West Virginia Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

Looking for West Virginia trivia? Try our list West Virginia little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

The state’s oldest wooden-frame structure is the Peter Burr house, built in 1751. The Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission is preserving the property, near Charles Town (pop. 2,907), as an example of an 18th-century family homestead.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

The state’s hottest recorded temperature, 112 degrees, was reached twice: on Aug. 4, 1930, in Moorefield (pop. 2,375), and on July 10, 1936, in Martinsburg (pop. 14,972).

first appeared: 9/11/2005

The red-speckled brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) hooked the title of West Virginia’s state fish in 1973. The 6- to 8-inch fish thrives in cold, spring-fed streams.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

In 1903, Camden Park in Huntington (pop. 51,475) was built as a picnic spot along the Camden Interstate Railway line and is the state’s only amusement park, still whirling with 27 rides, including a carousel and two wooden roller coasters.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Sixty-five tons of coal mined from the Winifrede seam were cut into blocks and used for walls to build the Coal House in Williamson (pop. 3,414). The 1933 building, a tribute to the coal industry in Mingo County, is preserved by regular coats of varnish. The Tug Valley Chamber of Commerce is located in the building.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

The Wyoming County coal mining town of Itmann was named in 1916 for I(saac) T. Mann, president of the Pocahontas Fuel Company. The Itmann Company Store is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

In his 1901 autobiography titled Up From Slavery, the African-American educator Booker T. Washington wrote of his journey from working in the salt mines in Malden (pop. 850) to attending Virginia’s Hampton Institute to founding Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in 1881.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

Sylvia Bishop is thought to be the nation’s first licensed African-American female horse trainer. During much of her career, from 1938 to 2000, Bishop was the only female trainer at the Charles Town (pop. 3,132) Race Track. She died last December at age 84.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

Thousands of vintage toys and trains fill the former classrooms of a 1906 brick elementary schoolhouse, which opened in 1998 as the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling (pop. 31,419).

first appeared: 6/5/2005

The Pence Springs Resort, originally known as the Grand Hotel, was a premier resort from the 1890s until the Great Depression and a women’s prison from 1947 to 1985. The refurbished inn, east of Hinton (pop. 2,880), once again attracts willing guests.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

Sistersville (pop. 1,588) hosts an annual Oil and Gas Festival commemorating the discovering of oil in Tyler County in the early 1890s.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

Presbyterians established the state’s first church in 1719 at Potomoke, now called Shepherdstown (pop. 803).

first appeared: 4/24/2005

Ira Rodgers scored 19 touchdowns in the 1919 season for West Virginia University at Morgantown (pop. 26,809), a school record that still holds.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

The Mountain State has the highest mean elevation, 1,500 feet, of any state east of the Mississippi River. At 4,861 feet, the highest point is Spruce Knob, southeast of Elkins (pop. 7,032); the lowest is the Potomac River at 240 feet.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

Born in Bluefield (pop. 11,451), John Shively Knight founded Knight Newspapers. At his death in 1981, his company, renamed Knight Ridder after a merger, owned 32 newspapers in 17 states.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

The Organ Cave System in Greenbrier County boasts 45 miles of mapped passageways.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

Walter "Jack" Rollins (1906-1973) of Keyser (pop. 5,303) co-wrote the songs Peter Cottontail (1949), Frosty the Snowman (1950) and Smokey the Bear (1952).

first appeared: 2/13/2005

In 1988, the flood-control damming of the West Fork River near Weston (pop. 4,317) created the 2,650-acre Stonewall Jackson Lake, named for the Confederate general who spent his boyhood years at nearby Jackson’s Mill.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

Two families living on either side of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River—one in West Virginia and one in Kentucky—ignited the nation’s most famous family feud from 1878 to 1891. The story of the Hatfields and McCoys is retold each summer during outdoor performances at Theatre West Virginia in Beckley (pop. 17,254).

first appeared: 1/16/2005

Silver Lake, southeast of Kingwood (pop. 2,944), is blessed with Our Lady of the Pines, built in 1958 by immigrant Peter Milkint, who called it the "smallest church in 48 states." The 12-by-24-foot church seats 12.

first appeared: 1/2/2005

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