By Make everyone on your holiday shopping list happy with a few of these West Virginia-made treasures. Violins crafted by Paolo MarksBased in Pocahontas County, Paolo Marks is a musician and artisan. For more than a decade he has focused on building his own string instruments, producing a handful a year
Swapping Luck for Planning
The 2015 State Wildlife Action Plan gives us a first-ever comprehensive roadmap for protecting the state’s at risk species. It’s hard to imagine how West Virginia’s Cheat Mountain salamander survived the early-1900s clear-cut of the virgin red spruce forest and the wildfires that followed. The scrappy, lung-less, brass-flecked amphibian somehow
Lions on the Leash
A tall tale of a small-town law. This story was originally published in the October 2019 issue of Wonderful West Virginia. To subscribe, visit wonderfulwv.com Written by Christian M. GiggenbachPhotographed by Nikki Bowman Mills & Christian M. Giggenbach Politicians across West Virginia have passed many odd laws through the years.
Law of the Wild
We ride along with West Virginia’s Natural Resources Police. The weather forecast calls for thunderstorms in the afternoon, but this morning it’s just sunny and windy. The breeze pushes the water on the Kanawha River into hundreds of little waves, each peak reflecting the late morning sun. It’s muggy, and
The Room is Bugged
Despite its unassuming appearance, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture Insect Collection is a trove of interesting critters. There is a room, in a white rectangular building perched on a hilltop just 10 minutes outside Charleston, where you can find crowds of cockroaches, hordes of hard-shelled beetles, and multitudes of
New Discovery!
Did you know: A species of violets new to the Mountain State was recently discovered by West Virginia Division of Natural Resources ecologists. The plant, known as the prostrate blue violet (viola walteri), was found growing on limestone in forests and woodlands around Germany Valley, Pendleton County. Pendleton County Convention & Visitors Bureau
Trout in the Classroom
A letter from our editor, Zack Harold: For as long as humans have walked the Earth, we have been compelled to make things that last. You can see this compulsion in great works of literature, music, and visual art, but it’s especially evident in architecture, from the pyramids of Giza
