We recently came across mention of Francis McCoy–known as “the strongman of the mountains” in the 19th century–who supposedly killed the last panther in West Virginia is 1887. The story relates that McCoy and his friend Col. Cecil Clay of New York, who had lost one of his arms in the Civil War, treed and […]
“Nobody in Pocahontas County has the slightest doubt but what the name of Cal Price will live on forever after he dies, that is if you can find anybody who believes he will die,” fellow journalist Jim Comstock wrote in 1953. “Most Pocahontasites think of him just living on and on like the trees of the forest.” Price was the editor of the Pocahontas Times for over 50 years, and his name indeed lives on.
“I saw the panther. I whistled at him, and he growled at me,”- Calvin Price, 1956. Skip Johnson was a well followed outdoors writer for the Charleston Gazette. He passed away in 2010, but a book that he completed just before his death, called West Virginia Mountain Lions, the Past Present and Future of the […]
Here is another episode in our series about mountain lion and panther sightings in West Virginia. In the early 1900s in Monroe County, a mountain lion stole the straw hat right off the head of Clarence Mohler. His grandson, Craig Mohler, editor of The Monroe Watchman, told me this story last year when we were […]
by Roxy Todd and Dan Schultz, Traveling 219 In Christmas of 1955, at least six people reported seeing a beige mountain lion near Marlinton, West Virginia, according to an article by Calvin Price, who was then the editor for The Pocahontas Times. Browsing through the newspaper articles that Price wrote, Traveling 219 producers Roxy Todd and […]
A long black tail, yellow eyes, a scream in the woods at night…
There are more than 300,000 acres of National Forest in Pocahontas County, WV. Many people say that panthers still live in these woods, from the high peaks of the Allegheny ridgeline to the Cranberry Wilderness with miles and miles of unspoiled forests, there’s plenty of room to roam, that’s for sure.
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Click the map to download a high-resolution copy of the Traveling 219 map, or pick up a hard copy at one of many locations along U.S. Route 219. You may also view our interactive map of Traveling 219 stories [HERE].
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