Lewisburg to Rich Creek

Feverish red and orange bags of Bloody Butcher corn are stoneground at a historic mill. The Greenbrier Valley hills are full of blazing beauties among the trees as autumn sweeps across the highway.

For the People: New Deal Art Along Highway 219

For the People: New Deal Art Along Highway 219

July 12, 2016 |

“For the People: New Deal Art Along Highway 219” highlights works of art created under New Deal era programs and agencies, particularly the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, that are housed in federal buildings in towns situated on U.S. Highway 219. The online exhibit examines murals housed in U.S. post offices. Dozens of small towns […]

Read More

Hot Blackberry Picking Days, and Rocks, and Snakes

Hot Blackberry Picking Days, and Rocks, and Snakes

January 12, 2015 |

By Sheila Bowyer Kline. It was a hot, humid, lazy kind of summer day….you know the kind when it is so dang hot you can fry an egg on a concrete sidewalk? Yeah, that hot. “Hot as blazes!” the old timers would say. But I reckon since we were living on our farm in the hills of Southern West […]

Read More

Greenville

Greenville

December 9, 2014 |

This article is by guest contributor Jeffrey Kanode The land is gentle and the road is narrow which leads up to the little town of Greenville, on state road 122, off of US 219. In the center of town, beside the Greenville Post Office and across from a redbrick building which used to house the […]

Read More

Turkey Drives Down 219

Turkey Drives Down 219

November 26, 2014 |

“You don’t see people raising turkeys now. When I grew up, everyone had turkeys,” recalls Layuna Rapp, who grew up on a family Dairy Farm outside of Frankford, W.Va. This photo is dated 1900 in Lewisburg. The turkeys were probably being driven down the road from a farm in Greenbrier or Monroe County to be […]

Read More

Country Music Dance Hall Takes Honky-Tonk Fans Back in Time

Country Music Dance Hall Takes Honky-Tonk Fans Back in Time

August 15, 2014 |

Down in Greenbrier County, West Virginia the American Heritage Music Hall in Ronceverte has a devoted following. The venue started as a small informal living room jam among friends and soon grew into a non-profit organization with its own venue. Now the Music Hall hosts weekly jams and monthly concerts. Dan Schultz of Traveling 219 […]

Read More

The Blue Bubbling Water: Sweet Springs

The Blue Bubbling Water: Sweet Springs

July 18, 2014 |

“In its day a fashionable spa, one of the oldest in the South, now drowses by the roadside, lost in dreams of a glamorous past. Renowned as Old Sweet, it opened as a watering place in 1792.”- West Virginia Writers’ Project, 1941.

Listen to a 102 year old resident of Sweet Springs, Pauline Baker, who learned to swim in the pure, blue water at the once famous resort.

Read More

Civil War Sites Along (and near) U.S. Rt. 219

Civil War Sites Along (and near) U.S. Rt. 219

June 10, 2014 |

You can zoom in and out of this map and click & drag it to move around and explore it. Click on the different colored markers for more information on that particular civil war site.   Timeline of Events in West Virginia during the Civil War along or near U.S. Route 219. 1861: June 3, […]

Read More

Farming, Love, and the Ellison Farm

Farming, Love, and the Ellison Farm

May 9, 2014 |

Judy and Warren Ellison celebrated their 70th anniversary last year. Click play to listen to the radio story, or download the story for later. 89-year-old Warren Ellison has been farming in Monroe County since he returned home from World War II. Over lunch at the Ellison farm, Traveling 219’s Roxy Todd recorded Warren talking about […]

Read More

John Wesley Methodist Church in Lewisburg

John Wesley Methodist Church in Lewisburg

April 24, 2014 |

The John Wesley Methodist Church in Lewisburg was built in 1820 and continues to hold services. It is located on E. Foster Street and is one of the oldest brick churches in West Virginia. As was common at the time, the John Wesley Methodist Church was built with a second story slave gallery, and today […]

Read More

Pulling at the Roots of the Wild Ramp Market

Pulling at the Roots of the Wild Ramp Market

April 17, 2014 |

photo by Mike Costello On Saturday, April 26th the town of Richwood, West Virginia will serve 2,000 pounds of wild ramps, along with bacon, potatoes, cornbread and sassafras tea. Richwood prides itself as being the “Ramp Capitol of the World”, and its Feast of the Ramson Festival is the oldest ongoing ramp celebration in the […]

Read More