WV FUN Facts

• Joanie F. Strode of Mason WV was the first woman mayor in the stateof WV.
• West Virginia’s Memorial Tunnel was the first in the nation to bemonitored by television. It opened November 8, 1954.
• The first rural free mail delivery was started in Charles Town onOctober 6, 1896, and then spread throughout the United States.
• West Virginia was the first state to have a sales tax. It becameeffective July 1, 1921.
• The first steamboat was launched by James Rumsey in the Potomac Riverat New Mecklensburg (Shepherdstown) on December 3, 1787.
• Bailey Brown, the first Union solider killed in the Civil War, diedon May 22, 1861, at Fetterman, Taylor County.
• A naval battle was fought in West Virginia waters during the CivilWar. United States Navy armored steamers were actively engaged in the Battleof Buffington Island near Ravenswood on July 19, 1863.
• On February 14, 1824, at Harpers Ferry, John S. Gallaher publishedthe “Ladies Garland,” one of the first papers in the nation devoted mainlyto the interests of women.
• Organ Cave, near Ronceverte, is the third largest cave in the UnitedStates and the largest in the state.
• A variety of the yellow apple, the Golden Delicious, originated inClay County. The original Grimes Golden Apple Tree was discovered in 1775near Wellsburg.
• West Virginia has an mean altitude of 1,500 feet, giving it the highestaverage altitude east of the Mississippi.
• The first iron furnace west of the Alleghenies was built by PeterTarr on Kings Creek in 1794.
• One of the first suspension bridges in the world was completed inWheeling in November 1849.
• Outdoor advertising had its origin in Wheeling about 1908 when theBlock Brothers Tobacco Company painted bridges and barns with the wording:“Treat Yourself to the Best, Chew Mail Pouch.”
• Moundsville is the site of the continent’s largest cone-shaped prehistoric burial mound. It is 69 feet high and 900 feet in circumference at the base and was opened on March 19, 1838.
• The first electric railroad in the world, built as a commercial enterprise,was constructed between Huntington and Guyandotte.
• The first memorial building to honor World War I veterans was dedicatedon May 30, 1923, in Welch.
• On September 10, 1938, the Mingo Oak, largest and oldest white oaktree in the United States, was declared dead and felled with ceremony.
• Coal House, the only residence in the world built entirely of coal,is located in White Sulphur Springs. The house was occupied on June 1, 1961.
• “Paws-Paws,” nicknamed the “West Virginia banana,” originated in thestate and took their name from Paw Paw, Morgan County.
• The 1500 block of Virginia Street in Charleston is considered thelongest city block in the world.
• Declared a state by President Abraham Lincoln, West Virginia is theonly state to be designated by Presidential Proclamation.
• The world’s largest shipment of matches (20 carloads or 210,000,000matches) was shipped from Wheeling to Memphis, Tennessee, on August 26, 1933.
• Daniel Boone made his last survey of Charleston on September 8, 1798.He left the state in 1799.
• The first white people to go through the New River Gorge and reachthe head of Kanawha Falls were Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam on September17, 1671.
• William Tompkins used natural gas to evaporate salt brine in 1841,thus becoming the first person in the United States to use natural gas forindustrial purposes.
• The last public hanging in West Virginia was held in Jackson Countyin December 1897.
• The first glass plant in West Virginia was at Wellsburg in 1815.The first pottery plant was in Morgantown in 1785.
• In May 1860, the first well in the state for producing crude oilwas drilled at Burning Springs.
• Stone that was quarried near Hinton was contributed by West Virginiafor the Washington Monument and arrived in Washington in February 1885.
• West Virginia University was established on February 7, 1867 underthe name of “Agricultural College of West Virginia.”
• On May 31, 1910, the Supreme Court held that the Maryland-West Virginiaboundary was the low-water mark of the south bank of the Potomac River.
• The first post office in West Virginia was established on June 30,1792, at Martinsburg.
• Mother’s Day was first observed at Andrews Church in Grafton on May10, 1908.
• The longest steel arch bridge (1,700 feet) in the world is the NewRiver Gorge Bridge.
• The first spa open to the public was at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia,in 1756 (then, Bath, Virginia).
• The Christian Church was begun in West Virginia by Alexander Campbellin Bethany.
• The first free school for African Americans in the entire south openedin Parkersburg in 1862.
• Mrs. Minnie Buckingham Harper, a member of the House of Delegatesby appointment in 1928, was the first African American woman to become amember of a legislative body in the United States.
• Chester Merriman of Romney was the youngest soldier of World WarI, having enlisted at the age of 14.
• White Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, was the first “summer WhiteHouse.”
• The first brick street in the world was laid in Charleston, WestVirginia, on October 23, 1870, on Summers Street, between Kanawha and VirginiaStreets.
• West Virginia is the only state created by carving out territoryfrom another state, without that state’s permission.
• On October 24, 1861, in a public referendum, voters overwhelminglysupported the creation of the new state, to be called Kanawha. The followingmonth, a convention at Wheeling changed the name to West Virginia. A hundredyears later, a Beckley newspaper suggested the name of the state be changedto either Kanawha or Lincoln because so many people believed West Virginiawas the western part of Virginia, and not a separate state.
• West Virginia’s capital was originally Wheeling. It was changed toCharleston in 1870, back to Wheeling in 1875, and back to Charleston in 1885.
• West Virginia has the highest average elevation of any state eastof the Mississippi River, and the most irregular boundary of any state.
• Weirton is the only city in the U. S. that extends from one stateborder to another.
• Both candidates for Governor in the 1888 election -- Nathan GoffJr. and Aretas Fleming -- claimed to have won, and both were sworn in asGovernor on March 4, 1889. Goff appeared to have won the election by 130votes, but Fleming disputed the vote count and asked the Legislature to declarehim the winner. The President of the Senate, Robert S. Carr, also claimedthe governorship.
• A hanging in Ripley in 1896 turned into a spectacle that attractednationwide attention. A New York Sun reporter likened the town's atmospherethat day to a festival. The event is described in a song by Tom T. Hall,The Last Public Hanging in Ripley, West Virginia.
• West Virginia University played Pitt in the first football game everbroadcast on the radio, in 1921 on KDKA.
• In 1928 Minnie Buckingham Harper of Welch became the first blackwoman legislator in the U. S. She was appointed by the Governor to the Houseof Delegates to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband.
• During World War II, 1700 persons from foreign countries, many ofthem diplomats, were imprisoned at the Greenbrier resort.
• On January 26, 1960, Danny Heater of Burnsville High School scored135 points in a high school basketball game, earning him an entry in theGuinness Book of World Records.
• From 1849 until 1851, the 1010-foot Wheeling Bridge was the longestbridge in the world. It was blown down by high winds in 1854. The New RiverGorge Bridge near Fayetteville, completed in 1977, is today the longest steel-arch bridge in the world.
• Bluefield radio station WHIS claims its broadcast of a murder trialin 1931 was the first ever outside of Russia. The defendant, accused of murdering her three-year-old stepchild by scalding it to death in a wash tub of boiling water, appealed her conviction on the grounds that the broadcast had made a "circus" of her trial.
• In 1838 excavations began at the Grave Creek Mound, one of the largestconical mounds in the U. S. Among the relics recovered from two burial chambersis the famous Grave Creek Stone, on which are markings that scientists andstudents of ancient languages have never been able to explain. No other writinglike it has ever been found. It has been suggested the stone may be a hoax.
• The first state sales tax in the United States went into effect inWest Virginia on July 1, 1921. The tax was levied against the gross incomeof banks, street railroads, telephones, telegraph, express, electric lightand power retailers, timber, oil, coal, natural gas, and other minerals.[Robert Murray Haig and Carl Shoup, The Sales Tax in the American States.
• The first federal prison exclusively for women in the U. S. was theFederal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, which opened in 1926.Among its inmates have been: Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Lolita Lebron, who opened fire on the House of Representatives chamber in 1954, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Ford, and Billie Holiday and Irene Smith, the sister of country music legend Hank Williams Sr., both on drug convictions.
• The first brick pavement in the U. S. was laid in Charleston in 1870by a private citizen at his own expense.
• The first barenuckle world heavyweight championship was held on June1, 1880, near Colliers, about 300 yards from the Pennsylvania border. PaddyRyan won an undisputed title by knocking out Joe Goss of England in the 85thround. [Famous First Facts]
• The first union soldier killed by enemy action in the Civil War wasBailey Thornberry Brown. On May 22, 1861, while engaged in obtaining recruits,he was fired upon by Confederate pickets at Fetterman, near Grafton. He was given a military funeral. The first significant land battle between Union and Confederate Armies was the Battle of Philippi, on June 3, 1861.
• Memorial Tunnel was the first tunnel in the U. S. to be monitoredby television. The tunnel opened November 8, 1954, and was closed in 1987.
• The first trust in the U. S. was the salt trust organized November10, 1817, by the salt manufacturers of Kanawha. It went into operation onJanuary 1, 1818, at the Kanawha Salt Company. It was formed for the purposeof controlling the quantity of salt manufactured, the method of manufacture,the packing, and the production. [West Virginia Encyclopedia]
• The first municipally owned parking building in the U. S. was openedSept. 1, 1941, in Welch. It accommodated 232 cars and showed a profit thefirst year. [Famous First Facts]
• The first recipients of food stamps were the Chloe and Alderson Muncyfamily of Welch. The family, which included 15 children, received $95 worthof stamps from Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman on May 29, 1961,as a crowd of reporters watched. [Barbara Weese]
• ESPN’s Scholastic last year picked as the best sports team nicknamein America the Dots of Poca High School in Poca. The team nickname was suggestedby a sportswriter for the Charleston Gazette in 1928.
• In 1997 and 1998 the population of West Virginia had the highestmedian age of any state. In 1998 the median age was 38.1, slightly olderthan Florida.
• The Delta Tau Delta fraternity was founded by eight students at BethanyCollege in 1858. The fraternity began as a secret society, formed in responseto what the students believed was a fixed vote for a prize in oratory.
• Each October several hundred parachutists jump 876 feet from theNew River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville on Bridge Day, West Virginia's largestsingle-day event, which attracts about 100,000 spectators. Automobile trafficis rerouted for the event, which has been held since 1980. The bridge isthe second highest in the United States, behind the Royal Gorge Bridge inColorado. Three people have died during Bridge Day jumps, the last in 1987.
• A memorial building to honor World War I veterans dedicated on May30, 1923, in Welch is said to be the first such building.
• On the map of West Virginia included in Microsoft’s Bookshelf 98,Beckley is misspelled as “Beckely.” White Sulphur Springs is spelled “WhiteSulfur Springs.” On the 1996 Magellan Geographix map of West Virginia (whichis seen by America On Line users looking for a state map), Summersville isspelled “Summerville.”
• The youngest person ever elected by popular vote to the U. S. Senatewas Rush D. Holt, who was born in Weston. Elected in 1934 at age 29, he hadto wait until he turned 30 in June 1935 to take his seat. (Sen. Henry Claywas actually younger than Holt but was chosen by the state's legislature,before the Constitutional amendment providing for popular election of Senators.) His son, Rush, was elected to Congress from New Jersey in 1998.
• Gov. Cecil Underwood was the state’s youngest governor when he wasfirst elected in 1956 at the age of 34. Elected again in 1996, Underwoodis now the nation's oldest governor. He turned 76 on Nov. 5, 1998.
• On May 31, 1992, with the Cold War apparently over, the WashingtonPost revealed a fact that a small number of West Virginians had largely keptsecret for thirty years: Underneath the Greenbrier resort at White SulphurSprings existed a huge, two-story bunker designed to house the entire UnitedStates Congress and support staff for forty days in the event of a nuclearattack on this country.
• The first public school for blacks in West Virginia, organized inParkersburg in 1862, was, according to a contemporary newspaper account,the first such school south of the Mason-Dixon line and one of only two publicschools run by blacks in the U. S.
• The first rural free mail delivery was started in Charles Town onOctober 6, 1896.
• On September 10, 1938, the Mingo Oak, largest and oldest White Oaktree in the United States, was declared dead and felled with ceremony. Itsage was estimated at 582 years.
• The first steel cut nails were manufactured in West Virginia in 1883.
• Pocahontas County has the highest average elevation of any countyeast of the Mississippi River.
• On Oct. 23, 1998, J. R. House, quarterback for Nitro High School,broke the national high school career passing record of 12,104 yards thathad been set by current Cleveland Browns quarterback Tim Couch, who playedhigh school football in eastern Kentucky from 1992-95.
• There are no traffic lights in Calhoun County.
• From the 1980 census to the 1990 census, Winfield grew in populationfrom 329 to 1,164, a 253.8% increase. Bradshaw in McDowell county droppein population from 1,002 to 394, a loss of 60.7%.
• Towns in West Virginia named after cities in other countries includeAthens, Berlin, Cairo, Calcutta, Geneva, Ghent, Glasgow, Killarney, Lima,London, Moscow, Odessa, Ottawa, Palermo, Rangoon, Santiago, Shanghai, Vienna,and Wellington.
• Once upon a time, there was a community in Ritchie County named MoleHill. The citizens, deciding a name change was in order, exercised a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, changing their Mole Hill to a Mountain.
• The first public spa in the U. S. opened in 1756 in Bath, Virginia(now Berkeley Springs, W. Va.).
• The first newspaper to appeal primarily to women, the Ladies Garland,was published in Harper's Ferry on Feb. 14, 1824.
• The first patent for a soda fountain was granted in 1833 to GeorgeDulty in Wheeling .
• The first court in the U. S. to admit videotaped evidence, convictinga drunk driver was Charleston Municipal Court in 1967.
• The world’s largest sycamore tree is located on the Back Fork ofthe Elk River in Webster Springs
• The world’s greatest gas well, “Big Moses” in Tyler County, was drilledin 1894. It produced 100,000,000 cubic feet of gas per day.
• The world’s largest axe factory (which no longer exists) was locatedin Charleston.
• The first and world’s largest clothespin factory was located at Richwood.
• A one-lane bridge on Route 152 (formerly Route 52) in Wayne Countywas mentioned on NBC television in 1960 during the West Virginia DemocraticPrimary. When the bridge was replaced, it was named the Huntley-BrinkleyBridge.
• During the 1980s, these films were shot wholly or in part in WestVirginia: Pudd'n'head Wilson (1984, in Harpers Ferry), Reckless (1984, inWeirton), Sweet Dreams (1985, in Martinsburg), and Matewan (1987, in Thurmond).
• In a high school football game in 1912, New Martinsville defeatedWoodsfield, Ohio, by a score of 157-0.