Appalachian music and art at its best.
If you’re looking for a true Appalachian experience besides hiking and colorful vistas, you’ll find it at these specialty artisan shops. While you’re visiting in Pocahontas County visit local shops, galleries, and coops to discover one-of-a-kind pottery, dazzling jewelry, custom woodwork, intricate quilts, hand-blown glass and much more.
The Shops at Leatherbark Ford – Cass
The Whistle Stop – Durbin
Green Bank Gallery – Green Bank
Green Bank Coop – Green Bank
4th Avenue Gallery – Marlinton
Gunter’s Country Store – Edray
Dirtbean Gallery 102 Main Street – Marlinton
Music gives soundtrack to our lives.
Folks who live in the mountains use music to entertain, convey the joy and pain of life, and continue stories passed on through several generations. The Mountain Music Trail promotes the traditional music, dance, and folkways of the Allegheny Mountain region of West Virginia in Monroe, Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Randolph and Tucker counties. The winding ribbon of highway known as U. S.Route 219 is the backbone of the Trail where venues feature Mountain Music and showcase legends in the industry as well as up and coming musical groups.
Check out the website for locations and dates you can hear and enjoy this unique music, written and sung by a special kind of people.
Pocahontas County Opera House
The Pocahontas County Opera House built in 1909 by J. G. Tilton, publisher of the Marlinton Messenger, opened as a venue for the rapidly increasing number of cultural and sporting events in the Marlinton area.
The century old building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is the performing arts center of the community. On any given Friday or Saturday night the building is packed with people, who come from far and near.
Allegheny Echoes
Accomplished musicians, who hail from the mountains, work to insure young people from throughout the region learn the skills to play the old time mountain music. The Allegheny Echoes is an extraordinary program of workshops where proficient musicians instruct and demonstrate how to play the instruments that mountain music is centered on – banjo, guitar, mandolin, flat pick, fiddle, bass and dulcimer. Those interested in writing music are encouraged to participate in classes aimed at the novice and the experienced. Based in Marlinton, the Allegheny Echoes offers summer classes in an inspiring venue.
Local Authors
Although a small geographical area, Pocahontas County has produced a wealth of world-renowned writers. Pearl S. Buck, winner of both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize was born in the Hillsboro region.
Other celebrated authors who called Pocahontas home include W. E. Blackhurst, Cal Price, Ed Friel, William T. Price, and John O’Brien. A more current generation boasts William P. McNeel, Roy Clarkson, Curtis Curry, Patch Adams and Harold Crist.
West Virginia’s Poet Laureate from 1979 to 1993 was Louise McNeill, born and raised on a farm in Buckeye. Her books Milkweed Ladies and Gauley Mountain depict the simple mountain life to which she was accustomed.
Dorothy Clutter Callison, born and raised in the Beard area of Pocahontas County, was named West Virginia folk artist from 1961 through 1963. Later she was heard on the Arthur Godfrey Show and on radio throughout New York and Connecticut, touting the virtues of the Appalachian hills.
