The History Project WVgov

In 1974, the Kanawha County Board of Education introduced a new set of language arts textbooks, following state and federal guidelines to provide a more multicultural education. A newly elected board member, who ran against sex education, denounced the books and set in motion a culture war that resounded around the nation. 

The Mason-Dixon Line was created to officially decide the boundary between states, but as enslavement became entrenched in the South, it became the dividing line between slave states an free states, making Western Virginia’s proximity to Pennsylvania a locus of the Underground Railroad. 

With the Ohio River as its northwestern boundary, the Underground Railroad ran through Western Virginia before the Civil War, giving the body of water the nickname, “The River Jordan,” as it led to the “promised land” of freedom.  Abolitionists, the enslaved, and free Blacks conspired together to get escaped slaves across the river and to new lives. 

Amid West Virginia’s natural beauty are various Oriskany sandstone outcroppings that do more than decorate the landscape.  The stone breaks into sand perfect for making glass, and within it is the natural gas needed to melt it. No other industry found such a serendipitous location as glass found in the Mountain State.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, every region had its own discount department store chain and for West Virginia and its neighboring states, Charleston-based Heck’s reigned supreme, even outdistancing K-Mart and Wal Mart for a while. 

Throughout history, children have written letters to Santa with the list of toys they wanted, under the idea they were created in his workshop and they were…by extension of America’s Santa, Louis Marx, who built his busiest factory in Glen Dale, where the classics of 20th century toys were made.