After two years of forest restoration work on top of Cheat Mountain, a new tourist train is climbing the old logging tracks to the old ghost town of Spruce, which sits nearly 4,000 feet above sea level. The forests here are returning after decades of timber and coal extraction that nearly devastated the rare boreal […]
Ed and Agnes-Hannah Friel spent part of their childhoods around the Mill Point Federal Prison camp, where both had parents working as federal prison officers and they met as children. The Mill Point Federal Prison camp was opened in 1938 for low level federal prisoners and work was immediately begun on construction of the road […]
A hundred years ago this month, Confederate veterans, family of veterans, and locals from the surrounding region made the trek out to southern Randolph County to an unlikely mountain pasture that looks down into the Tygarts River Valley. In 1913, they held a ceremony to dedicate the Mingo Confederate Soldier monument to their fallen Confederate […]
Friendsville, Maryland is located about 7 miles west of route 219 in Garrett Co., off the scenic Bear Creek Rd., or 8 miles north of the route 219 intersection with Friendsville Rd, rt. 42. It is a picturesque mountain town in the river valley of the Youghiogheny River. Listen to our story “If these Trees […]
Today, driving along US Route 40 in Garrett County, Maryland, it’s hard to miss the multitude of historic structures: inns, taverns, and log cabins built in the 1700s and 1800s still proudly stand along the road, a testament to the rich history that has followed this route for centuries. It was once known as Nemacolin’s […]
The Traveling 219 Project continues its Maryland series, at a place where US route 219 becomes part of a major interstate i-68, in the northern part of Garrett County. This also happens to be where rt. 219 crosses rt. 40 the historic National Road, the first federally funded road in the country, built back in […]
The ballad of Omie Wise has been sung many times. It has been included in Jim Comstock’s West Virginia Songbag, sung by Maggie Hammons and other West Virginian ballad singers.3 Some say that Naomi Wise, or Omie Wise, of ballad fame is actually from Randolph County, WV: I’ll tell you the story about little Naomi […]
World War Two Veteran Sherman Beard remembers flying over Europe as a B-24 pilot in the last months of the war. Sherman was stationed in Foggia, Italy in 1945, where he flew 35 missions over Europe. Traveling 219 interviewed him recently about his experiences, and put this piece together in commemoration of Veterans Day. Sherman […]
“A magnificent vista of wooded mountaintops, green cultivated valleys and distant blue ranges.” – 1941, the West Virginia Writers’ Project guide. Hillsboro is the home of these popular historic destinations: -Pearl S. Buck Birthplace and Museum (in Hillsboro) http://www.pearlsbuckbirthplace.com/ -Pretty Penny Café (in Hillsboro, located in an old general store) http://www.wvyourway.com/west_virginia/AdView.aspx?sid=4431 -5.2 m. Watoga State […]
The town of Oakland, Maryland lies 11.5 miles north of the West Virginia-Maryland line on U.S. Route 219. The history of Oakland is linked to the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, which laid its tracks through the Allegheny Mountains of Western Maryland in the 1850s. When the original train station in Oakland burned down, the current […]
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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