My friend Ben and I were excited to explore West Virginia, aiming to visit locations featured in the Fallout 76 video game. Despite Ben’s tight schedule, we hoped to see key sites like the New River Gorge, Seneca Rocks, Mollohan Mill, and Dolly Sods. However, the extensive driving distances and winding mountain roads required us to condense our plans.
Tag: Business
Located in rural Monroe County, West Virginia is Sinks Grove, named for the many sinkholes throughout the area. It could be mistaken for just another rural community that is slowly disappearing into the landscape, but I found it fascinating for the variety of abandoned and historic buildings that still existed. The most visually interesting out of all of them is the shuttered Bob & Bob Speleo General Store with its handpainted sign that is adorned with the faded motto “Cavers Serving Cavers.” Constructed circa 1910, it was operated as a general store and gasoline station by numerous proprietors including Roy…
Nestled in the heart of Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the Blue Sulphur Springs Resort whispers tales of its grandeur and subsequent oblivion from a past era.
Work is progressing on the stabilization of the shuttered Sweet Springs Resort in eastern West Virginia.
often passed by an abandoned roadside curiosity in southern West Virginia for years. During a Sunday drive through the countryside with my girlfriend, I decided to pull off the road and check out a rambling collection of five buildings.
Imagine standing in the heart of the Pocahontas Coalfield region of southwest West Virginia, surrounded by the rugged topography of the mountains. Amidst this landscape lies the abandoned Algoma Company Store and Offices.
With the inauguration of United States President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. today, I wanted to share a history and gallery of 43 crumbling effigies of the presidents of the United States that stand in a field near Williamsburg, Virginia.
On a misty, storm-wrapped late autumn day, a drive along the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway, skirting the edge of New York’s Catskill Mountains, can steal your breath quicker than a cold snap in November.
The Millard F. Field Building, located at Winchester Avenue and 16th Street in downtown Ashland, Kentucky, was home to the Field Department Store and Sears.
While living in the now-demolished Friar’s Club in Cincinnati, Ohio between 1941 and 1944, Lumen Martin Winter painted murals on the walls of the residents’ lounge. The 1,600 square-foot scenes, painted in tempera emulsion on a casein ground, depicted regional highlights of industry, music, religion, and literature.
Amazon has been called the killer of the American indoor shopping mall in countless articles. But it’s been no secret that traditional shopping centers have been struggling long before the advent of online shopping, with the United States boasting more square feet of retail than any other developed nation by far. It is with some irony that Amazon is building new fulfillment centers on the grounds of two dead malls.
Stumbling upon an untouched apartment above a long-abandoned pharmacy in New York made me reflect on my own mortality and the finite nature of life.
Once considered outdated and redneck, dirt oval racetracks have made a resurgence across the rural swaths of America as unending regulations and expensive fares make it hard to justify trips to a NASCAR race track. Local dirt track racing has come back full throttle, although that resurgence has not spread to the abandoned West Virginia Motor Speedway near Parkersburg, West Virginia.
East Liverpool, Ohio, once lovingly referred to as the “Crockery City” and the “Pottery Capital of the World,” is the classic definition of the Rust Belt. Much like Pittsburgh’s reliance on steel mills and Cleveland’s manufacturing plants, East Liverpool depended on the pottery industry because of ample natural resources, access to newly laid railroads, the Ohio River, and an untapped market.
When the Dennison Hotel on Main Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio closed in 2011, it marked the end of a hoteling era. The single room occupancy extended stay facility once competed with the Browne Hotel, Fort Washington Hotel, Fountain Square Hotel, and others — all of which are long closed and demolished.
America is not unique in having desolate shopping malls, but the sheer number of underperforming, closed, and abandoned malls—including the mammoth Century III Mall near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—should give cause for alarm.
The series of buildings at the corner of East 9th and Monmouth streets in Newport, Kentucky, is fascinating, and after years of neglect, is being renovated.
Yogi Berra once said to trust your instincts, keep trying, and, most importantly, act. For years, I have been traveling to the southeast corner of West Virginia, exploring its many one-lane roads and scenic byways and taking in all the Mountain State had to offer. The desire for wanderlust was just too great.