When Elizabeth Dye Walker lived in the Old Stone House of Mineral County in the beginning of the twentieth century, getting around employed a diversity of methods. It could mean a horseback ride, a horse-drawn buggy, or taking the Twin Mountain & Potomac Railroad, which rolled through her property blasting its whistle so she could run outside and wave. Where the railroad once ran, across the Northwestern Turnpike from the Stone House, now lies a trucking facility. Elizabeth Dye Walker’s childhood in the Stone House was colored by these various modes for motion, the resilient horse-drawn buggy and sled, a fruitless fruit-filled train, and a peculiar horseless carriage.
If you’re driving down Route 50 through Mineral County, blink and you might miss a curious stone structure on the side of the road. If you were a stagecoach passenger peering out from your horse-drawn carriage this L-shaped building would be a cause for celebration. In the age of horse-drawn wagons and carriages, travel was no small feat and the people who relied on Traveller’s Rest viewed the process of getting around fundamentally different from today. For them, the landscape of the Appalachian Forest could be wild and unpredictable and the journey itself was always far from mundane.
John Robert (J.R.) Clifford was a trailblazing African American lawyer, educator, and activist whose work continues to inspire the fight for justice. Clifford's landmark legal battles, including the landmark ruling on November 16, 1898 in Williams v. Board of Education of Fairfax District, highlight his profound impact on civil rights and democracy.
The history of bison in the AFNHA unfolds like a windy trail that aligns with a stream of human change. Their presence and proliferation in the region was first blazed by indigenous tribes who brought a fire regime to the Appalachian forest, creating and maintaining the savannah and meadows that invited, hosted, and fed migrating buffalo. When European colonists came to West Virginia, they found much needed salt by way of the bison. Yet the settlers' domineering conception of the New World broke the balance between humanity and bison leading to their abrupt extermination in West Virginia. The cars and locomotives that now traverse these paths of least resistance owe a great debt to the herd-minded engineers they now succeed.
West Virginia’s famed old-time folk family, the Hammons, live in both the mythologies and histories of Appalachia. Through the Hammons and their music, we gain a peek into the history of Appalachian old-time music and its diverse sources. Burl and Currence learned many of their tunes from Black folk artists like Grafton Lacy from Braxton County. Lacy is no exception; Black artists have made founding contributions in the genre. Their role often remains untold, or in the case of Lacy, is sparsely mentioned in the stories of Appalachian folk music. The origins of old-time music, ranging from West Africa to the British Isles, come alive in between the lines of the music itself, where its hidden history becomes clear.
Let’s spend some time thinking about the organisms that have stood tall for well over 250 years. That’s right- we’re talking about trees. There are some trees in our region that have existed for over 250 years or are descendants of trees that play a role in history - from the Pringle Tree in Buckhannon to Cathedral State Park.
