Quest to buy one’s own island need not extend beyond WV’s border – Charleston Gazette-Mail (subscription)

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail

A house built on flood-thwarting piers is the only structure on 36-acre Johnson Island in the Greenbrier River near Alderson.

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail

Island co-owner Kay Sparks admires one of many mature hardwoods thriving on Johnson Island.

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail

Kelly and Kay Sparks walk past a set of shoals while strolling the perimeter of their 36-acre Greenbrier River island, now on the market for $1.4 million.

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail

The upstream end of Johnson Island is easily viewed from the W.Va. 3 bridge over the Greenbrier River in Alderson.

KENNY KEMP | Gazette-Mail

Kelly Sparks closes the gate leading to the bridge he built to access the Greenbrier River island he and his wife recently put up for sale.

ALDERSON Among properties featured in the current issue of Private Islands magazine are:

--Trump Island, a 29-acre expanse of rocky terrain and evergreen forest in Washingtons San Juan Islands, with sweeping ocean views perfect for whale watching, a private heliport for shopping trips to Seattle or Vancouver, an 8,000-square-foot home and an $8.75 million price tag.

--Cerboli Island, a 10-acre, $4 million chunk of limestone in Italys Tuscan Archipelago that comes equipped with a 1,000-year-old lookout tower built of hand-cut stone blocks overlooking Elba, its nearest neighboring island and, 200 years ago, the site of Napoleon Bonapartes exile.

--Johnson Island, a 36-acre, $1.4 million West Virginia getaway shaded by its own mature deciduous forest, surrounded by the rippling waters of the longest free-flowing river in the East, yet less than a half-mile from Aldersons Wagon Wheel cafe, should the yen for one of its signature barbecue sandwiches strike after a day of kayaking or fishing from a private island beach. The Greenbrier River island is one of 22 islands included in the spring-summer edition of Private Islands, which retails for $14.95 an issue and caters to the independent, adventurous personality, according to its cover. Johnson Island is the only river property featured in the issue.

Johnson Island is owned by Kelly Sparks, who grew up in Dille near the Clay-Nicholas border, and his wife, Kay, a Wisconsin native and a political campaign aide. They met and married while he was working as a regional legislative director for the United Auto Workers before returning to West Virginia 17 years ago.

I love it here, said Sparks, as he stood in the shade of the couples self-designed, pier-elevated island home, which escaped last summers epic flooding with several feet to spare. You can sit down and relax and listen to the river passing through the shoals and the worries of the world just melt away. The island is covered in bluebells in April, and geese build nests and lay eggs all over the island in spring.

Sparks left West Virginia at age 15, using doctored documents to accommodate a premature enlistment in the Navy.

By the time I was 17, I was sailing through the Straits of Gibralter, he said.

Later, he absorbed all the knowledge and skills he could learn from various Navy schools and training programs. After his military career ended, he found work in the Louisiana oil fields and later moved to the upper Midwest, where he worked in tractor plants in Wisconsin and became active in UAW affairs at the local and regional levels before becoming the unions top legislative liaison for a six-state area.

The couples unique boathouse style home is the islands sole dwelling and was designed to feel roomier than its relatively small size through the use of wraparound decks and the installation of 25 windows and five skylights. A walkway from the home leads to a small private dock at the head of a two-mile-long Greenbrier River pool, while a crushed rock vehicle lane leads to a deliberately overbuilt bridge crossing a Greenbrier River back channel atop four 36-inch steel I-beams and a huge quantity of concrete to connect the island roadway with W.Va. 20 near the mouth of Muddy Creek and the Alderson city limits.

Most of the island is covered by a mature hardwood forest with an abundance of huge, sentinel-straight specimens of oak, hickory and poplar and numerous groves of pawpaws already bearing fruit.

The couple first visited the island several years after moving to Greenbrier County, where they built their primary residence, a concrete home built on a cliff-top rock formation near Ronceverte with an aerial view of a miles-long stretch of the Greenbrier.

Back then, we liked to walk it, said Kay Sparks, since the islands owner at that time kept a pathway around the property mowed and cleared of debris.

After lengthy research to locate the title to the property, the Sparkses and another couple bought the island. Later, the former Wisconsinites bought their friends share of the island and built their home.

Johnson Island apparently gets its name from a brief period during the Civil War when it served as a temporary stockade for prisoners of war, Sparks said. Its namesake was Johnsons Island, a 300-acre island in Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio, that housed nearly 15,000 Confederate troops during its three years of operation.

During the Civil War, both Confederate and Union troops crossed the Greenbrier on several occasions at Aldersons Ferry, a short distance upstream from the island. On July 12, 1862, two companies of Union cavalry skirmished with a like-sized Confederate force at the ferry, killing, wounding or capturing seven of them.

Although the Sparkses were nominally retired when they moved to Greenbrier County, they have bought, revamped and sold more than 30 homes in the area since then, charging buyers 80 percent of the homes appraised value to make them more affordable, and in many cases, eliminating the need for buyers to come up with down payments.

Kay and I used to fix up and sell three of these houses a year, he said. Right now, were finishing up one, and it may be our last.

At age 71, Sparks said the time has also come to divest himself of the maintenance chores that need to be done to keep Johnson Island in tip-top shape.

I love it here, but it will be nice to have someone else taking care of it, he said. Weve had a $1 million offer on the island, but I turned it down. I want to sell it to someone who values seclusion, appreciates all these trees and wants to preserve all the other plants and animals that live here.

I want the next owner to be someone who has a vision for this place and the ability to make it happen.

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.

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Quest to buy one's own island need not extend beyond WV's border - Charleston Gazette-Mail (subscription)