Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!

Looking up the Potomac River to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia

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This is personal! 

I was born and raised in West Virginia.  Growing up and later as an adult, I heard all the “hillbilly” jokes about my state. I was laughed at when I attended Public School Number 92 in Baltimore, Maryland in the Fourth Grade, when my father was forced to work there after being laid off with the railroad in Huntington. I was gently ridiculed while serving in the United States Army about being from West Virginia.  I heard all the bad things that Northern Ohioans said about us when we invaded Columbus, Cleveland and  Dayton to find work in the 50′s and 60′s.  I heard it all. 

I live in Montana now!  Like most people who grew up in the 50′s and 60′s, I got educated, and went to work for a large corporation in search of the American Dream.  When you search for that dream you have to move, and move, and move; go where they want you to go.  Most of my life was lived in Florida but I found Montana and I fell in love with Montana because it is, well, great, and in every direction a picture postcard.

Shenandoah River in Northeastern West Virginia

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But I have never forgotten West Virginia.  I have never forgotten Huntington High School, Marshall University, the Ohio River, the Guyandotte River, the Mud River and many other places of my childhood.  Growing up on a farm for the first 14 years of my life, plowing the ground, planting crops, harvesting crops, milking cows, riding horses and selling our crops on the city market, were all part of it.  It is a measure of what we are, that is the way we are brought up, to work hard, and to actually enjoy it.  I had fun. 

Though people of other states might make fun of us West Virginians, we had nothing to be ashamed of, and we were special in many ways.  To begin with, the West Virginia of my early childhood was the Chemical Capital of the World, it was the Glass Capital of the World, we had steel mills, we made most of the bumpers on General Motors’ cars, we were a “White Water” and Trout fishing paradise, and we had very nice state parks.  We had the best Coal in the world.  It is the cleanest burning, high quality mineral of its kind anywhere. 

Hawk’s Nest, West Virginia near the town of Ansted

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Fact is, Pittsburgh would have been nothing without West Virginia and it’s natural resources, during the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s.  Pittsburgh Plate Glass didn’t come from Pittsburgh!  In fact, West Virginia sold out cheap to carpetbaggers from northern cities, who came down and raped us of our natural resources, and took the money back north with them. 

But West Virginians aren’t bitter.  Yes, chemicals, though not completely gone, mostly moved to Houston, Glass is gone, automobile bumper production is gone, and steel is gone. And Barack Hussein Obama is sworn to end the production of coal in America, no matter the economic impact on jobs, and on the cost of energy for Americans.  But the strength of West Virginia remains; that is its people who love the state, and never say die.

There is historic Marshall University, founded in 1837, and named after John Marshall of early Supreme Court fame.  It sprawls along a seven city block landscape in Huntington, West Virginia with beautifully designed buildings and greenery.  There is West Virginia University in there northern extremity near Pittsburgh, and many small colleges located in serene small towns in most every region of the state.  There is an education for every West Virginian if they want it. 

Kanawha Falls on the Kanawha River East of Charleston, West Virginia

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So………

Don’t come to West Virginia for “Six Flags over West Virginia”, we don’t have one.  Don’t come for Major League sports, we don’t have any.  Don’t come for 400 year old structures of Greek and Roman architecture, we don’t have any of those either.  And don’t come for a sprawling landscape of sky scrapers as far as the eyes can see;  we don’t have those either. 

Do come to see some of the oldest mountains in the world.  Do come for scenic views that take the breath away.  Do come to see mountain streams and rivers of gorgeous proportions.  Come for the quite serenity and gentle summer winds, whistling through two hundred year old trees, that have been saved just for you.  From the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers near the suburbs of Washington, DC, to the Ohio River traversing the entire western border of the state, to near the suburbs of Pittsburgh, to the gateways to the Midwest, and to the southern Coal Fields……. West Virginia has it all. 

John Denver was not kidding, when in a song, he called West Virginia “Almost Heaven!” 

Bridge over the New River Gorge in South Central West Virginia near Fayetteville 

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