White Water Rafting in West Virginia

West Virginia is famous.  Rightfully so, too.  We invented pepperoni rolls and American feuds.  We invented ramps.  We didn’t invent white water rafting, but we made it big.  We have a lot to be proud of.

We also invented the Liar’s Contest.  It’s held every year at the Vandalia Gathering, a celebration of the state at the capitol complex in Charleston.  And in honor of all the wild and wonderful Liars in our state, here’s a list of facts about West Virginia.

Most of which are true.

• The world’s largest sycamore tree is located on the Back Fork of the Elk River in Webster Springs, WV.
• The first major land battle fought between Union and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War was the Battle of Phillippi, WV on June 3, 1861.
• It takes 3,481 cans of orange spray paint to write “Git ‘Er Done” across the front of the New River Gorge Bridge.
• One of the nation’s oldest and largest Indian burial grounds is located in Moundsville.  It is 69 feet high, 900 feet in circumference, and 50 feet high.  An inscribed stone was removed from the vault and is on display at the Smithsonian institute in Washington, D.C.
• The first steamboat was launched by James Rumsey in the Potomac River at New Mecklensburg (Shepherdstown) on December 3, 1787.
• The Mystery Hole is an astrophysical anomaly that sits on a micro-vortex in the space time continuum, just west of Hawks Nest State Park on Rt 60.
• Organ Cave, near Ronceverte, is the third largest cave in the United States and the largest in the state of WV.
• Outdoor advertising had its origins in Wheeling about 1908 when the Block Brothers Tobacco Company painted bridges and barns with the wording, “Treat Yourself to the Best, Chew Mail Pouch.”
• Mountain Biking was first invented in West Virginia, where it was originally called “biking”.
• Mrs. Minnie Buckingham Harper, a member of the House of Delegates by appointment in 1928, was the first African American woman to become a member of the legislative body in the United States.
• The first brick street in the world was laid in Charleston, WV, on October 23, 1870, on Summers Street.
• Moonshine was invented in West Virginia hic! by the greatest hic! guy that ever lived, ever hic! I love that guy! hic!
• The Kanawha River, which forms at Gauley Bridge with the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers, flows about 97 miles before joining the Ohio River and is the largest inland waterway in the state.
• After being on the brink of extinction, the West Virginia northern flying squirrel glided off the federal endangered species list in August 2008.  The Squirrels inhabit the Allegheny Highlands forests in WV.
• West Virginia is the northernmost southern state, and the southernmost northern state.
• In 1966, men working in a cemetary in Clendenin reported seeing a brown mothlike creature fly from the trees.  Mulitiple sightings of Mothman, as he became known, also were reported in Point Pleasant, where a statue of Mothman adorns Gunn Park.
• A popular regional fare are pepperoni rolls, which are sticks or slices of pepperoni baked inside  a white yeast bread roll.  The culinary combo was first baked in the early 1900s at the Country Club Bakery in Fairmont.
• The New River was named by George Washington’s survey company, who, after first discovering the waterway, exclaimed, “Hey, that’s new!”  The name stuck.
• Issued last year in the 50 State Quarters Program, the Mountain State’s coin depicts the New River Gorge Bridge, an engineering wonder spanning a natural beauty.  At 3,030 feet long, it is the world’s second longest steel-arch bridge (this is where our Lower New River trips end their day.)

Were you able to tell the fact from the fiction?  Have any good facts (or fictions) of your own?  Tell us about it.