This story originally appeared in the December 11, 2012 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. Ben Cedar crossed the Silver Bridge three times on the day it fell. He was working as a Kirby sweeper salesman back then, and crossing the bridge was the fastest…
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. Russ Jones navigates the woods with an ease that only comes through vast experience. His running shoes do not lose their footing on this steep, unmarked trail in Kanawha State Forest. As a certified…
This is an excerpt of a story that first appeared online at Rolling Stone Country on November 10, 2016. Read the rest of the story here. Early afternoons were pretty quiet at the Lyric Springs Country Inn. The previous night’s guests usually left in the morning,…
This story originally appeared in the August/September ’16 issue of Morgantown Magazine. Susanna Wheeler prefers not to divulge the location of her summer garden. She’ll admit it is planted on WVU property, but that is as much information as she’s comfortable giving out. “We don’t…
This story originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. The fish weren’t biting when Rick Burgess and his twin brothers Denny and Danny arrived at Spruce Knob Lake for a weekend camping trip in 1976. Denny suggested they try their…
This story originally appeared in the August 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. At first, no one knew exactly what was happening, or why. But one fact was clear—lots of things were dying in Dunkard Creek. Division of Natural Resources fisheries biologists Frank Jernejcic and…
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. The Native American hunter, all bulging muscle and sinew, lies close to his horse’s neck as the beast reaches full gallop. He clutches a flint-tipped spear in his right hand. With his left…
This story originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. On June 15, 2015, elected officials, members of the public, and journalists crammed into the dark wood-paneled council chambers at Charleston City Hall to watch Kanawha Circuit Judge Todd Kaufman administer the…
This story was originally published in the September/October 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. Around 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, the newsroom staffs of the Charleston Daily Mail and Charleston Gazette were called to the front lobby of their shared headquarters at 1001…
This story originally appeared in the February 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. For more than a millennium, people in Japan and China have used aquatic birds called cormorants to help them catch fish. Fishermen tie hemp snares around a trained bird’s throat so…