David Sibray
The State of West Virginia has been named to the Forbes list of America’s Best Employers 2022, Gov. Jim Justice announced. The list includes businesses from all industries, not only governments, according to the governor, and West Virginia was one of only two states to crack the list’s top 250. Justice said the honor was … Read more
Bluefield State College announced today the founding of the Pete Sternloff Center for West Virginia Musicology, which will archive and promote the history of music created and performed in southern West Virginia. College President Robin Capehart says the center will fill a much-needed gap in the preservation of and education about the music that flourished … Read more
Thanks to the Internet, almanacs aren’t printed as they once were, but in West Virginia, where communications were hampered by the mountains, these useful guides were vital to farmers and all who depended on their brand of calendared information. Wheeling, in what’s now the northern panhandle of West Virginia, was a principal source of printed … Read more
Shepherd University, at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is hosting two talks by The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia that will focus on actions for climate resiliency and forest conservation in the state and the Appalachian Mountains on Monday, February 28, at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education auditorium. The presentations, which are … Read more
Older folks who live in the valley of Paint Creek may recall legends about how the stream was named: an ancient warpath followed it through the mountains, and warriors celebrated their battles by painting trees along the trail a bloody red. According to late archaeologist Sigfus Olafson, the stories were true. The route was actually … Read more
National Park Service officials say that after careful consideration they propose permanently closing parking areas at Maryland Heights at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The parking areas have been closed since March 2020, originally as a COVID-19 safety protocol, but park officials have maintained the closures because of parking safety-related incidents in the area. Such … Read more
BETHANY, W.Va. — A castle in West Virginia? You’ll find a few examples of castle-like structures scattered through its hills, but nothing compares to Old Main at Bethany College, one of the finest examples of “Collegiate Gothic” architecture in the U.S. A visitor’s first glimpse of the building is generally had from a distance: its … Read more
It might sound like a joke, but it’s true that a circus clown helped relocate the West Virginia capital from Wheeling to Charleston, its present location, in the late 1800s. They say that finding a location for the seat of government had been a bit of a circus anyway, and the capital city had shifted … Read more
Until just after the Civil War, large parts of the valley of the Ohio River in what’s now West Virginia were controlled by pirates. Sparsely settled, these marauders in watercraft hid easily in the river’s coves, sporadically raiding ships and riverside communities. The opportunity to plunder along the route, far from civil authority, was extremely … Read more
To see it now, a visitor might hardly guess the Ohio River at Parkersburg was a stretch of river that many boat captains feared. Long ago known as the “Graveyard of the Ohio,” it was considered one of the most dangerous sections on the 981-mile river. Now a popular destination for water recreation—fishing, kayaking, and water … Read more
