Qualla: Pocahontas Times Print Shop

Pocahontas Times Print Shop: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The numbers are small. The building measures roughly 21 feet by 75 feet - the footprint of a modest middle-class house. It is one story, framed in wood, rectangular and unadorned. But behind its plain front, a weekly newspaper has been put together in this Marlinton shop since 1900, using equipment that has barely changed since the early twentieth century. As recently as the 1970s, a paper folder and press installed around 1911 were still in use. The Pocahontas Times, which the shop was built to produce, has been published continuously since 1882 - one of the longest unbroken runs of any newspaper in West Virginia.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Pocahontas Times Print Shop: A Shop for a Boom-Town Paper

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Pocahontas Times was founded in 1882, a decade and a half before the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway reached Marlinton in 1899 and transformed the sleepy county seat into a railroad and lumber boom town. By 1900, when the print shop was built, the paper needed a permanent home co...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Pocahontas Times Print Shop: Equipment from 1911

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The press and paper folder installed around 1911 stayed in use for more than 60 years. As late as the 1970s, the shop was still producing the Times on equipment that had been new when the Wright Brothers were still figuring out flight. Small-town print shops were often the last p...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Pocahontas Times Print Shop: On the National Register, Still in Use

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Pocahontas Times Print Shop was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 - one of a small national category of industrial-printing buildings recognized for their role in local journalism history. Its peers on the Register include the Basin Republican-Rustler...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Pocahontas Times Print Shop: Why Weekly Newspapers Matter

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The weekly community newspaper is one of the most distinctive American institutions, and the Pocahontas Times is among its longest-running examples. The paper covers school board meetings, county commission decisions, high-school sports, obituaries, weddings, and the kind of loca...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain