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Old 09-08-2016, 08:25 PM
 
Location: The Heart of Dixie
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Not a good or bad thing at all, but which city or town in West Virginia feels the most different than the rest of the state?

My top pick would be Huntington. First of all its flat geography really stands out compared to every other part of the state I've been to. Charleston is only 45 minutes west but is much more hillier. The rest of the Mountain State like Beckley, Princeton, Morgantown are all mountainous or at least hilly. The architecture of Huntington also stands out in my opinion. It has a more expansive urban feel than anywhere else in the state and the area feels the most spread out, from Barboursville all the way out to Kenova, and into Ashland and Flatwoods, Kentucky which is technically part of the region.

Many of Huntington's residential districts also feel very different than Charleston, Beckley, Morgantown etc. There are many neighborhoods with back alleys that reminded me of neighborhoods in Louisville and Baltimore (the nicer parts of these cities). Barboursville/Teays Valley also has the kind of modern sprawling suburbia that you don't really see anywhere except Corridor G in Charleston and the far Eastern Panhandle. Huntington and its immediate suburbs feel more urban than anywhere else in the state.

The next most different area would probably be the far Eastern Panhandle because of the modern development and the large number of transplants from the Baltimore and DC areas. I have many friends in Hampshire County who moved from Baltimore and they are very assimilated into WV and rural living, but the ones in places like Charles Town, Martinsburg, Harpers Ferry have not assimilated as much and those areas remind me of Frederick and Hagerstown in Maryland. The EP is also the one part of the state where neither coal mining nor natural gas production is dominant.

Most of the media stereotypes of the state come from areas like Logan, Boone, and Mingo Counties though those are nice enough areas with honest, hardworking people.
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Old 09-08-2016, 09:27 PM
 
Location: Cumberland
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I would vote Harper's Ferry or Shepherdstown. Most of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties looks more like VA than the rest of WV to my eyes.

Not that they aren't nice towns, I like them both, but more like Winchester, VA, or Brunswick, MD than the parts of WV I am familiar with.
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Old 09-09-2016, 06:43 PM
 
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Originally Posted by westsideboy View Post
I would vote Harper's Ferry or Shepherdstown. Most of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties looks more like VA than the rest of WV to my eyes.

Not that they aren't nice towns, I like them both, but more like Winchester, VA, or Brunswick, MD than the parts of WV I am familiar with.

I agree about the eastern panhandle feeling different from the rest of the state, but an argument can be made that Wheeling and Bluefield are also like that to an extent as well. Wheeling feels like it is part of Pittsburgh and Bluefield feels like it is in Virginia, which part of it is. But everything down there on the southern border as a more southern feel to it than does even Beckley which is less than an hours drive north.
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Old 09-09-2016, 08:36 PM
 
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Originally Posted by westsideboy View Post
I would vote Harper's Ferry or Shepherdstown. Most of Berkeley and Jefferson Counties looks more like VA than the rest of WV to my eyes.

Not that they aren't nice towns, I like them both, but more like Winchester, VA, or Brunswick, MD than the parts of WV I am familiar with.

I totally agree !! I used to live in Martinsburg and later Falling Waters and neither felt like West Virginia to me actually other than the license plates and the local radio stations airing Metronews programming out of Morgantown really its was quite easy for me to forget that I was living in West Virginia. Television is another example of this sort of thing. The only true West Virginia TV station available in the Martinsburg and Charles Town/Ranson areas is PBS and even comes from a repeater and the programming is from elsewhere in WV. I guess this would explain the other night I was watching Charleston-Huntington's FOX 11 here in Denver which BTW is now available on the NewsOn app. When they did the weather for the state guess who was missing ?? The Eastern Panhandle !! Oh well..its the same with Winchester on the Richmond TV stations when they do weather for the state even though Winchester is in Virginia Winchester is missing from their map.
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Old 09-10-2016, 06:17 AM
 
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There is no doubt in my mind that the most distinctly different towns in West Virginia are Wheeling and Shepherdstown. This is because of the architecture and societal feel of each city. No other town in our state can come even close to Wheeling in terms of historical buildings or old money related public amenities, and the EP towns of Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown have their own uniqueness that isn't found elsewhere.
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Old 09-10-2016, 07:34 PM
 
Location: The Heart of Dixie
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Originally Posted by CTMountaineer View Post
There is no doubt in my mind that the most distinctly different towns in West Virginia are Wheeling and Shepherdstown. This is because of the architecture and societal feel of each city. No other town in our state can come even close to Wheeling in terms of historical buildings or old money related public amenities, and the EP towns of Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown have their own uniqueness that isn't found elsewhere.
I think Wheeling in some ways resembles the rest of northern WV, including its physical geography. I would still say that Huntington feels more different than Wheeling.

I'm not familiar with Shepherdstown but there's definitely a lot of old money feel in Charleston, Lewisburg, and White Sulphur Springs. Shepherdstown IS on the border though. As for the EP at least the transplants are the exurban kinds and not the yuppie kinds, many of them chose to move to WV and enjoy WV living, unlike the northerners who move to NC for a job and Moderator cut: political remark removed . So politically Moderator cut: This isn't the Politics forum .

There's something distinct about Huntington's urban architecture that you don't get elsewhere in the state. The flatness also stands out, while Wheeling is still in the mountains.

Last edited by mensaguy; 09-11-2016 at 07:26 AM.. Reason: Somebody doesn't know this isn't the Politics forum.
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Old 09-11-2016, 04:49 PM
 
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Originally Posted by Tom Lennox 70 View Post
I think Wheeling in some ways resembles the rest of northern WV, including its physical geography. I would still say that Huntington feels more different than Wheeling.

I'm not familiar with Shepherdstown but there's definitely a lot of old money feel in Charleston, Lewisburg, and White Sulphur Springs. Shepherdstown IS on the border though. As for the EP at least the transplants are the exurban kinds and not the yuppie kinds, many of them chose to move to WV and enjoy WV living, unlike the northerners who move to NC for a job and Moderator cut: political remark removed . So politically Moderator cut: This isn't the Politics forum .

There's something distinct about Huntington's urban architecture that you don't get elsewhere in the state. The flatness also stands out, while Wheeling is still in the mountains.
I agree that Huntington is flat, and Wheeling is not flat, but Wheeling is actually located at least 50 miles from the mountains. It is in the Allegheny foothills (same as Pittsburgh, and Charleston for that matter) with Wheeling being at the foot of the Allegheny Plateau with the Piedmont Plateau on the other side of the river in Ohio. Those foothills did not stop Wheeling from developing into the state's industrial powerhouse for more than a century, with tens of thousands of jobs in steel, tobacco, coal, toy manufacturing, glass, and nearby chemicals. It also didn't stop the local wealth that came with that development. While the jobs have disappeared, the local wealth has mostly not, and it is still located on the outskirts of the city. Wheeling was well developed long before all the other cities except those in the Eastern Panhandle, and the local Victorian and pre-Victorian architecture accurately reflects that.

It is that architecture and largely German ethnic heritage that gives Wheeling a very different feel from other cities in our state. It's flat in Hurricane too. While flatness is rare in our state, that alone wouldn't make a city more different than others. Both Wheeling and Huntington border Ohio and one other state, and that does make both cities unique in a distinct way, but in terms of culture and architecture, Wheeling stands out from others. Wheeling is a place where both the polka and bluegrass mingle in harmony, and it is the only city in the state that has much of the feel of the nearby large city Pittsburgh. Well, I guess you could make the argument that Weirton has that too, but Weirton never had the accumulation of wealth that one finds in Wheeling, and it came along later so it doesn't have nearly as much of the architectural distinctness.

Last edited by CTMountaineer; 09-11-2016 at 05:10 PM..
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Old 09-11-2016, 05:15 PM
 
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To be honest, I've always felt that all of the major cities/population centers (Huntington, Charleston, Beckley, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Morgantown and the Easter Panhandle) all feel different for all the others. I think all of them have their own influences (based on geography, neighboring States, economic drivers, etc.) and I think that is a good thing. I think it adds to the beauty and uniqueness of the State. It adds personality and 'feel' to the State.
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Old 09-11-2016, 05:23 PM
 
10,147 posts, read 14,992,028 times
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Originally Posted by aeros71 View Post
To be honest, I've always felt that all of the major cities/population centers (Huntington, Charleston, Beckley, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Morgantown and the Easter Panhandle) all feel different for all the others. I think all of them have their own influences (based on geography, neighboring States, economic drivers, etc.) and I think that is a good thing. I think it adds to the beauty and uniqueness of the State. It adds personality and 'feel' to the State.
I agree with that. Here are some photos of one of the things that makes Wheeling unique in our state. It is a city that has old homes loaded with stained glass windows, leaded glass windows, fireplaces with tile bases and carved oak mantles, turrets on the top of homes, mostly brick construction, and if you venture "out the pike" to the wealthy areas, amazing mansions.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U5szXnwQOo

Other things unique to Wheeling:

http://www.wheeling-park.com/index.htm

Last edited by CTMountaineer; 09-11-2016 at 05:39 PM..
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Old 09-11-2016, 05:32 PM
 
Location: Ohio, USA
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Chester, West Virginia. It's the most Ohio-like place in the state.
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