There are plenty of reasons to look forward to spring in West Virginia: apple blossoms, waterfalls rich with snowmelt, baby lambs. If you pay close attention to the trees and bushes around you, you might find another reason to love spring hidden in plain sight. Bird nests! Many of West Virginia’s birds, both residents and migrants, choose their mates, build their nests, and raise their young during the spring. You can watch the whole drama unfold as the days warm up and the flowers open. You just have to know what to look for!

Arthurdale Heritage has a number of ongoing projects to accompany the traveling Smithsonian exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America. The exhibit examines our understanding of rural places and their history. Arthurdale and the other sites in the state hosting the exhibit will be thinking about topics like mental health, labor, and community memory. They will also be discussing the representations of their communities and West Virginia.

Officials from the Appalachian National Forest Heritage Area presented a Planning Exchange Camp Monday at 4H Camp Pioneer. Those who attended were able to give their input and help with planning of the future of the Appalachian National Forest Area. The AFNHA must submit its plans to the National Park Service in the spring of 2022.

The AFNHA Discovery Center is open for the 2021 Season! We are open May-October, Thursday-Sunday from 9:30AM-4:30PM every day. Come check out our two exhibits and visit the WV Railroad Museum upstairs! Admission is FREE!

heers could be heard throughout the Green Bank Observatory as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover successfully touched down on the red planet Thursday, February 18th, at 3:55 p.m. EDT. The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) helped relay communications from the rover to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) located in southern California.

We at AFNHA wanted to share with you some resources that speak more to the history of black Americans, not only in the AFNHA but in the Appalachian region as a whole. These resources in no way speak to any political leanings, and they do not advocate for any political organization. They are simply listed to promote learning and growth about our heritage, history, and culture in the Appalachian region, of which AFNHA is a part of.

What’s in a name? Join Abi Smith with the Greenbrier Historical Society as she explores the Shanghai Parade, a major event each year in Lewisburg, attracting thousands of people to gather and celebrate the start of a new year. But despite its popularity, this New Years event is shrouded in mystery. When did it begin? Who started it? and How did it get the name Shanghai? Get ready for the story!

The Forest Festival usually dominates Elkins conversations during the first weekend of October; however, everything is different in 2020. The Coronavirus forces us to avoid person-to-person chatting. If we want to talk, we need to go online, and that forces us to contemplate the reasons for things we are saying. This week I joined a zoom meeting to help develop a plan for the interpretation of visitor experiences in the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area [AFNHA].

In spring 2019, the Monongahela National Forest conducted a prescribed burn in the Big Mountain area in Pendleton County, West Virginia near the town of Cherry Grove. A prescribed burn is defined as fire applied at a set location, under specific weather conditions, to accomplish predetermined, well-defined objectives. Read more about this burn and why it is necessary in this post!

Sharps Knob is the former site of a surface mining project; now it is the site of a red spruce-northern hardwood ecosystem restoration project.