West Virginia Trivia & Tidbits
Looking for West Virginia trivia? Try our list West Virginia little know facts, tidbits and trivia.
—The Monongah Heroine Statue, dedicated last year, honors the 250 widows left after an underground explosion in a Monongah (pop. 939) coal mine killed about 360 men and boys in 1907. Many of the coal miners were Italian immigrants.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
—The Monongahela National Forest, headquartered in Elkins (pop. 7,032), covers more than 919,000 acres in 10 counties in the state.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
—The state’s first female prison warden is Evelyn Seifert, appointed in 1998 as chief administrator of the Northern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility in Moundsville (pop. 9,998).
first appeared: 2/24/2008
—Mullens (pop. 1,769) is named after Andrew Jackson Mullins, who owned the land where the town was built. When incorporated in 1912, the i was accidentally changed to e, and townsfolk retained the misspelled name.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
—Track and field athlete John Ware Jr. of Martinsburg (pop. 14,972) won a gold medal in the long jump in the 2007 Special Olympics World Games in Shanghai, China.
first appeared: 1/27/2008
—The official state tree is the sugar maple, designated in 1949. The tree produces maple syrup and its wood is excellent for furniture.
first appeared: 1/13/2008
—Built in 1889, Dents Run is the last covered bridge in Monongalia County. The bridge is 12 feet 10 inches wide and 40 feet long.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
—Seneca State Forest, near the Greenbrier River in Pocahontas County (pop. 9,131,) is West Virginia’s oldest state forest. Named for the Seneca Indians, who once lived in the region, the forest offers camping, swimming, fishing and more than 11,000 acres of lush woodlands for hiking, hunting or communing with nature.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—Austin Hendrickson of Huntington (pop. 51,475) rolled to a first-place finish in the National Super Kids Classic race during the 70th All-American Soap Box Derby in July in Akron, Ohio. Sixty-one youngsters, ages 8 to 18, participated in the race for children with disabilities.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
—The state’s official animal is the black bear, designated in 1973, and once in decline. Today, the black bear population totals about 12,000, with sightings in all 55 counties.
first appeared: 10/21/2007
—Beartown State Park near Hillsboro (pop. 243) earned its name because residents claimed that the many cave-like openings in the rocks made ideal bear dens and the deep narrow crevices between the large boulders formed a crisscross pattern resembling the streets of a town.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
—During 5 p.m. rush-hour traffic on Dec. 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River collapsed, killing 46 people. Built in 1928, the bridge linked Point Pleasant (pop. 4,637) and Kanauga, Ohio.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
—The first memorial built to honor the 400,000 blacks who fought in World War I was the Kimball World War Memorial, dedicated in 1928 in Kimball (pop. 411). About 1,500 of those veterans were from McDowell County (pop. 27,329).
first appeared: 9/9/2007
—The Hatfield-McCoy Trails near Gilbert (pop. 417) include a network of more than 500 miles of mountainous trails for all-terrain vehicle riders. The trails are on private land, which is unusual.
first appeared: 8/26/2007
—Called “Jefferson Rock,” a pile of shale boulders near Harpers Ferry (pop. 307) offers a sweeping view of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. When Thomas Jefferson stood at the spot in 1783, he described the view as one of nature’s “most stupendous scenes.”
first appeared: 8/12/2007
—The first county 4-H camp in the nation was held at Camp Good Luck in Randolph County (pop. 28,262) in 1915.
first appeared: 7/29/2007
—Students learn the history and how-to of falconry—hunting with a trained bird of prey—at the Falconry Academy at The Greenbrier, a resort in White Sulphur Springs (pop. 2,315).
first appeared: 7/15/2007
—Since 1791, Reed’s Mill in Monroe County (pop. 14,583) has been in continuous operation grinding corn, buckwheat and wheat into meal and flour.
first appeared: 7/1/2007
—Born in 1926 in Nitro (pop. 6,824), Lew Burdette was named Most Valuable Player of the 1957 World Series when he pitched the Milwaukee Braves to victory over the New York Yankees in their only series championship. Burdette died in February at age 80.
first appeared: 6/17/2007
—In 1966, men working in a cemetery in Clendenin (pop. 1,116) reported seeing a brown manlike creature fly from the trees. Multiple sightings of Mothman, as he became known, also were reported in Point Pleasant (pop. 4,637), where a statue of Mothman adorns Gunn Park.
first appeared: 6/3/2007
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