“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 […]
by Matt Wilson Silver Lake is a small community located in the southeastern part of Preston County near the West Virginia-Maryland border. The community is named for a man-made lake of the same name, which is located within a private campground in the community. Built in 1928, the lake is retained by a small concrete […]
If you’ve already listened to the Traveling 219 Mill Point Prison story you’re familiar with Ed and Agnes Friel, who spent time around the prison camp as kids while their parents worked there. Ed recently sent us these photos from a visit Agnes’ parents took to the prison camp a few years after it had […]
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 […]
“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.
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 […]
For one week each June, Marlinton, West Virginia lights up with the sound of fiddles and banjos. The weeklong workshop, Allegheny Echoes, attracts nearly 150 students each year to the mountains of Pocahontas County to play and learn traditional West Virginia old-time music. The epicenter of Allegheny Echoes is the Marlinton Motor Inn, where classes […]
The 17th Annual Little Levels Heritage Fair was held this past weekend at the historic Pearl S. Buck Birthplace in Hillsboro in Pocahontas County. Events included music, an old fashioned barbecue pig roast, arts and crafts vendors, and parades through town. The fair also celebrated Pearl S. Buck’s birthday, as well as the 100th anniversary of […]
photo of the Alleycats outside the Delmonte in Elkins, by Bill King. The Tribble’s house stands out from the street because of the solar panels on the roof, and because even from outside you can hear the sound of 16-year-old Walter King warming up his fiddle. Beside him stands Nevada Tribble, with long, straight red […]
“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.
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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