PICKLE STREET, W.Va. — Of all the odd community names in West Virginia, “Pickle Street” may rank among the oddest. Why this hamlet in Lewis County bears the name “pickle” is as much a mystery as why it is termed “street.” There is little street-like about rural US-119, which wanders the valley of Leading Creek between Glenville and Weston.
Several obscure theories about why the community is so-named have been put forth, though none may ring true, and the name’s origin may remain a mystery.
According to one source, the community may have been named for a muddy track on the old dirt road that ran through it. Wagons bearing supplies from Weston to Glenville would get mired in a particularly huge mud hole there in spring when the weather is typically wet.
Six-horse teams had to be used to pull supplies through, and on one occasion, a wagon full of—among which were pickle barrels—lost part of its load while attempting to negotiate the hole.
Another origin was once postulated by the late Maud Harris Eakle of Fairmont, West Virginia, who lived on Pickle Street as a child. Eakle claimed it was named after a jar of pickled beans that she broke over the head of a schoolmate who had “said things about my mother.”
However, the late Ella Bailey Warner, who also lived in Pickle Street at about the same time as Mrs. Eakle, said the place was named by her cousin, Lucinda, after her father, John Clemons, who said he was going to plant pickles in his garden patch and have a pickle factory. Warner noted that Clemons “did not plant pickles at all, but watermelons, which have been known, by the way, to make pretty good pickles.”
A fourth possibility is that “Pickle” was the surname of an early settler. Pickles Fork, nearby in Braxton County, is the name of a small right-hand tributary of Salt Lick Fork of the Little Kanawha River. Pickle Ridge, in Pendleton County, is a short ridge that rises to about 3,000 feet in elevation west of the South Branch of the Potomac.
It’s also been said that “pickles” was another term for “whiskey,” and that the community might have been known as a source for libations. Perhaps some intrepid genealogists can determine whether any Pickles ever lived in the little valley along Leading Creek.
Visiting Pickle Street
In Lewis County near the border of Gilmer County, Pickle Street is about 12 miles northeast of Glenville (an 18-minute drive) and 15 miles west of Weston (a 20-minute drive) along US-119. Decidedly rural, the area is known for its hilly woodlands and small cattle farms. Since the completion of Interstate 79 in 1973, traffic on the highway has decreased and is chiefly local, but it remains a popular rural alternative for travelers.
For more information on visiting the region, contact the Lewis County Convention & Visitors Bureau. The county may be best known as the home of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park.
Wolf Moon once shone on wolf-haunted West Virginia hills
January’s annual Wolf Moon recalls a time when wolves roamed the forests of West Virginia, including the wooded hills of Lewis and Gilmer counties. Though the idea may seem as remote as the dark Allegheny forests through which they stalked, West Virginia’s rugged interior was the final eastern stronghold of the Canis lupus. As far as is known, the last wolf that lived in West Virginia was shot and killed in remote Webster County in 1897 by 17-year-old Daniel Stoffer Hamrick. READ THE FULL STORY HERE.