100 and named the new town Point Marion in honor of General Francis Marion. Point Marion’s principal business was lumber, with logs floated down the Cheat River from camps in the West Virginia mountains and processed in planing, saw, and finishing mills. In 1890 McClain Brothers Sand Company began supplying sand and gravel for Baltimore and Ohio Railroad masonry work between Morgantown and Uniontown, later expanding with dredges, a steamboat, and barges. The glass industry arrived in 1900, and several companies operated plants there. On July 5, 1923, Leon J. Houze combined three smaller firms into the L.J. Houze Convex Glass Company, known for colored glass, art glass, utilitarian products, and window glass. In the early 1950s it uniquely produced hand-blown replacement glass for the 1792 White House windows, remained Point Marion’s leading employer for almost 100 years, and closed in 2004.