Like most cities, Morgantown has other municipalities located outside city limits but nearby to the primary city. In Morgantown's case, one of those municipalities is Westover.
Westover has always sought a certain autonomy in relation to Morgantown. I remember when I was in school in Morgantown in the early 1960s, state government, largely influenced at the time by Bible Belt politicians, mandated that beer taps be shut off at midnight in bars across the state. This resulted in an interesting development in Westover. Cities were free to determine the time of day in their city limits, so Westover always set their time to be one hour earlier than it was across the bridge in Morgantown in order to capture the late night party crowd for their local bars. Midnight came an hour later in Westover, so the beer taps kept flowing an hour longer.
There was big money involved for 2 reasons. First of all, the money from selling beer. In order to keep their beer licenses, the beer was actually stopped at midnight in accordance with the state code. Liquor and wine, on the other hand, were illegal to sell in establishments in West Virginia in any case. Social norms were quite different between the northern and southern parts of the state in those days, and the northern folks saw no sense in adhering to the restrictive "liquor by the drink" laws imposed by a southern tier dominated legislature. The result was that, from Sutton north, police and Justices of the Peace simply refused to enforce them. A bar owner would get in trouble for selling beer after midnight, or selling beer to somebody under the age of 18, but the sale of liquor and wine was unregulated in northern West Virginia in bars and restaurants. People who had been drinking beer in a Westover bar, could remain there and switch to hard liquor, staying for several hours longer.
Westover, in some ways, has always marched to it's own drummer.
City on the Rise - Morgantown Magazine - April-May 2017 - Morgantown
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