
Road Less Traveled: A Tour of North-Central West Virginia
On a brisk, gray day, I set out to traverse the less-traveled paths of north-central West Virginia, a journey through time and history.
On a brisk, gray day, I set out to traverse the less-traveled paths of north-central West Virginia, a journey through time and history.
West Virginia may be regarded as a state centered around the coal industry, but it was the oil and gas industry that provided the state’s first economic boom and drove the development of the north-central part of the state.
In the isolated hills of West Virginia stands the forgotten and dilapidated Dusk Camp Methodist Church.
The bleakness of the winter landscape in south-central West Virginia was a constant reminder of the season’s harshness. It was a perfect time to visit some abandoned bridges and churches.
A late autumn trip to West Virginia’s Greenbrier Valley isn’t complete without a visit to a few abandoned or forgotten…
Autumn arrived in a hurry along the South Fork South Branch Potomac River valley in the Potomac Highlands region of…
Sometimes I come across these roadside churches and wonder where people parked or if most of the congregation simply walked…
The Irish Corner district of Greenbrier County, West Virginia is dominated by large family farms, the remains of early mills…
Mining in the Winding Gulf coalfield of West Virginia began in the early 1900s, producing low-volatile smokeless coal, including metallurgical coal suitable for use in steel making. Mining was centered on the thick Beckley seam until it was economically exhausted by the 1950s, and the Pocahontas seam until the late 1980s.
But after the coal seams were exhausted, these coal camps were all but abandoned and today, only a few reminders of this booming era remain.
I was pretty excited to come across two notable churches in the Winding Gulf that are still extant.
Regretfully, the roof of the long-abandoned Church of the Transfiguration in Buffalo, New York collapsed during a storm yesterday.
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish contains an abandoned church, school, and parish house in the Newburgh neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.
The Rust Belt defines a vast declining industrial corridor of the United States roughly between Chicago and Albany, New York, and dominating many of those once-bustling communities are churches. Many were built as domestic steel mills were being constructed across the country in the early 20th century, and many were closed with the collapse of the steel industry.
Towering over the modest residences in its vicinity, the soaring blue limestone and Ohio sandstone faced Roman Catholic church is one of the most recognizable symbols of Albany, New York’s rich history. It’s also one of the most endangered.
St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church, located in the Union-Miles Park neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, was recently demolished.
The industrial heart of the Rust Belt is western Pennsylvania as once-mighty steel mills, coke plans, and machine shops, scattered alongside railroads, rivers, and highways, have downsized and closed. A globalized economy and increased automation led many jobs overseas; what remained was a shell, unable to be self-sustaining without government intervention.
From the window of my hotel room in Beckley, I could see the leaves billowing down the street among a fine rain punctuated by dark, gloomy skies. It was perfect road trip weather,
Olympia, a small wayside community of several dozen people in eastern Kentucky, has a fascinating history as over a span of ten minutes on March 3, 1876, red meat rained down.
It was announced that Foxy Shazam is disbanding. One of my favorite music videos of theirs was filmed in an abandoned church in Cincinnati.
While the demise of rural life in many areas is overstated, there are many areas that are in long-term decline, brought about by sustained job losses and single-focus economies. In Cannel City, Kentucky’s case, it was coal and timber.
The Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church is located near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was host to a Slovak Catholic congregation. Designed by…
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