Hunter, unlike Slide, was located close to settlements and saw considerable exploitation of its forest resources. Retired Colonel William Edwards was so successful harvesting hemlock bark for tanning during the mid-19th century in what is now the ski area that not only was the ridge named the Colonel's Chair in his honor, the village of Hunter was briefly renamed Edwardsville. On the other side of the mountain, the West Virginia-based Fenwick Lumber Company logged Hunter and Southwest Hunter so thoroughly between 1903 and 1917 that it is hard to find virgin forest anywhere in the lands they once owned. Some of the roads and railroads they built on the mountains still serve as trails today, and other remnants of their operations are in the nearby woods.