Qualla: The American South

Action at Mount Zion Church

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A one-hour Civil War skirmish in July 1864 where Mosby's Rangers wiped out 71% of a Union cavalry detachment - and a Ranger named Thomas Richards took a Union saber in the shoulder to save Mosby's life.

Aldie Mill Historic District

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah Stierch, CC BY 4.0. An early-1800s brick mill in Loudoun County that the same Moore family ran for six generations - powered by two overshot waterwheels on the Little River, with original Oliver Evans machinery patterns inside.

Image: Sarah Stierch | CC BY 4.0

Battle of Aldie

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. A four-hour cavalry fight at a Virginia crossroads on June 17, 1863, where the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry was trapped in a blind curve on the Snicker's Gap Turnpike and lost two thirds of its men in minutes.

Read more: Battle of Aldie on Qualla

Image: Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ellanor C. Lawrence Park

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 640-acre Fairfax County park preserving 8,000 years of human use - a Senate clerk's experimental farm, a Civil War battlefield in the cornfield, and the country estate of the founder of U.S. News & World Report.

Read more: Ellanor C. Lawrence Park on Qualla

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ox Hill Battlefield Park

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Geological Survey, Public domain. The 4.8-acre remnant of a 300-acre Civil War battlefield in modern Fairfax County, where two Union generals were killed in a thunderstorm on September 1, 1862 - now surrounded by a shopping center.

Read more: Ox Hill Battlefield Park on Qualla

Image: U.S. Geological Survey | Public domain

Reston, Virginia

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The planned community Robert E. Simon built on a Fairfax County whiskey farm in 1964 - 63,000 people, four lakes, 55 miles of trails, and a virus that scared the world in 1989.

Read more: Reston, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University School of Law

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek E. Morton, CC BY-SA 4.0. The HBCU law school where Thurgood Marshall trained, Charles Hamilton Houston taught, and the legal strategy for Brown v. Board was built.

Image: Derek E. Morton | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howard University

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Mecca of Black American higher education, federally chartered in 1867, the only HBCU classified as a top-tier research university.

Read more: Howard University on Qualla

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

International Spy Museum

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aude, CC BY-SA 2.5. Seven thousand artifacts of espionage including KGB lipstick pistols, a Japanese Enigma machine, the U-2 wreckage, and the Aston Martin from Goldfinger.

Read more: International Spy Museum on Qualla

Image: Aude | CC BY-SA 2.5

Renwick Gallery

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fletcher, CC BY 4.0. The American Louvre, half a block from the White House, traded oil paintings for installations made of bugs, index cards, and 5,000 strands of rainbow thread.

Read more: Renwick Gallery on Qualla

Image: Fletcher | CC BY 4.0

Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Five Park Police on motorcycles flip the entire direction of a federal parkway every morning and every afternoon - a Washington commuter ritual hidden inside a National Register landscape.

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rock Creek Cemetery

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cornellrockey, CC BY-SA 4.0. Washington's oldest cemetery, established as a colonial churchyard in 1719, holds Saint-Gaudens's most haunting sculpture and the bones of a Supreme Court dissenter, an attempted presidential assassin, and Gore Vidal.

Read more: Rock Creek Cemetery on Qualla

Image: Cornellrockey | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rock Creek Park

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miketwo (talk) (Uploads), Public domain. The third national park ever established - twice the size of Manhattan's Central Park, threaded through the federal city, and home to a two-story pile of Capitol stones that quietly disappeared in 2022.

Read more: Rock Creek Park on Qualla

Image: Miketwo (talk) (Uploads) | Public domain

Saint Stephen Martyr Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dclemens1971, CC BY 4.0. John F. Kennedy's parish church loaned the four wooden candlesticks that stood at the corners of his coffin in the East Room - which is how a modest parish on Pennsylvania Avenue ended up in every photograph of the longest weekend in American history.

Image: Dclemens1971 | CC BY 4.0

Scott Circle

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Despite the name, Scott Circle is not a circle - it is a bow-tie of pavement holding a bronze general, hiding a buried creek, and split in half by a 1941 underpass that two rival neighborhoods spent years fighting over.

Read more: Scott Circle on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shakespearedc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Patrick Stewart wanted to play Othello but knew the time of white actors in blackface had passed - so the Shakespeare Theatre Company gave him an all-black cast and let him do the play backwards.

Image: Shakespearedc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shaw (Washington, D.C.)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. A neighborhood that grew out of freedmen's encampments became the pre-Harlem capital of Black America - the Shaw that produced Duke Ellington, fed Langston Hughes the 'sad songs of 7th Street,' and now wrestles with what gentrification has made of all of it.

Read more: Shaw (Washington, D.C.) on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The world's largest collection of New Deal art lives inside the building where Lincoln held his second inaugural ball - 7,000 American artists in galleries laid out under Parthenon porticos and block-long skylights.

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Smithsonian Institution

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Noclip, Public domain. An illegitimate Englishman who never set foot in America left his fortune to a country he had never visited - 104,960 gold sovereigns that became the Smithsonian, 21 museums, a zoo, and the closest thing the United States has to a national attic.

Read more: Smithsonian Institution on Qualla

Image: User:Noclip | Public domain

Spanish–American War Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Of the 2,910 Americans who died in the ten-week Spanish-American War, just 345 fell in combat - the rest died of disease. Arlington's granite column with a bronze eagle remembers all of them, and is the reason their bodies came home in the first place.

St. Dominic Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. A Dominican parish on land Catholic families had held since 1735 survived a 1885 fire, the Berman v. Parker urban renewal that razed Southwest Washington, and became a quiet refuge where Lyndon Johnson came to pray during the Vietnam War.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. John's Episcopal Church (Lafayette Square)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every president since James Madison has attended at least once - and on June 1, 2020, federal officers cleared Lafayette Square with tear gas and pepper balls, then Donald Trump walked across to pose for a photograph holding a Bible in front of the church's boarded-up parish house.

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Supreme Court of the United States

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0. For 146 years the highest court in the country had no building of its own - it borrowed rooms in the Capitol and met in private houses - until Cass Gilbert's marble temple opened in 1935 and gave the Supreme Court the architectural authority its decisions had been claiming since Marbury v. Madison.

Image: Joe Ravi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Takoma Park, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Named in 1883 by a Washingtonian who thought a Lushootseed word for Mount Rainier meant 'near heaven,' Takoma Park became the Berkeley of the East - a sixteen-year-old voting, nuclear-free, sanctuary-city Victorian commuter suburb where the food co-op is the center of town.

Read more: Takoma Park, Maryland on Qualla

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

Thomas Circle

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Named for the Union general known as the Rock of Chickamauga, surrounded by two churches and a tunnel that opened on the same day Hitler invaded Norway, Thomas Circle marks the line between downtown Washington and the city's gentrifying north.

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Tidal Basin

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel J Simanek, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 107-acre flushing reservoir engineered in the 1880s to clean the Washington Channel became, by an accident of diplomatic gift-giving, the most photographed body of water in the United States every spring.

Read more: Tidal Basin on Qualla

Image: Daniel J Simanek | CC BY-SA 3.0

United States Botanic Garden

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0. The oldest continually-operating botanic garden in the United States holds a fern descended from a plant Charles Wilkes brought back from a four-year Pacific circumnavigation in 1842 - and a pair of cycads that may actually be those same originals.

Image: Sdkb | CC BY-SA 4.0

United States Capitol rotunda

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Henry Powell, Public domain. 180 feet up, George Washington floats among the heavens in Brumidi's Apotheosis - the largest fresco in the building, painted during the Civil War as the dome went up in cast iron above the wounded Union soldiers who were using the rotunda as a hospital.

Image: William Henry Powell | Public domain

United States Capitol

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Burned by the British in 1814, expanded through the Civil War, climbed and breached on January 6, 2021 - the Capitol on Jenkins Hill has been continuously rebuilt for 230 years, partly by enslaved laborers who left their names on the bricks, partly by Scottish stonemasons, and partly by a cast-iron dome that took nearly a million dollars during a civil war to finish.

Read more: United States Capitol on Qualla

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Founded in 1917 to support Catholic chaplains during World War I, the conference of American bishops became, a century later, the institution that had to confront one of the largest clergy abuse scandals in the church's history and pay roughly four billion dollars in settlements.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Named for the Army physician who proved yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes, the rose-brick Georgian Revival hospital on Georgia Avenue treated American soldiers for 102 years - from the Spanish-American War to the Iraq War - before closing in 2011 to merge with the Bethesda naval hospital.

Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Washington Airport

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For fourteen years, planes landed on the patch of Virginia mud now occupied by the Pentagon's south parking lot - with a burning garbage dump on one side, an amusement park's roller coaster on the other, and pilots forced to dodge both.

Read more: Washington Airport on Qualla

Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo by User:Aude, taken on May 6, 2006., CC BY-SA 2.5. Named for two formerly segregated elementary schools that were forced to merge, Adams Morgan stretches between Florida Avenue and Columbia Road - the loudest, jumbo-slice-eating, most genuinely cosmopolitan corner of Washington, where Salvadoran pupuserias share blocks with Ethiopian coffee houses.

Image: Photo by User:Aude, taken on May 6, 2006. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Georgetown

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Older than the city around it, built on a tobacco and slave trade economy, ruined by the Civil War, gentrified by John and Jacqueline Kennedy and the federal civil servants who wanted to live near them - Georgetown is what survives when a colonial port town becomes the most expensive neighborhood in Washington.

Read more: Georgetown on Qualla

National Mall

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two miles of grass between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial - planned in 1791, used for cabbage and trash dumping in the 1840s, redesigned in 1901, and now home to twenty-five million visits a year and most of America's secular sacred sites.

Read more: National Mall on Qualla

Shaw (Wikivoyage)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Black Broadway, the home of Duke Ellington's first piano lessons, the place where U Street jazz predated Harlem - Shaw is the neighborhood that produced Duke Ellington, burned in 1968, lost forty years to disinvestment and crack, and reemerged in the 2010s as one of the most expensive parts of the District.

Read more: Shaw (Wikivoyage) on Qualla

West End

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NOAA, Public domain. K Street's lobbyists meet Foggy Bottom's universities meet the Kennedys' Watergate scandal - the small slice of Washington that holds the White House, the World Bank, the Kennedy Center, and the densest population of squirrels ever recorded.

Read more: West End on Qualla

Image: NOAA | Public domain

Washington, D.C.

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A capital city born of compromise in 1790, burned by the British in 1814, redesigned by Beaux-Arts planners in 1901, riot-scarred in 1968, gentrified in the 2000s - Washington holds the federal government, the Smithsonian, the largest Ethiopian community outside Africa, and a hundred miles of monumental sightlines.

Read more: Washington, D.C. on Qualla

Washington, D.C.

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), CC BY-SA 4.0. Three founders ate dinner in June 1790 and decided where to put the United States capital. The compromise placed it on the Potomac, near Washington's plantation, on land surveyed by a Black astronomer whose father had been enslaved.

Read more: Washington, D.C. on Qualla

Image: Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Washington Marriott Marquis

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. It took fifteen years of political fights, three mayors, two competing site proposals, a Supreme Court case, eminent domain, and 520 million dollars in public financing to build the 1,175-room headquarters hotel for Washington's convention center.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. Six lines, 98 stations, an interstate compact between Maryland Virginia and the District, and a transit agency that has built one of the country's largest rapid transit networks and survived the country's most expensive transit crashes - the Washington Metro is what happens when three jurisdictions and the federal government agree to do something together.

Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Washington Metropolitan Area

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Labor Statistics, Public domain. The DMV - District, Maryland, Virginia - is a region defined by a beltway, fueled by federal power, and shaped by some of America's most educated and affluent residents.

Image: Bureau of Labor Statistics | Public domain

Washington Monument

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Art10 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. An obelisk built in two phases more than two decades apart, the Washington Monument bears a visible scar where its marble suddenly changes shade - a record of an unfinished promise and a country at war with itself.

Read more: Washington Monument on Qualla

Image: Art10 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

White House Correspondents' Association

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Founded in 1914 to formalize relations between presidents and reporters, the WHCA is best known for an annual dinner where presidents have been roasting themselves - and being roasted - since 1921.

White House State Ballroom

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HiraV, CC BY 3.0. An 89,000 square-foot addition that replaced the East Wing in 2025 - privately funded, fast-tracked, and the most contested change to the White House complex since Truman's reconstruction.

Image: HiraV | CC BY 3.0

The White House

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit me, Public domain. Burned by the British in 1814, gutted to its sandstone shell by Truman in 1949, and continuously rebuilt by every president who has lived in it, the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania is less a building than a 230-year-old habit.

Read more: The White House on Qualla

Image: me | Public domain

Anacostia Community Museum

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. BlofeldOpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first federally funded community museum in America, born in a 1967 storefront across the river from the National Mall to bring the Smithsonian to a neighborhood the Smithsonian had largely ignored.

Image: Dr. BlofeldOpenStreetMap contributors | CC BY-SA 2.0

Baltimore-Washington Parkway

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. A forty-mile parkway through wooded median between the country's capitals of government and steel - built in part to evacuate Washington in a nuclear emergency, and run for sixty years by the National Park Service.

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Civil War Defenses of Washington

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0. An earthen ring of 68 forts, 93 batteries, and 30 miles of military roads thrown up around Washington in the 1860s - much of it built on land seized from farmers and free Black families whose names mostly went unrecorded.

Image: Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao | CC BY-SA 3.0

College Park, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Geological Survey,, Public domain. Home to the University of Maryland, the world's oldest continuously operating airport, and a historically African American neighborhood that was nearly erased by urban renewal - College Park is a college town still working out what kind of town it wants to be.

Read more: College Park, Maryland on Qualla

Image: United States Geological Survey, | Public domain

University of Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit University of Maryland, Public domain. Founded in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College on land bought by Charles Benedict Calvert, the flagship campus now spreads across 1,250 acres of arboretum, federal partnerships, and the largest academic mall in the United States.

Read more: University of Maryland on Qualla

Image: University of Maryland | Public domain

Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe1020, CC0. An 11.7-mile rail trail on the bones of an electric commuter railway that ran from 1908 to 1935 - finally united across the Patuxent River by a bridge that took twenty-five years to build.

Image: Joe1020 | CC0

Anacostia

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ron Cogswell, CC BY 2.0. The neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River - home to Frederick Douglass, Marvin Gaye, Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, and a complicated history of segregation, demographic shift, and chronic federal neglect.

Read more: Anacostia on Qualla

Image: Ron Cogswell | CC BY 2.0

Annapolis

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, Public domain. Maryland's capital, briefly the capital of the United States, home of the Naval Academy and the largest wooden dome built without nails in the country - all packed into the smallest land area of any state capital.

Read more: Annapolis on Qualla

Image: Smallbones | Public domain

Somerset County, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bwave at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. Maryland's southernmost county was founded in 1666 by Virginia Quakers fleeing a conversion law - and almost became Napoleon's hideout.

Image: Bwave at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NOAA Photo Library, Public domain. An HBCU on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore that began in a converted farmhouse with nine students - and now sends bowlers to NCAA finals and sprinters to the Olympics.

Image: NOAA Photo Library | Public domain

Pocomoke City, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tichnor Brothers, Publisher, Public domain. An Eastern Shore river town named for the black water that flows past it - and the subject of a documentary called The Friendliest Town that was not friendly.

Read more: Pocomoke City, Maryland on Qualla

Image: Tichnor Brothers, Publisher | Public domain

Worcester County, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Linda Roy Walls, CC BY-SA 4.0. Maryland's easternmost county runs from cypress swamp to Atlantic surf, holds the state's only ocean coast, and was once home to the highest proportion of free Black residents in the state.

Image: Linda Roy Walls | CC BY-SA 4.0

Salisbury, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Fischer, CC BY 2.0. The capital of the Eastern Shore is the home of Perdue chicken, the world's first Kindness USA city, and a courthouse lawn that has reckoned with three lynchings.

Read more: Salisbury, Maryland on Qualla

Image: Eric Fischer | CC BY 2.0

Salisbury University

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard J. DeFrancisci, CC BY-SA 3.0. A teachers' college founded in 1925 has become the Eastern Shore's research engine, with a lacrosse program that has won more Division III titles than almost anyone.

Read more: Salisbury University on Qualla

Image: Leonard J. DeFrancisci | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicomico County, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Maryland's last Eastern Shore county, carved out of two older ones in 1867, takes its name from an Algonquian phrase meaning 'a place where houses are built.'

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Arthur W. Perdue Stadium

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gregory Koch, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 5,200-seat ballpark in Salisbury named for a man who started with 50 chickens - and the unlikely venue for a 2009 world boxing title.

Read more: Arthur W. Perdue Stadium on Qualla

Image: Gregory Koch | CC BY-SA 4.0

Assateague Island National Seashore

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonard J. DeFrancisci, CC BY-SA 3.0. The hurricane of 1962 destroyed a planned beach resort on Assateague Island. The federal government bought the wreckage and let the wild ponies keep grazing.

Image: Leonard J. DeFrancisci | CC BY-SA 3.0

Assateague State Park

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fritz Geller-Grimm, CC BY-SA 2.5. Maryland's only ocean beach state park - two miles of dunes, surf, and grazing wild horses on the north end of Assateague Island.

Read more: Assateague State Park on Qualla

Image: Fritz Geller-Grimm | CC BY-SA 2.5

Berlin, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Squelle, CC BY-SA 3.0. An Eastern Shore town pronounced 'Burl'in,' where Julia Roberts left a wedding twice and Man o' War spent his foal years on a nearby farm.

Read more: Berlin, Maryland on Qualla

Image: Squelle | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fenwick Island, Delaware

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Delaware's quiet southernmost beach town - all 355 residents - incorporated itself in 1953 to keep Ocean City from creeping over the state line.

Read more: Fenwick Island, Delaware on Qualla

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ocean City (Maryland)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Dough4872, CC BY-SA 3.0. A ten-mile beach with 6,800 year-round residents and eight million summer visitors - Maryland's only Atlantic Ocean city, packed onto a narrow strip of sand.

Read more: Ocean City (Maryland) on Qualla

Image: User:Dough4872 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ocean City, Maryland

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Ladies' Resort to the Ocean became Maryland's biggest summer city - and the White Marlin Capital of the World - after a hurricane cut its harbor in 1933.

Read more: Ocean City, Maryland on Qualla

Bethany Beach

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A dry beach town founded by a Washington D.C. minister of the Disciples of Christ in 1901 - and still anchored by a 24-foot Chief Little Owl totem pole on Garfield Parkway.

Read more: Bethany Beach on Qualla

Adkins Arboretum

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willcook3, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 400-acre native garden tucked inside Tuckahoe State Park - five miles of paths through the indigenous plant communities of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Read more: Adkins Arboretum on Qualla

Image: Willcook3 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sussex County, Delaware

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kej605, CC BY-SA 3.0. The site of Delaware's first European settlement - a failed Dutch whaling colony in 1631 - and now home to the state's Atlantic beaches and the northernmost bald cypress swamp in America.

Read more: Sussex County, Delaware on Qualla

Image: Kej605 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Absalom Jones

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dwkaminski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Born enslaved near Milford, Delaware in 1746, he bought his wife's freedom before his own, walked out of a segregated church, and became the first Black priest in the Episcopal Church.

Read more: Absalom Jones on Qualla

Image: Dwkaminski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Delaware

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The second-smallest U.S. state, where more than three-fifths of the Fortune 500 incorporate themselves - and where Caesar Rodney's overnight ride decided American independence.

Read more: Delaware on Qualla

Lewes (Delaware)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dough4872, Public domain. The First Town in the First State - founded by Dutch whalers in 1631, massacred a year later, and rebuilt into a Bay-front harbor where the ferry to Cape May still leaves every two hours.

Read more: Lewes (Delaware) on Qualla

Image: Dough4872 | Public domain

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dough4872, Public domain. Founded in 1873 as a Methodist camp-meeting town, the Nation's Summer Capital now hosts Congress, presidents, and Poodle Beach - all without sales tax.

Read more: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Qualla

Image: Dough4872 | Public domain

Rehoboth Beach

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A one-mile boardwalk, Funland since 1962, the Dogfish brewpub since 1995, and tax-free shopping that draws weekend traffic from four states.

Read more: Rehoboth Beach on Qualla

Big Stone Gap, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KJPurscell, CC BY-SA 3.0. A coalfield town that John Fox Jr. made famous, where Elizabeth Taylor once choked on a chicken bone and the lonesome pine still stands in popular memory.

Read more: Big Stone Gap, Virginia on Qualla

Image: KJPurscell | CC BY-SA 3.0

A. P. and Sara Carter House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Maces Spring frame house where A.P. and Sara Carter raised their family while reshaping American music.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

A. P. Carter Homeplace

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swampyank, CC BY-SA 4.0. The half-dovetailed log cabin where A.P. Carter was born in 1891 - now relocated to stand beside the Carter Family Fold.

Read more: A. P. Carter Homeplace on Qualla

Image: Swampyank | CC BY-SA 4.0

A. P. Carter Store

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swampyank, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1945 country store A.P. Carter built after he stopped recording - now the Carter Family Museum.

Read more: A. P. Carter Store on Qualla

Image: Swampyank | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carter Family Fold

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Swampyank, CC BY-SA 4.0. An 842-seat concert venue in Poor Valley where the daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter kept the family's music alive - and where Johnny Cash gave his last public performance.

Read more: Carter Family Fold on Qualla

Image: Swampyank | CC BY-SA 4.0

Scott County, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skye Marthaler, CC BY-SA 3.0. A far-southwestern Virginia county on the Tennessee line, where Daniel Boone built forts, the Wilderness Road carried settlers west, and the Carter Family invented country music.

Read more: Scott County, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Skye Marthaler | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bad Branch Falls State Nature Preserve

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J654567, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 2,639-acre sandstone gorge cut into the face of Pine Mountain, where a 60-foot waterfall spills through some of Kentucky's most biologically rich forest.

Image: J654567 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wise County, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J654567, CC BY-SA 3.0. A Virginia coal county that produced George C. Scott, Napoleon Hill, and Ralph Stanley - and holds two of the commonwealth's highest-security prisons.

Read more: Wise County, Virginia on Qualla

Image: J654567 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Letcher County, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J654567, CC BY-SA 4.0. An eastern Kentucky coal county whose disasters - the 1976 Scotia Mine explosions, the 2022 Appalachian floods, the 2024 courthouse murder - keep reshaping it.

Read more: Letcher County, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: J654567 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pittston Coal Strike

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AFL-CIO, CC BY 2.0. When a coal company stopped paying for retired miners' health care, 2,000 workers and their families turned a hollow in southwest Virginia into Camp Solidarity and held the line for ten months.

Read more: Pittston Coal Strike on Qualla

Image: AFL-CIO | CC BY 2.0

Abingdon Historic District

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven C. Price, CC BY-SA 3.0. A half-mile of Main Street in southwest Virginia preserves 145 contributing buildings, a Greek Revival church, the longest-running professional theater in America, and a hotel built as a private home for nine Preston children.

Image: Steven C. Price | CC BY-SA 3.0

Abingdon, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adamster524, CC BY-SA 2.0. A town built on the Wolf Hill tract in 1778, where Daniel Boone hunted, the Overmountain Men mustered to march toward Kings Mountain, and a young actor named Gregory Peck once worked for his supper at the Barter Theatre.

Read more: Abingdon, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Adamster524 | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bristol, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Where two states share a single Main Street, country music was born in a 1927 recording session, and a 50-dollar paycheck to A.P. Carter and his family launched an entire genre.

Read more: Bristol, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

King-Lancaster-McCoy-Mitchell House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD, CC BY-SA 4.0. The oldest building in Bristol started as a brick farmhouse on a meadow called Kings Meadows in 1820, hosted Andrew Jackson, and stayed in the Mitchell family for more than a century when a young man's vow came true.

Image: Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD | CC BY-SA 4.0

Virginia Intermont College

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. A women's college that opened in 1884, won three straight NAIA cross-country titles in the 2000s, closed in 2014 after 130 years, and burned to the ground a decade later on a December morning.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Washington County, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RebelAt at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. Carved out of frontier Fincastle County in 1776 and named for a sitting general fighting a war he might still lose, this county at the top of the Holston Valley has been Virginia's southwestern doorstep for two and a half centuries.

Image: RebelAt at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Emory and Henry University

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jediah999, CC BY-SA 3.0. The oldest college in Southwest Virginia, founded by Methodists in 1836, where Wiley Hall served as a Confederate hospital, J.E.B. Stuart enrolled as a teenager, and Frank Rowlett cracked the Japanese diplomatic code.

Image: Jediah999 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alice Lloyd College

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. A journalist from Cambridge, Massachusetts and a teacher from New York arrived in a Kentucky hollow in 1916 and started a school that today guarantees free tuition to students from 108 Appalachian counties who agree to do 160 hours of work each semester.

Read more: Alice Lloyd College on Qualla

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Big Sandy Expedition

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the autumn of 1861, a Union general called Bull Nelson marched five thousand Ohio and Kentucky volunteers up the Big Sandy Valley in mud and rain, fought a Confederate force entrenched on a thousand-foot hogback, and won by rolling boulders down the hill.

Read more: Big Sandy Expedition on Qualla

Breaks Interstate Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bpluke01, CC BY-SA 4.0. Daniel Boone gave this Appalachian gorge its name in 1767 - and locals have called it the Grand Canyon of the South ever since.

Read more: Breaks Interstate Park on Qualla

Image: Bpluke01 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pikeville, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doc Searls, CC BY 2.0. The town that moved a mountain to save itself, deep in the country where the Hatfields and McCoys fought their famous feud.

Read more: Pikeville, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: Doc Searls | CC BY 2.0

University of Pikeville

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Epling-media, CC BY-SA 4.0. A small Presbyterian college on a hillside in coal country that quietly became one of the three medical schools in Kentucky.

Read more: University of Pikeville on Qualla

Image: Epling-media | CC BY-SA 4.0

Prestonsburg, Kentucky bus crash

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. On a cold February morning in 1958, a school bus on U.S. 23 went into the flooded Levisa Fork. Twenty-six children and their driver did not come home.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Johnson County, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. J654567 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. U.S. 23 runs through here - the highway country music historians call the Country Music Highway, where Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle and Chris Stapleton all grew up within a few hollers of each other.

Read more: Johnson County, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. J654567 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Paintsville, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J654567, CC BY-SA 3.0. Named for the tribal art Shawnee hunters painted on debarked trees by the salt lick. Loretta Lynn grew up just up the holler.

Read more: Paintsville, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: J654567 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Martin County coal slurry spill

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just after midnight on October 11, 2000, the bottom dropped out of a Massey Energy coal slurry pond. 306 million gallons. About 28 times the Exxon Valdez. The water in 27,000 homes turned black.

2002 Appalachian School of Law shooting

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On January 16, 2002, three people died at a small law school in Grundy, Virginia: Dean Anthony Sutin, Professor Thomas Blackwell, and first-year student Angela Dales.

Appalachian School of Law

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tburgess68, CC BY-SA 3.0. A small private law school in a Grundy, Virginia coal town, founded with a Latin motto: From the rock of truth, justice arises.

Image: Tburgess68 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Buchanan County, Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SheepNotGoats (Talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The only county in Virginia that touches both Kentucky and West Virginia - so far back in the mountains that locals pronounce its name differently from the president it was named for.

Image: SheepNotGoats (Talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

War, West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The smallest city in West Virginia carries a name shared by no other place in America, and a history of coal that built it and a slow ebb that has nearly emptied it.

Read more: War, West Virginia on Qualla

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Welch, West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Department of the Interior. Solid Fuels Administration For War. 4/19/1943-6/30/1947, Public domain. Once called "The Heart of the Nation's Coal Bin," Welch built the country's first municipal parking garage, hosted the first federal food stamps, and watched the coalfield empty around it.

Read more: Welch, West Virginia on Qualla

Image: Department of the Interior. Solid Fuels Administration For War. 4/19/1943-6/30/1947 | Public domain

Matewan Historic District

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. On May 19, 1920, ten men died on these two streets in a shootout between coal miners, a sympathetic mayor and police chief, and the company detectives sent to break a strike.

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mingo County, West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Badagnani at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. West Virginia's youngest county, carved from secessionist Logan County in 1895, holds the Tug Fork border with Kentucky, the town of Matewan, and a labor and political history as steep as its hills.

Image: Badagnani at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Logan County, West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 4.0. Named for a Mingo chief who lost his family to settler violence, Logan County is the heart of the southern West Virginia coalfield and the site of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor uprising in American history.

Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 4.0

Mingo Oak

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Celticchrys, CC BY-SA 3.0. For roughly 582 years the world's largest and oldest white oak stood in a Mingo County cove until the sulfur fumes of a burning coal spoil tip killed it in 1938.

Read more: Mingo Oak on Qualla

Image: Celticchrys | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aracoma Alma Mine accident

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On January 19, 2006, a conveyor-belt fire in a Massey Energy mine near Melville, West Virginia, killed Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield after smoke poured into an escape route through two missing ventilation walls.

Kentucky Appalachians

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 3.0 us. The mountains that gave America Loretta Lynn, Chris Stapleton, and a poet laureate who wrote about hill country with the precision of a botanist.

Read more: Kentucky Appalachians on Qualla

Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 3.0 us

Yatesville Lake

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Buaidh, CC BY-SA 4.0. A serpentine reservoir on Blaine Creek where a 19th-century cabin and an oil well exhibit remember the valley that the lake covered up.

Read more: Yatesville Lake on Qualla

Image: Buaidh | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fred M. Vinson Museum and Welcome Center

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The jailer's house in Louisa, Kentucky where a future Chief Justice of the United States was born above the cells his father supervised.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Beech Fork State Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Youngamerican and touched up by User:WVhybrid, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 1970s recreation area built around an Army Corps flood-control lake where electric trolling motors enforce a particular kind of quiet.

Read more: Beech Fork State Park on Qualla

Image: User:Youngamerican and touched up by User:WVhybrid | CC BY-SA 3.0

1993 East Carter High School Shooting

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An English teacher and a head custodian were killed in a Grayson, Kentucky classroom in 1993 - one of the early American school shootings that did not yet feel like a pattern.

Ashland, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Augiejv, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Ohio River steel town that raised Billy Ray Cyrus, Naomi Judd, and Ashley Judd, and still throws a Fourth of July weekend party that draws three states.

Read more: Ashland, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: Augiejv | CC BY-SA 3.0

Congregation Agudath Achim

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An Eastern European Jewish congregation that built a synagogue in steel-town Kentucky in 1938, closed in 1986, and spent its last twelve years hoping enough Jews would return to start again.

Greenbo Lake State Resort Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 3,600-acre park born from a 1948 fishing trip, with a fieldstone lodge named for poet Jesse Stuart and a lake that has produced two state-record largemouth bass.

Highlands Museum and Discovery Center

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J654567, CC BY-SA 3.0. A combined heritage center and children's science museum housed in an old Ashland department store, with exhibits on the Eastern Kentucky coalfields.

Image: J654567 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mayo Mansion

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 17,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts house in Ashland, Kentucky, built by remodeling around World War I rationing rules - and finished with marble pulled out of the owner's other mansion in Paintsville.

Read more: Mayo Mansion on Qualla

Paramount Arts Center

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 1931 Rapp and Rapp movie palace that survived the Depression, hosted Billy Ray Cyrus's Achy Breaky Heart video, and still claims a friendly ghost named Joe.

Read more: Paramount Arts Center on Qualla

Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ironton, Ohio

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vasiliymeshko, CC BY 4.0. The Ohio River town that forged iron for the USS Monitor, helped enslaved people escape on the Underground Railroad, and accidentally invented the NFL's Thanksgiving Day game.

Read more: Ironton, Ohio on Qualla

Image: Vasiliymeshko | CC BY 4.0

Jesse Stuart Memorial Bridge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vbofficial, Public domain. A 1984 viaduct bridge built directly on top of the Greenup Lock and Dam, naming a road crossing for the Kentucky poet laureate whose hills it leaves.

Image: Vbofficial | Public domain

2022 Huntington High School Walkouts

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Jewish student asked to leave a mandatory Christian revival assembly in West Virginia, was refused, and the resulting student-led walkouts became a national Establishment Clause case.

Big Dipper at Camden Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 1958 wooden roller coaster in Huntington, West Virginia - the largest and oldest in the state, and one of only three surviving National Amusement Devices coasters anywhere.

Camden Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One of thirteen surviving trolley parks in the United States, founded in 1903 by an interurban railway company and still run by the family that bought it from the trolleys.

Read more: Camden Park on Qualla

Camden Park Mound

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heironymous Rowe (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. An Adena culture burial mound, two thousand years old, sitting at the center of a working West Virginia amusement park - the third-largest such mound in the state.

Read more: Camden Park Mound on Qualla

Image: Heironymous Rowe (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carnegie Public Library, Huntington

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wv funnyman, CC BY-SA 4.0. Huntington's 1903 Carnegie library, where a Union soldier statue vanished from the front lawn in 1915 amid controversy over a planned Confederate monument and was never seen again.

Image: Wv funnyman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catlettsburg, Kentucky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 3.0 us. The Boyd County seat at the mouth of the Big Sandy River, once the largest hardwood timber market in the world - and home to the clown who revamped Ronald McDonald.

Read more: Catlettsburg, Kentucky on Qualla

Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 3.0 us

Catlettsburg Refinery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vbofficial, Public domain. A 650-acre oil refinery on the Big Sandy River that processes more than 291,000 barrels of crude a day - the industrial heart of the Ashland-Huntington corridor.

Read more: Catlettsburg Refinery on Qualla

Image: Vbofficial | Public domain

Douglass Junior and Senior High School

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Huntington's segregation-era school for African American students - the institution that educated NBA Hall of Famer Hal Greer and historian Carter G. Woodson, founder of Black History Month.

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Downtown Huntington Historic District

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wv funnyman, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 112-building National Register district that preserves the commercial heart of a Gilded Age railroad city - including an opera house from 1885 and a 1928 movie palace still in use.

Image: Wv funnyman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guyandotte

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An eighteenth-century French settlement at the mouth of the Guyandotte River, burned by Union troops in 1861 after a Confederate raid - now a quiet Huntington neighborhood older than the city around it.

Read more: Guyandotte on Qualla

Guyandotte River Train Wreck

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Xpda, Public domain. On New Year's Day 1913, a Chesapeake and Ohio bridge collapsed under a Mikado locomotive crossing the Guyandotte River, killing the engineer and six bridge workers.

Image: Xpda | Public domain

Heritage Farm Museum and Village

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rlely777, CC BY-SA 4.0. A West Virginia open-air museum that grew from one couple's curiosity about the logs in their own farmhouse walls into the state's first Smithsonian affiliate.

Image: Rlely777 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Huntington Museum of Art

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gkwfleming1974, CC BY-SA 4.0. West Virginia's largest art museum, designed in part by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, holding Renoir, Picasso, and a firearms collection that ranks third in the nation.

Read more: Huntington Museum of Art on Qualla

Image: Gkwfleming1974 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Huntington, West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Jewel City - West Virginia's second-largest city, built by railroad money in 1871, named for the man who built it, home to Marshall University and the world's largest rotating root beer mug.

Keith-Albee Theatre

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wv funnyman, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thought to be the second-largest theater in America when it opened in 1928 - a 3,000-seat Thomas W. Lamb movie palace in New Spanish Baroque style, with a reinstalled 1927 Wurlitzer organ.

Read more: Keith-Albee Theatre on Qualla

Image: Wv funnyman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Macedonia Baptist Church

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. An Ohio church built by free Black settlers, including thirty-two people freed from a Virginia plantation in 1849 and given land near Burlington to start their lives over.

Read more: Macedonia Baptist Church on Qualla

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Marshall University

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wv funnyman, CC BY-SA 4.0. A West Virginia university founded in 1837 that lost 75 people in a 1970 plane crash that killed nearly its entire football team and reshaped a city's identity forever.

Read more: Marshall University on Qualla

Image: Wv funnyman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Memorial Arch

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jrappold, CC BY-SA 3.0. The only triumphal arch in West Virginia - a 42-foot Indiana limestone monument to Cabell County's World War I dead, built between 1924 and 1929.

Read more: Memorial Arch on Qualla

Image: Jrappold | CC BY-SA 3.0

Memphis Tennessee Garrison House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Huntington home of Memphis Tennessee Garrison, a teacher and civil rights organizer who led the West Virginia NAACP and lived in this modest frame house for forty years.

Museum of Radio and Technology

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Samz73428091, CC BY 4.0. A West Virginia museum in a converted 1920s elementary school, displaying working crystal radios, a 1930s 5,000-watt AM transmitter, and a Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab kit.

Image: Samz73428091 | CC BY 4.0

Old Main, Marshall University

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeanne6924, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marshall University's symbolic heart - five connected buildings constructed in stages between 1868 and 1907 on land that began as a one-room log church in the 1820s.

Image: Jeanne6924 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ritter Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. A lumberman's donation became Huntington's green heart - 75 acres of roses, footbridges, and trails along the Ohio River bottomlands.

Read more: Ritter Park on Qualla

Image: Youngamerican at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Simms School Building

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. A 1920 Huntington schoolhouse with Doric columns and a circular interior hallway, now home to twenty senior apartments.

Read more: Simms School Building on Qualla

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tri-State Airport

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Geological Survey (USGS), Public domain. A ridge-top airfield outside Huntington, West Virginia, forever marked by the November 1970 plane crash that killed nearly the entire Marshall football team.

Read more: Tri-State Airport on Qualla

Image: United States Geological Survey (USGS) | Public domain

West Virginia Colored Children's Home

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Youngamerican (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. For more than a century, this Huntington institution sheltered Black orphans and elders in a segregated state - and then, in 2011, it was demolished.

Image: Youngamerican (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0