WHEELING, W.Va. — There was a time when Wheeling was being proposed as the location for a new capital of the U.S., though the idea never attracted much interest. Situated at the junction of the Ohio River and the National Road, two of the expanding nation’s most influential travel routes, the burgeoning city was also nearer … Read more
PRUNTYTOWN, W.Va. — If you were an unruly boy growing up in West Virginia before the 1980s, there’s a chance your misbehaviors were met with the threat of banishment to “Pruntytown.” Pruntytown! Any infraction that could not otherwise be dealt with might lead to the mention of the word by adults. For many, the threat … Read more
HUNDRED, W.Va. — There was a time soon after the completion of the B&O Railroad when passengers would clamber to the car windows to catch a glimpse of “Old Hundred.” He was a marvel of a man who, even after his hundredth birthday, labored in his fields to the delight of passersby. The town of … Read more
RICHWOOD, W.Va. — The word “hillbilly” was a term of endearment in the southern Appalachian Mountains region in the early 1800s, though it later developed negative connotations. The former publisher of the West Virginia Hillbilly newspaper, the late Jim Comstock, believed that residents of the valleys in southern Appalachia first used the term to describe … Read more
BULLTOWN, W.Va. — During the first years of the U.S. Civil War, marauding bands of guerillas roamed the hills in what’s now central West Virginia. Most were loyal to the Confederacy, though they often acted in their own interests, raiding towns and farms at will. To counter their activities, the Union established a fort on … Read more
FRAZIER’S BOTTOM, W.Va. — How did a great-nephew of George Washington come to be buried in a virtually forgotten graveyard in the Kanawha Valley near Winfield, West Virginia—more than 400 miles from the family’s Potomac Valley plantations? Historian and environmental geographer Alex Cole says that the cemetery’s elusive past and why the landmark is not … Read more
QUIET DELL, W.Va. — On the morning of March 18, 1932, Harry Powers plummeted through the gallows at the West Virginia Penitentiary and dangled for 11 minutes before being pronounced dead. His body hung limp, his lips still, never revealing his thoughts about the violent murders with which he had been charged. Who was Harry … Read more
THOMAS, W.Va. — The Allegheny Mountains in eastern West Virginia grow treacherous in winter—and hardly more so than along the western front of that range, which bears the brunt of blizzards coming off the Monongahela Valley. In 1885, twenty-year-old James B. Helmick came face-to-face with the savagery of the Alleghenies while hunting on Backbone Mountain. … Read more
CAMP CREEK, W.Va. — Only a few local historians may remember the obscure and chilling tale of Charles Anderson Mills, more infamously known in the neighborhood of Nubbins Ridge in Mercer County as “Likker Charlie.” A ruthless moonshiner who, on his deathbed, confessed to the violent murders of dozens of victims, Mills and two of … Read more
COWEN, W.Va. — Cowen today is a sleepy town of 500, perhaps best known for its location near a quiet lake. It was hardly so in 1900 when railroads were first being extended into the dark interior of the Allegheny Mountains. One of the last ancient forests in the eastern U.S. was being timbered, and … Read more
