Qualla: Richwood, West Virginia

Richwood, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every April, the town of Richwood smells like garlic dropped down a chimney. The Feast of the Ramson, which the locals also call the Ramp Festival, brings cooks and eaters from across the Appalachians to a former lumber town that has, against the odds and against fashion, made the pungent wild leek called the ramp into civic identity. Richwood calls itself the Ramp Capital of the World. The claim is defensible: this is where the first ramp festival in the United States started in 1938, and where the local high school once held an annual Ramson Dinner that students had to attend before being allowed back into class.

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Richwood, West Virginia: Boom and Bust

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Richwood was incorporated in 1901, riding the wave of the central Appalachian timber rush. The Cherry River Boom and Lumber Company built what was, briefly, the largest band sawmill in the world here, slicing red spruce and hemlock that had stood for centuries into boards that be...

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Richwood, West Virginia: The Ramp

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Allium tricoccum grows in the cool damp leaf litter of eastern hardwood forests, and for two or three weeks each spring it pushes up broad green leaves and white bulbs that taste like a fight between garlic and onion. Indigenous Appalachians ate ramps as a spring tonic for centur...

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Richwood, West Virginia: Gateway to the Cranberries

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Richwood sits on the western edge of the Monongahela National Forest, and most travelers come here as a base for the Cranberry Wilderness, the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, and the Falls of Hill Creek. The Cranberry Glades are a high-elevation peat bog system - the largest in ...

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Richwood, West Virginia: Winter

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Wikivoyage entry for Richwood includes a warning that visitors should not skim: the roads in this part of the state are not always cleared in winter and can become impassable even with four-wheel drive. This is the kind of country where snow drifts settle into the hollows and...

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Richwood, West Virginia: What Remains

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The population today is roughly 1,900, less than a third of what it was at peak. The big mill is gone. The downtown carries the architecture of optimism - brick storefronts on a Main Street built for more people than now live here - and the Wikivoyage entry helpfully lists a sing...

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