Qualla: Monroe County, West Virginia

Monroe County, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Two men were pitching horseshoes near Peterstown in 1928 when one of them noticed something glinting in the grass. The stone turned out to be a 34.46-carat diamond - later known as the Jones Diamond or the Punch Jones Diamond, named for William Jones, on whose property it lay. It remains the largest alluvial diamond ever found in North America. The story is the kind of thing that happens in Monroe County, a quiet corner of southeastern West Virginia that keeps producing oversized claims for a place of just 12,376 people. James Monroe lent the county his name in 1799, three years before he became the fifth President of the United States. Almost everything else worth knowing about Monroe County is older than that, or stranger.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Monroe County, West Virginia: Where Paleontology Began

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. At the end of the 18th century, saltpeter miners working in Haynes Cave near Sweet Springs broke through to a chamber full of strange bones. The diggers crated some up and shipped them to a man who liked that sort of mail - Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, then Vice President, examin...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monroe County, West Virginia: The Union Hole and the Civil War

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G. W. Peterkin, Public domain. When Virginia seceded in 1861, Monroe County's white men were overwhelmingly pro-Confederate - the western secession movement that created West Virginia in 1863 included Monroe by Congressional decree, not local vote. But pockets of Union sympathy survived in the rougher country ...

Image: G. W. Peterkin | Public domain

Monroe County, West Virginia: Sweet Springs and the Soldier of Garcia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Andrew Summers Rowan was born in Gap Mills in 1857 and would not have entered American folklore at all except for a single mission. In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Army needed to contact Cuban insurgent leader Calixto Garcia somewhere in the mountains of...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monroe County, West Virginia: Alderson, Saltpeter, and the Federal Prison

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CZmarlin — Christopher Ziemnowicz, releases all rights but a photo credit would be appreciated if this image is used anywhere other than Wikipedia. Please leave a note at Wikipedia here. Thank you!, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Federal Bureau of Prisons' Federal Prison Camp at Alderson - which straddles the Monroe-Summers county line - was the first federal prison for women in the United States, opened in 1927. Its most famous inmate was Martha Stewart, who served five months there in 2004-2005 afte...

Image: CZmarlin — Christopher Ziemnowicz, releases all rights but a photo credit would be appreciated if this image is used anywhere other than Wikipedia. Please leave a note at Wikipedia here. Thank you! | CC BY-SA 3.0

Monroe County, West Virginia: Living Memory and Farmers' Day

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Monroe County's modern county seat, Union, sits on the rolling karst pastureland that defines the county - a landscape of dairy farms, covered bridges, and limestone bluffs. Every first Saturday in June, Union hosts Farmers' Day, founded by Louie H. Peters and now stretching into...

Image: Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Monroe County, West Virginia: Aviator's Notes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Monroe County sits at 37.56 N, 80.54 W, on the rolling plateau between the Greenbrier Valley and the Virginia state line, with terrain reaching 3,862 feet on the eastern ridges. The nearest commercial airport is Greenbrier Valley Regional (KLWB) at Lewisburg, about 15 nautical mi...

Image: David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA | CC BY 2.0