The year is 1847, and a man named Samuel Yeager was the owner and captain of a steamboat called the “John B. Gorden.” He was headed to Fairmont, W.V., loaded with 70 tons of freight. Now, what was a seaman to do with all the merchandise he had purchased elsewhere? He unloaded it, stored it…
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Let’s Jump and Jive and Take a Ride in Ravine Park Tonight! Part 2
Ravine Park was to be the biggest little amusement park in the area. As told in the previous part 1 of this story, the park was furnished with concession stands, a pavilion, an auditorium, and a swimming pool to keep everyone cool. Now was the time for the rides. The City bought and installed its…
Let’s Jump and Jive and Take a Ride at Ravine Park Tonight! Part 1
In the City of Fairmont, W.V., with the coal industry spurring on a growth of business and more and more people relocating here, something needed to be done about the entertainment in town. There wasn’t much for the whole family to enjoy. Sure, they had the Grand Opera house, with the burlesque dancers and vaudeville…
Burn it to the Ground. Build it up. Burn it Down Again. Then let it Go!
Fairmont W.V. has always been known as the “Friendly City” and a historic town. I, as well as many others, never felt it was all that historic. When I started doing this blog and studied more about my town, “Historic” is precisely as it should be described. As I write more weekly blogs, readers will…
Lyon’s Den in Fairmont, West Virginia
Nestled in the northcentral section of West Virginia is my hometown. Fairmont, the county seat of Marion County. Having a conversation with my brother the other day, we realized that there is not a part of this town we don’t have a memory of, good memories. This is the town we went to school in,…
The Ticket to the Golden Door: An intermigration Story
History is the true Spine of America, without it we would fall and collapse.
America’s Most Treacherous Winter Disaster
“It fell like powered sugar,brittle, yet airy and without direction as it covered the land under an unforgiving tomb.” H.S. Crow Northwest Plains The year was 1888, and it would go down in history as having one of the worst storms ever. States like the Dakotas, Montana, and Nebraska, had unseasonably warm weather the previous…
The Illegal Abortion and Death of a Supermarket Heiress
On Aug 24, 1955, Doris Silver Oestreicher, heiress to the fifth-largest grocery chain in the country, Food Fair Stores Inc, would be found dead in the slums of Philidelphia. She had married only two months before her death to a Miami policeman named Earl Oestreicher. Her mother, Gertrude Silver, was appalled and demanded she gets…
How Does the Word Beautiful Figure into a Suicide?
More and more people who choose to end their lives by suicide make headline news in today’s world. Right or wrong, it happens. When a newspaper or news show reports this tragic event, beautiful is never a word associated with suicide. But it has been used many times in the past. Furthermore, as I was…