Since I was already in Virginia, and West Virginia was so close, I took a drive over there today. West Virginia is really beautiful (I was at the southern end). I visited two very small towns; Princeton and Bluefield.
Princeton, West Virginia, is at the southern end of the state (about 30 miles from Virginia). It is a very small town (in 2000 the population was 6,347). I didn’t find much to do there, but it’s a really friendly little town. They had a nice Vietnam Veterans Memorial that you saw as soon as you entered the town.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
To get there, I had to go through two horrible tunnels!
This was a nice Vietnam Veterans Memorial
The trees were really pretty this morning.
This was the COOLEST bridge! (West Virginia if full
of bridges!) I thought this one was so beautiful
Bluefield, West Virginia, was incorporated in 1889. Although the population was only 600 at the time, it grew to 25,000 by 1940. Today, it is approximately 11,000. Bluefield sits at the base of East River Mountain and adjacent to the Virginia state line. It is known as "Nature's Air Conditioned City" due to the fact that the temperature rarely hits 90 degrees. One of the better-known people to come from Bluefield is Dr. John Nash, who won a 1994 Nobel Prize and was the subject of "A Beautiful Mind." John S. Knight, who developed Knight Ridder Newspapers and won a 1968 Pulitzer Prize, was also born in Bluefield. It, too, was a nice little town to visit
The Downtown area was nice - lots of historic buildings.
A small Veterans' Memorial
A plaque for Dr. John Nash.
Some murals in the town.
Some of the different houses in the area.
This was a very interesting little park in town. It had a bunch of little trains, painted by different artists. There was no explanation as to why the trians were there or what they represented. But, they were pretty. West Virginia is a big coal mining state, so I assume it might also be a railroad town. They were all beautifully painted.
This one must have been really nice, because it got stolen!
