Qualla: Memorial Arch

Memorial Arch: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Cabell County, West Virginia, sent soldiers to France during World War I. Some came back. Some did not. When the war ended in 1918, surviving family members and community leaders organized the Cabell County War Memorial Association with a clear goal: build a permanent monument in Huntington's Memorial Park honoring both the dead and those who had served. The result was completed between 1924 and 1929 - the Memorial Arch, 42 feet high and 34 feet wide, built of gray Indiana limestone on a gray granite base, decorated with Classical Revival bas-relief carvings. It is the only triumphal-style arch in the state of West Virginia. The dead it honors have not been forgotten because the arch keeps remembering them for the community that built it.

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Memorial Arch: The Association and the Idea

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daderot, CC0. The Cabell County War Memorial Association formed in the years immediately after the Armistice with a specific charge: create a monument substantial enough to be worthy of the loss. The triumphal arch form, with its roots in Roman imperial monuments and its long modern American h...

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Image: Daderot | CC0

Memorial Arch: Built in Limestone

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wv funnyman, CC BY-SA 4.0. Indiana limestone is the workhorse American building stone of the early twentieth century. Quarried in the Bedford and Bloomington areas of southern Indiana, it has been used to build the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the National Cathedral, and innumerable smaller civic m...

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Image: Wv funnyman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Memorial Arch: The Only One in the State

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Youngamerican and touched up by User:WVhybrid, CC BY-SA 3.0. West Virginia has many war memorials. It has obelisks, statues, plaques, walls, and small monuments at courthouse squares throughout the state. It has only one triumphal arch. The Huntington Memorial Arch's status as the only such structure in West Virginia matters as a matter of...

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

Memorial Arch: The 1980 Rededication

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kuyler McComas (Kuyman), CC BY-SA 3.0. The arch was rededicated in 1980 - sixty-two years after the Armistice and fifty-one years after the original completion. By that point most of the Cabell County veterans of World War I were dead. The rededication formally extended the memorial's meaning to include all American m...

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Image: Kuyler McComas (Kuyman) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Memorial Arch: Memorial Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Parker, CC BY-SA 2.5. Memorial Park is a green expanse in southern Huntington that anchors the arch as its centerpiece. The park sits south of the railroad tracks that bisect the city, near Ritter Park, in the residential neighborhoods between the downtown core and the wealthier hills above the city. ...

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Image: Dave Parker | CC BY-SA 2.5