e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia is the comprehensive reference resource for the Mountain State of West Virginia. Based on the best-selling West Virginia Encyclopedia, e-WV offers thousands of articles on West Virginia’s people and places, history, arts, science and culture.
e-WV is a project of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
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Rural Free Delivery Rural Free Delivery, the U.S. Post Office’s program to provide direct delivery of mail to every household in the country, began on October 1, 1896, in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. Read More »
Rocket man On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier by flying a Bell X-1 rocket airplane 700 miles per hour Read More »
Minister’s mission During the 1980s and 1990s, the Reverend Bernard Coffindaffer erected clusters of crosses in West Virginia and much of the Southeast. Many of those crosses can still be seen along roadways. Read More »
The Mountaineers West Virginia University football got its start in 1891 when two students raised $160 to buy uniforms and a rule book and recruited players for the team. Read More »
Fall in the Mountain State Cooler temperatures and the beginning of fall foliage bring visitors to the state's mountains. Read More »
Submarine West Virginia October 20, 1990, the current U.S.S. West Virginia, an Ohio Trident Class ballistic missile submarine, was commissioned. Read More »
New River Gorge Bridge After three years of work, the New River Gorge Bridge was dedicated on October 22, 1977. Read More »
Flood of 1985 In October 1985, heavy rains brought fatal flooding to West Virginia. Forty-seven people were killed, and several towns, including Moorefield, were heavily damaged. Read More »
October snowstorm Hurricane Sandy collided with a cold front, bringing heavy snows to West Virginia. The blizzard left seven people dead and more than 500,000 homes without electricity. Read More »
Back to school in the Mountain State Find resources related to West Virginia studies in the e-WV Classroom. Read More »
This Date in HistoryOctober 23, 1890: The Fast Flying Virginian passenger train wrecked on the C&O On October 23, 1890, at 5:40 a.m., the passenger train known as the Fast Flying Virginian, pulled by engine 134, wrecked due to a rock slide three miles east of Hinton on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. The eastbound luxury train was traveling from Cincinnati to Washington. Its engineer, George Washington Alley, a member of a prominent railroading family, was killed while attempting to stop the train, and firemen Lewis Withrow an... |
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