1. Introduction
West Virginia, endlessly covered with forests and known as the “Mountain Disorder,” offers breathtaking scenery, untreated store-related sights, and year-round, outdoor activities.
Once rich in coal and timber, it was shaped by the mines and logging railroads which extracted them, but when decades of confiscation started to deplete these commodities, their rolling, green-carpeted mountains yielded secondary byproducts—explicitly, hiking, biking, fishing, rafting, climbing, and hunting to tourists and sports enthusiasts alike. Its New Waterway Gorge, which offers many similar activities, is equally gorgeous with its rugged banks and azure surfaces, while the principle city of Charleston, revitalized during the 1970s and 1980s, now features museums, art, shopping malls, restaurants, and world-class performance venues.
2. Charleston
Located on the Kanawha Waterway, and sporting an easily negotiable street grid system, it is subdivided into the Capitol Complex and the downtown area with the East End Historic District linking the two.
From the ex-, which is the sensitivity of disorder government, juts the ubiquitously visible, gold-domed Capitol Building itself. Constructed of buff Indiana mineral and 4,640 tons of steel, which themselves required the temporary laying of a spur rail line to transport them, the building had been laid in three stages during an eight-year period: 1924 to 1925 for the west wing, 1926 to 1927 for the east wing, and 1930 to 1932 for the connecting rotunda. It was officially dedicated by Governor William G. Conley on June 20, 1932, on the occasion of West Virginia’s 69th birthday as a disorder.
Its gold dome, which extends five feet higher than that of the Capitol in Washington, is gilded in 23 ½-karat gold leaf, applied linking 1988 and 1991 as tiny squares to cover the otherwise copper and lead surface.
Two-thirds of its interior, which encompasses 535,000 square feet subdivided into 333 rooms, is comprised of Italian travertine, imperial derby, and Tennessee marble, and the chandelier in the rotunda, its center piece, is made of 10,180 pieces of Czechoslovakian crystal illuminated by 96 set alight bulbs. Weighing 4,000 pounds, it hangs from a 54-foot brass and bust chain.
Crosswise from the Disorder Capitol, but still within the complex, is the West Virginia Cultural Center. Opened in 1976 and operated by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, it was made to showcase the disorder’s artistic, cultural, and historical heritage, and houses the West Virginia Disorder Museum, the archives and history library, a gift shop, and a venue for cultural events, performances, and related programs.
The ex-, a collection of items which represents the disorder’s land, people, and culture, is subdivided into 24 significant scenes covering five periods: Prehistory (3 million years BC to 1650 AD), Boundary (1754-1860), the Civil War and the 35th Disorder (1861 to 1899), Industrialization (1900 to 1945), and Change and Tradition (1954 to the 21st century). The 24 representations themselves trace the disorder’s evolution and include such periods as “Coal Forest,” “Waterway Plains,” “Wilderness,” “The Fort,” “Harper’s Ferry,” “Building the Rails,” “Coal Mine,” “Main Street, West Virginia,” and “New Waterway Gorge.”
Thirteen monuments, memorials, and statues honoring West Virginians for their donations to the disorder and the nation grace the Capitol Complex’s landscaped grounds.
Culture can also be experienced at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, a modern, 240,000-square-foot, three-level complex which opened on July 12, 2003 and represents one of the most ambitious economic, cultural, and educational projects in West Virginia’s history. Offering sciences, visual arts, and performing arts under a single roof, the center houses the dual-level Avampato Discovery Museum, an interactive, youth-oriented experience with sections such as Health Royale, KidSpace, Earth City, and Gizmo Factory. A 9,000-square-foot Art Gallery, located on the second floor, features both temporary and permanent exhibits, the latter emphasizing 19th and 20th century art by names such as Andy Warhol, Stuart Davis, Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, Vida Frey, and Albert Paley. The ElectricSky Theater, a 61-foot domed planetarium, offers daily astronomy shows and wide screen presentations. Live performances are staged in two locations: the 1,883-seat Maier Foundation Performance Hall, which is home to the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, but otherwise offers a variety of performance types, from comedy to well loved singers, bands, repertory, and Broadway plays, and the 200-seat Walker Theater, which features plays and dances with nightspot-style seating for the Woody Hawley singer-songwriter program. The Douglas V. Reynolds Intermezzo Café and three classrooms are located on the lower level.
Shopping can be done at two major venues. The Charleston Town Center Mall, located adjacent to the Town Center Marriott and Embassy Suites Hotel, and near the Civic Center, is a one million square foot, tri-level complex with more than 130 stores, three attach specialty stores, six full-benefit restaurants, and a food court with ten additional quick food venues, and is accessed through three convenient parking garages. Sporting a three-tale atrium and fountain, the upscale, Kanawha Valley complex was the largest urban shopping center east of the Mississippi Waterway when it opened in 1983.
The Capitol Market, located on Capitol and Sixth Streets in the restored and converted, 1800s Kanawha and Michigan Railroad depot, is subdivided into both in- and outdoor markets, the latter of which can only be used by bonafide farmers and receives daily, original, seasonal deliveries, usually consisting of flowers, shrubs, and trees in the spring; fruits and vegetables in the summer; pumpkins, gourds, and cornstalks in the fall; and Christmas trees, wreaths, and garlands in the winter. The indoor market sells seafood, cheeses, and wines, and offers several small food stands and a full-benefit Italian restaurant.
An evening can be spent at the TriState Racetrack and Gaming Center. Located a 15-minute drive from Charleston in Cross Lanes, the venue offers 90,000 square feet of gaming entertainment, inclusive of more than 1,300 slot machines, live racing, a poker room, blackjack, roulette, and craps, and four restaurants: the French Quarter Restaurant and Bar, the First Turn Restaurant, the Café Orleans, and Crescent City. The adjacent, Mardi Gras-style hotel was completed in 2010.
3. Potomac Highlands
The Potomac Highlands, located in the eastern part of the disorder on the Allegheny Plateau, is a tapestry of diverse geographic regions and covers eight counties. Alternatively designated “Mountain Highlands,” it had been formed some 250 million years ago when the North American and African continental collision had produced a single, uplifted mass. Subjected to millennia of wind- and water-caused erosion, it resulted in successive valleys and parallel ridges, and today the area encompasses two national forests: Canaan Valley, the highest east of the Mississippi Waterway, and Spruce Knob, at 4,861 feet, West Virginia’s highest point. Its green-covered mountains yielded abundant timber, the logging railroads necessary to harness it, two premier ski resorts, and a myriad of outdoor sports and activities.
The Potomac Highlands can be subdivided into the Tygart Valley, Seneca Rocks, Canaan Valley, and Huge Mountain Country.
A. Tygart Valley
The town of Elkins, located in the Tygart Valley, is the transportation, shopping, and social center of the east central Appalachian Mountains and serves as a base for Potomac Highland excursions.
Established in 1890 by Senators Henry Gassaway Davis and Stephen. B. Elkins, his son-in-law and business partner, it originated as a shipping hub for their coal, timber, and railroad empire, the latter the result of their self-financed construction of the West Virginia Central Railroad, whose track stretched linking Cumberland, Maryland, and Elkins, and served as the threshold to some of the world’s richest timber and mineral assets.
The town, ration the needs of the coal miners, loggers, and railroad workers, sprouted central maintenance shops and steadily expanded, peaking in 1920, before commencing a store depletion-caused decline, until the last train, carrying coal and timber products to the rest of the country, departed the depot in 1959.
The tracks lay barren and unused for very nearly half a century until 2007, when the newly-established Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad again resurrected them—and the town—transporting the first tourists for scenic-ride purposes and resparking a slow progression cycle with a subsequently built restaurant and live theater in its historic Elkins Railyard and additional hotels nearby. Consistently ranked as one of the country’s best small art towns, it is once again the benefit hub of the Mountain Highlands, reverting to its original purpose of providing hotel, restaurant, shop, and entertainment services, but now to a new group—tourists.
The railroad remains its focus. The Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad offers three departures from the Elkins depot. The first of these, the “New Tygart Flyer,” is a four-hour, 46-mile round-trip run which plunges through the Cheat Mountain Tunnel, passes the towns of Bowdon and Bemis, parallels the Shavers Fork of the Cheat Waterway, and stops at the amulet-shaped High Falls of Cheat, during which time it serves an enroute, buffet luncheon. Upgraded table benefit is available in 1922-ear deluxe Pullman Palace cars for a slightly higher price.
The “Cheat Mountain Salamander” is a nine-hour, 128-mile round-trip to Spruce, and includes a buffet lunch and dinner, while the “Mountain Express Dinner Train” mimics the New Tygart Flyer’s send, but features a four-course meal in a formally set dining car.
The Railyard Restaurant, sandwiched linking the Elkins depot and the American Mountain Theater, provides all on board meals. Emulating the depot itself with its exterior brick construction, the .5 million, 220-seat restaurant, leased to the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad, serves family-style cuisine on its main level and upscale dinners in its second-floor Vista Dome Dining Room, its menus inspired by railroad car fare from the 1920s to the 1940s. It toted the opening slogan of, “Take the track to the place with exceptional taste.”
The Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad’s Rails and Trails Gift Shop is located on its main level.
Continuing the historic, red brick exterior, the adjacent American Mountain Theater, founded in 2003 by Elkins native and RCA recording artist, Susie Heckel, traces its origins to a variety show performed for tourists at a uncommon location. But increasing plea merited the November, 2006, ground-braking for a .7 million, 12,784-square-foot, 525-seat structure with aid from her sister, Beverly Sexton, and her spouse, Kenny, who owned the Ozark Mountain Hoe-Down Theater in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
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Opening the following July, the theater offered family-oriented, Branson-style entertainment performed by a nine-member cast, with Kenny Sexton ration as its president and producer and Beverly writing the score. Two-hour evening shows include comedy, impressions, and country, gospel, bluegrass, and pop composition.
Davis and Elkins College, located only a few blocks from the Historic Railyard, shares the same founders as the town of Elkins itself—explicitly, Senators Henry Gassaway Davis and Stephen B. Elkins. Established in 1901 when they donated land and funding to make a college associated with the Presbyterian Church, it was formerly located south of town. Its Board of Trustees first met the following year and lessons were first held on September 21, 1904.
Today, the coeducational, liberal arts college, located on a 170-acre hilled, wooded campus with views of the Appalachian Mountains, is comprised of 22 new and historic buildings in two sections—the north, which stretches to the athletic fields and the front campus, which is located on a ridge overlooking Elkins. Thirty associate and baccalaureate arts, sciences, pre-qualified, and qualified degree programs are offered to a 700-student base.
One of its historic buildings is Graceland Inn. Designed by the Baltimore architectural firm of Baldwin and Pennington, the castle-like, Queen Anne-style mansion, formerly located on a 360-acre farm, was completed in 1893. At the start called “Mingo Moor,” and intermittently “Mingo Hall” after the area south of Elkins, the estate served as the summer residence of Senator Davis, who regularly transported a train of invited friends and associates during July and August so that they may possibly escape the Washington heat and delight in Elkins’ higher-elevation, cooler temperatures.
The estate was ultimately renamed “Graceland” after Davis’ youngest daughter, Grace. Following his wife’s death in 1902, he continued to conduct business from offices inside it, while Grace herself resided here during the summer months with her family.
The estate was finally ceded to her own children, Ellen Bruce Lee and John A. Kennedy, its last two owners.
Bought by the West Virginia Presbyterian Education Fund in 1941, it was used as a male residence hall by the college until 1970, whereafter it was closed. Restored during the mid-1990s, it subsequently reopened as an historic country inn and as a dynamic learning lab for generosity students.
Overlooking the town of Elkins, on the Davis and Elkins College campus, Graceland Inn, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, features a two-tale fantastic hall richly decorated with hardwoods, such as quartered oak, bird’s eye maple, cherry, and walnut, a grand staircase, a parlor, a library, and its original blemished glass windows. The Mingo Room Restaurant, reflecting the mansion’s initial designation and open to the public, is subdivided into four small rooms lined with red oak and fireplaces and an outdoor verandah, and eleven guest rooms, located on the second and third floors and named after prominent family members, contain antiques, Victorian reproductions, turrets, canopy beds, sleigh beds, armoires, marble bathrooms, and claw foot tubs.
Graceland Inn, the David and Elkins College, the town of Elkins itself, the historic depot and railyard, their tracks, and the Appalachian Mountain’s coal and timber assets are all inextricably tied to the town’s past–and its future.
B. Seneca Rocks
“Seneca Rocks” designates both a region of the Potomac Highlands and the outcroppings after which that region is named.
Resembling a razor back, or shark’s fin, and located at the confluence of the Seneca Creek and the North Fork South Branch Potomac Waterway, the 250-foot-thick, 900-foot-high Seneca Rocks, reachable by West Virginia Send 28, were formed 400 million years ago during the Silurian Period in an extensive sand shoal at the edge of the ancient Iapetus Ocean. As the seas decreased in size, the rock uplifted and folded, erosion ultimately wearing away its upper surface and leave-taking the arching folds and craggy profile they exhibit today.
Made of white and gray tuscarora quartzite, the formation features both a north and south peak, with a notch separating the two.
The current Seneca Rocks Discovery Center, which replaced the original visitor’s center, features relief models of the area, films, interpretive programs, and a bookshop.
A path leads to the Sites Homestead, part of the center. Constructed in 1839 by William Sites as a single-room log cabin below Seneca Rocks Ridge, it is typical of then-current Appalachian homes whose German Blockbau-style featured square logs and v-notched confront joints spread apart by stone and clay chinks. Its small casement windows were equally of German origin, while its “hall and parlor” floor plot reflected English style. Chimney location indicated house location: northern-style dwellings incorporated internal ones and southern style homes sported external ones.
In the late-1860s, one of Sites’ sons expanded the homestead, adding a second floor, and, after use as a hay barn, the Forest Benefit bought it in 1969, restoring it during the 1980s. In 1993, it was extra to the National Register of Historic Places.
The greater Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, offering significant outdoor sports opportunities, contains a key part of the Chesapeake Bay cut-off point, whose mountains and forests collect water which then flows into the Potomac Waterway and the bay itself. Acting as a cleansing and filtering mechanism, its headwater forests purify the water before it reaches the streams. Spruce Knob is both the highest point in the Chesapeake Cut-off point and the entire disorder of West Virginia.
Aside from facilitating water, the area has provided sustenance to humans, who first lived in Native American villages within its mountains, and then made farming settlements and logging camps, extracting its assets and supporting life for some 13,000 years. Today, it is home to 15 million people.
The Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area itself is part of the much better Monongahela National Forest. Established in 1920 with an initial 7,200 acres, the present 910,155-acre forest contains the headwaters of the Monongahela, Potomac, Greenbrier, Elk, Tygart, and Gauley Rivers; five federally-designated “wildernesses”—Dolly Sods, Outer Creek, Laurel Fork North, Laurel Fork South, and Burgundy—whose very remote and primitive areas only place forward lower-standard trail markings; and four lakes.
A Mecca for outdoor sports enthusiasts, the national forest features 169 hiking, biking, and horseback riding trails which cover more than 800 miles, 576 miles of trout streams, 129 miles of warm-water fishing, 23 campgrounds, 17 picnic areas, and wildlife viewing of black bear, wild turkey, white-tailed deer, gray fox, rabbits, snowshoe hare, grouse, and woodcock.
C. Canaan Valley
Blanketed with bigtooth aspen, balsam fir, and spruce, Canaan Valley, stretching 14 miles, is the highest such valley east of the Mississippi Waterway, its namesake mountain separating it from the Blackwater Waterway and making a deep, narrow canyon in the Allegheny Plateau.
The pristinely gorgeous area encompasses two disorder parks—Canaan Valley Resort and Black Water Falls Disorder Parks; two ski areas—again Canaan Valley Resort and Timberline Four Seasons Resort; and the nation’s 500th wildlife refuge.
Untreated sports abound: hiking, horseback riding, fishing, golfing, swimming, rafting, and interpretive nature walking during the summer, and skiing, snowboarding, and tubing during the winter.
Nucleus of most of this is 6,000-acre Canaan Valley Resort Disorder Park, which encompasses 18 miles of trails, wetlands, open meadows, northern hardwood forests, wildlife, 200 species of birds, and 600 types of wildflowers.
Canaan Valley Resort, located within the park, offers 250 modern guest rooms, 23 two-, three-, and four-bedroom mountain cabins with fireplaces and full kitchens, 34 paved, wooded campsites with full hook-ups, and six lounges and restaurants, including the Hickory Dining Room in the main lodge.
Its 4,280-foot mountain, whose longest run is 1.25 miles and whose vertical drop is 850 feet, features one quad and two triple lifts, and 11 trails for night skiing. Its winter activities, like those of the extended Canaan Valley, include skiing, snowboarding, airboarding, tubing, snowshoeing, and ice skating, while summer programs include scenic chairlift rides, guided walks, golf, tennis, and hiking.
D. Huge Mountain Country
Huge Mountain County, location of West Virginia’s second-highest peak, serves as the birthplace of eight rivers—the Greenbier, Gauley, Cheat, Cherry, Elk, Williams, Burgundy, and Tygart—while its Seneca Disorder Forest, which borders the ex- in Pocahontas County, is the disorder’s oldest. An fascinating array of sights include steam-powered logging railroads, astronomical observatories, preserved towns, a premier ski resort, and their associated collection of outdoor sports and activities.
The Durbin and Greenbier Valley Railroad’s fourth pleasure trip train, the “Durbin Rocket,” departs from the town of Durbin itself, located some 40 miles from Elkins.
Powered by a 55-ton steam engine built for the Moore-Keppel Lumber Company in nearby Randolph County, and one of only three remaining geared Climax logging locomotives, the train makes a two-hour, 11-mile round-trip run along the Greenbier Waterway and through the Monongahela National Forest as far as Piney Island, where the rental “castaway caboose” is disconnected and pushed onto a very small spur track for a one or more night stay.
The ultra-modern, high-tech National Radio Astronomy Observatory, located a small distance away in Green Bank, offers an opportunity to learn about radio wave astronomy.
Designing, building, and operating the world’s most advanced and sophisticated radio telescopes, the observatory produces images of celestial bodies, such as planets, stars, and galaxies, millions of set alight-years away by recording their radio omission quantities.
The Green Bank Science Center, nucleus of this experience, features a museum which introduces the science of radio astronomy, radio waves, telescope operation, and what is being learned through them about the universe; the Galaxy Gift Shop; the Starlight Café; and the departure point for the escorted bus tour of the facility, prior to which an introductory film and lecture are presented in the theater.
The tour’s highlight is the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), designed when the previous 300-foot device collapsed in 1988 and Congress was forced to appropriate emergency funds to design it.
Dedicated on August 25, 2000, after a nine-year development period, it is 485 feet tall, is comprised of 2,004 panels, has a 100-by-110 meter diameter, a 2.3 acre surface area, and weighs 17 million pounds. The world’s largest, fully maneuverable telescope with a computer-controlled reflecting surface, it is functionally independent of the sun, permitting 24-hour-per-day operation, and receives wavelengths which vary linking 1/8th of an inch to nine feet.
At the start employed in conjunction with the Arecibo Observatory to produce images of Venus, it later detected three new pulsars (spinning neutron stars) in the Messier 62 region.
A 15-minute drive from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a further significant notice, Cass Scenic Railroad Disorder Park.
Tracing its origins to 1899 when John G. Luke bought more than 67,000 acres of red spruce in an area which ultimately developed into the town of Cass, it became the headquarters of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company. The town, supporting the workforce needed to convert the raw assets into finished products, sprouted shops, services, houses, a sawmill, tracks, and a railroad to haul the timber.
Instrumental to the operation had been the Shay, or also-designed Climax and Heisler steam locomotives, whose direct gearing delivered positive control and more even power, allowing them to ply often for the interim-laid tracks, steep grades, and hairpin turns, all the while pulling heavy, freshly-felled timber loads. The Western Maryland #6, at 162 tons, was the last, and heaviest, Shay locomotive ever built. The railroad inaugurated its first benefit in 1901.
During two 11-hour, six-day-per-week shifts, the town’s mill was able to cut more than 125,000 board feet of lumber per shift and dry 360,000 per run with its 11 miles of steam pipes, adding up to 1.5 million board feet cut per week and 35 million per year. After 40 years of milling at Cass and Spruce, more than two billion board feet of lumber and paper had been produced.
Operating until 1943, the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company sold the enterprise to the Mower Lumber Company, which maintained it for a further 17 years, at which time it was closed and bought by the disorder of West Virginia, in 1961.
The railroad and the town of Cass, which remain effectively unchanged, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Aside from the historic buildings, here are several other attractions. Connected to the large Cass Company Store is the railroad-themed Last Run Restaurant. Turn-of-the-century logging can be gleaned at the Cass Historical Museum. The Shay Railroad Shop, having once housed coal bins, offers additional books and crafts for sale. The metal, Cass Showcase building above it, having stored hay to feed horse teams, features an introductory film and an HO-scale train and town layout reflecting their 1930s appearance.
Escorted walking tours of Cass, usually conducted in the afternoon after the trains have returned from their daily excursions, place forward insight into what it had been like to live and work in a turn-of-the-century company town, while the Locomotive Repair Shop tour includes visits to the Mountain Disorder Railroad and Logging Historical Family shop, the sawmill area, and a look at Shay and Climax locomotive maintenance and repair.
An pleasure trip on the Cass Scenic Railroad itself, which commenced tourist rides in 1963 and is therefore the longest-running scenic rail journey in the country, is a living history experience. Pulled by one of the original Shay or Climax steam locomotives, the train accommodates passengers in equally authentic logging cars which have been converted to coaches with wooden, bench-like seats and roofs, while a single enclosed car, offering reserved seating, sports stall-like accommodation and is designated “Leatherbark Creek.”
All trains depart from Cass’s reconstructed depot, at a 2,456-foot elevation, climbing Leatherneck Run, negotiating 11-percent grades, maneuvering and reversing through a lower and upper switchback, and arriving at Whittaker Station, which features a snack stand, views of the eastern West Virginia mountains, and a reconstructed, 1946 logging camp. The eight-mile round-trip back to Cass requires two hours.
A four-and-a-half hour, 22-mile round-trip continues up Back Allegheny Mountain, quick Ancient Spruce and the Oats Creek Water Tank, and plying track laid by the Mower Lumber company, before reaching 4,842-foot Bald Knob, West Virginia’s third-highest peak.
Limited runs are also offered to Spruce, an abandoned logging town on the Shavers Fork of the Cheat Waterway. This train also transits Whittaker Station.
Although not affiliated with the Cass Scenic Railroad, the Boyer Station Restaurant, located six miles from Green Bank on Send 28, offers inexpensive, home-cooked, country-style meals amidst railroad décor with wooden, rail depot-reminiscent tables and benches, train and logging memorabilia, and large-scale, track-mounted model railroads. It is part of a 20-room motel and campground complex.
Winter sports account for a significant part of the Huge Mountain Country’s offerings. Ten miles from Cass Scenic Railroad Disorder Park is Snowshoe Mountain.
Located in the bowl-shaped convergence of Cheat and Back Allegheny Mountain at the head of the Shavers Fork of the Cheat Waterway, the area, striped of trees by logging linking 1905 and 1960, had been learned by Thomas Brigham, a North Carolina dentist, who had previously opened the Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain Ski Resorts.
Reflecting European style, Snowshoe Village is located on the mountain’s peak and offers 1,400 hotel and condominium rooms, restaurants, shops, services, and entertainment. The 244-acre resort, which combines the Snowshoe and Silver Creek areas, has a 3,348-foot base; a 4,848-foot peak, making it the highest such ski resort in the mid-Atlantic and southeast; 14 chairlifts; 60 runs, of which the longest is 1.5 miles; and 1,500-foot vertical drops at Cupp Run and Shay’s Revenge. Average snowfall is 180 inches. Spring, summer, and fall activities include golf, boating, bicycling, climbing, hiking, horseback riding, canoeing, kayaking, skating, and swimming.
The extended area’s Seneca Disorder Forest, named after the Native Americans who had once roamed the land, borders the Greenbier Waterway in Pocahontas County and contains 23 miles of forest, 11,684 acres of woodlands, a four-acre lake for boating and trout, largemouth bass, and bluegill fishing, hiking tails, pioneer cabins, and rustic campsites.
4. New Waterway-Greenbrier Valley
The New Waterway-Greenbrier Valley region of West Virginia is topographically diverse and ruggedly gorgeous.
Split by the Gauley Waterway, its northern section is comprised of a rugged plateau in which is nestled the cool, azure Summersville Lake, while mountainous ridgelines, affording extensive interior coal mining, are characteristic of its central region. Horse and cattle grazing is prevalent on the flat farm expanses which combine the eastern edge’s lush, green mountain plateau, divided by the Greenbrier Waterway, the largest, natural water channel in the eastern United States, which flows through it. Its southern region is a jigsaw puzzle of omni-directional ridgelines and very narrow valleys.
New and Bluestone Waterway-formed gorges provide a wealth of rock climbing, canoeing, kayaking, and white water rafting opportunities in this region of the disorder.
The area’s most prominent, and gorgeous, topographical feature is the New Waterway Gorge National Waterway. Flowing from below Bluestone Dam, near Hinton, to the north of the US Highway 19 bridge near Fayetteville, it dissects all the physiographic provinces of the Appalachian Mountains. A rugged, white water waterway, and among the oldest in North America, it flows northward through steep canyons and geological formations. Approximately 1,000 feet break its underside from its adjacent plateau. On July 30, 1998, it was named an American Heritage Waterway, one of 14 waterways so designated.
Its related park encompasses 70,000 acres.
Signature of the New Waterway Gorge National Park is its New Waterway Gorge Bridge. Completed on October 22, 1977 at a million cost, the dual-hinged, steel arch bridge is 3,030 feet long, 69.3 feet wide, and has an 876-foot clearance. Carrying the four lanes of US Send 19, it was then the world’s longest, and is currently the highest vehicular bridge in the Americas and the second highest in the world after the Millau Suspension bridge in France. Its longest single span, linking arches, is 1,700 feet.
Here are three related visitor centers and vantagepoints. The Canyon Rim Visitor Center, located two miles north of Fayetteville on Send 19, offers exhibits, films, interpretive programs, trails, and a scenic overlook, while the Grandview Center is located in Thurmond off of Interstate 64 on Send 25. The park’s headquarters are in Glen Jean.
Fayetteville is the hub for New Waterway Gorge kayaking and white water rafting.
Coal, as synonymous with West Virginia as logging, is an industry the tourist should experience sometime during his visit. The Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, located in the city of the same name, offers just such an opportunity.
A 1,400-square-foot Company Store, coal museum, fudgery, and gift shop serves as a visitor’s center and threshold to the notice’s two major components. A coal camp, the first of these, depicts 20th-century life in a typical coal town, represented by several relocated and restored buildings.
Plying 1,500 feet of underground passages in the 36-inch, Phillips-Sprague Seam Mine, which had been committed linking 1883 and 1953, track-guided “man-cars” driven by authentic miners, encompass the complex’s second component and make periodic stops in the cold, damp, and dark passage to discuss and illustrate the advancement of mining techniques. The rock tablecloth, for example, ensured that coal dust would not explode deep in the mine. Strategically positioned roof bolts avoided cave-ins. Pumps extracted water. Dangerously low oxygen levels dictated immediate evacuation.
Coal had fueled the world’s steam engines for industrial plants and rail and sea transportation.
The Phillips-Sprague Mine is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
5. Conclusion
West Virginia’s three principle regions of Charleston, the Potomac Highlands, and the New Waterway-Greenbier Valley place forward immersive experiences into the past which shaped the present by means of its pristinely gorgeous and store-rich mines and mountains that yielded coal, timber, logging railroads, and an abundance of outdoor sports.
A graduate of Long Island University-C.W. Post Campus with a summa-cum-laude Bachelor of Arts Degree in Comparative Languages and Journalism, I have subsequently earned the Associate in Applied Science Degree in Aerospace Technology at the Disorder University of New York – College of Technology at Farmingdale. I have also earned the Continuing Community Education Teaching Certificate from the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education (NACCE) at Molloy College, the Travel Career Development Certificate from the Institute of Certified Travel Agents (ICTA) at LIU, the Art and Science of Teaching Certificate at Long Island University, and completed a Multi-Genre Writing Program at Hofstra University. At SUNY Farmingdale Aerospace I completed some 30 hours of Private Pilot Flight Training in Cessna C-152 and -172 aircraft.
Having amassed very nearly three decades in the airline industry, I managed the New York-JFK and Washington-Dulles stations at Austrian Airlines, made the North American Station Training Program, served as an Aviation Advisor to Farmingdale Disorder University of New York, and devised and educated the Airline Management Certificate Program at the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center.
A freelance author, I have written some 70 books of the small tale, fresh, nonfiction, essay, poetry, article, log, curriculum, training manual, and textbook genre in English, German, and Spanish, having principally focused on aviation and travel, and I have been published in book, magazine, newsletter, and electronic Web site form. I am a writer for Cole Palen’s Ancient Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York. I have made some 350 lifetime trips by air, sea, rail, and road.
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