In Pocahontas County on this day 95 years ago, Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park was dedicated.

Which was an appropriate date, as many will say.

That’s because the intense, 1863 skirmish for which the park is named was also West Virginia’s Revolutionary War, of sorts.

Even with West Virginia entering the Union that June, the Confederacy still maintained a strong military presence within the new, squiggly borders of the only state in the U.S. born of the Civil War.

The ink was barely dry on West Virginia’s statehood papers when everything spilled over the cold morning of Nov. 6.

Some 5,000 soldiers in blue uniforms dug in at the summit of Droop Mountain against 1,700 soldiers wearing gray. The town of Lewisburg and the Virginia-Tennessee railroad line were both at stake.

The first shots were fired at 11 a.m. — and by 1:45 p.m., the enemies were staring one another dead in the face.

Brutal, hand-to-hand fighting ensued.

By 3 p.m., the Confederate troops began pulling back, reporting that were being overrun by the soldiers from the Union.

An hour later, they were in full retreat. It was over. Some 275 soldiers in gray were dead on the battlefield, according to estimates. Another 119 Union soldiers were casualties of war.

Southern forces never took a stab at the new West Virginia after that.

“Well, they were tenacious, for sure,” author and archivist Stan B. Cohen said by telephone, two days before the Fourth of July, from his home in Montana.

“I always saw that as kind of a West Virginia thing,” the longtime Missoula resident said.

It was a mostly sunny day on July 4, 1929, when Droop Mountain became the first state park in West Virginia.

According to newspaper accounts, as many as 10,000 poured into the place, to see the handiwork of it all.

There were speeches and proclamations. More poignantly, a handful of elderly Civil War veterans on both sides of the fighting were there to shake hands.

The logo — and the Last Frontier
Missoula is where Cohen, a Charleston native and WVU graduate, started making his name.

He enjoys taking in all that Big Sky and the western range of the Rockies he can regard from his window, but if you ask him – he’ll still proudly proclaim his Mountain State pedigree.

“Everybody out here knows I’m from there,” he said.

“I was talking about Jerry West with a guy at my bank just now. I tell everyone I’m a West Virginian who just happens to live in Montana.”

Cohen earned a geology degree in 1960 from WVU.

As an undergrad, he thrilled to the basketball conquests of the aforementioned West, a cool, steely counterpart to Hot Rod Hundley, who paired his own prowess in the game with glorious clowning and comedic flair.

It was a good time to be a fan of WVU’s basketball Mountaineers, he said.

People would pack the now-gone Stansbury Field House on Beechurst Avenue, where the seats went right down to the court.

Dust would rain from the rafters when fans would stomp their feet in appreciation. (So too would colorful language and creative insults, when they weren’t pleased).

Cohen was born in the Mountain State’s capital city in 1938, a son of Benjamin Franklin Cohen and Ruth Lieberman Cohen.

He worked in the oil and gas industry here briefly after WVU, before opportunities in the U.S. Forest Service took him to Montana and Alaska.

The West Virginian has been a small business owner and publishing house founder and proprietor.

His 1976 book, “A Pictorial Guide to West Virginia’s Civil War Sites,” carries the imprint of his Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., in his Charleston hometown. He later sold the business to a friend.

Out west, he’s primarily regarded as a writer and historian.

“I might be a little more known in Alaska than I am in Montana,” he said.

He’s penned more than 70 books on everything from wildlife to military history, while publishing close to 400.

He’s authored at least 15 books on America’s Last Frontier and is a recipient of the state’s Alaska History Award.

At 86, he has no plans of slowing down, as he’s currently writing a historical study of America’s monorail and alternate transportation systems — “I’m guessing the PRT is still going in Morgantown?” he asked.

Wars are just as much about real estate as they are ideologies, and the Mountain State is a revolution of place regarding both, Cohen said.

It’s home.

“I haven’t been back to West Virginia in six years. And that’s starting to bug me.”

HINTON, W.Va. (WVVA) – After several years of preparation, the division of natural resources have launched their dive and rescue team for the state of West Virginia.

“Today we’ve unveiled our dive team. This is a statewide effort that’s been going on for some time. It’s taken an immense amount of training and gathering of equipment and putting together policy and all the departmental stuff,” said JB Smith. “So, we just kind of unveiled it. These guys have been in the works for several months or years now, honestly, and we’re just kind of getting ready to show it off to the state.”

Governor Jim Justice is excited to have this new resource available for the state. The governor says he believes with these safety measures in place more people will flock to the mountain state and continue to drive up tourism, which has played a factor in allowing this launch to happen.

“We didn’t have the money. You know, now we do. We’re flourishing in every category tourism, license sales and fishing and hunting, all the different things that are going on. We’re flourishing in this state and therefore we have the money and that’s why we’re how we’re able to do this,” said Justice.

The environment, as well as what is being recovered, dictates what the diver will be equipped with, and what steps need to be taken. Safety precautions between officers in the water and those who are assuring their safety from above, include things like having radios and hand signals to always guarantee safety.

Training to become a certified diver is not an easy task, including everything from swimming tests to learning how to navigate with your hands in sometimes eight inches of visibility. One diver talks about the eerie feeling of being underwater while barely being able to see.

“When you’re searching for something, sometimes you can’t see it. It’s all about feeling and you’ve got to get on top of it,” said Zachary Mills. “So, once you feel it, then you have to try to put your eyes on it, which is very difficult, but our underwater lights do help a little bit. It’s just very eerie feeling when you have to rely on your sense of feel versus see”

With great honor these divers carry the responsibility of being side by side with individuals in their time of need.

Copyright 2024 WVVA. All rights reserved.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force West Virginia to spend $330 million to improve prison and jail conditions statewide and fill worker vacancies.

U.S. District Judge Irene Berger ruled Tuesday in Beckley in favor of motions by Gov. Jim Justice and state Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia to dismiss the suit.

The lawsuit was filed in August 2023 by inmates at the maximum-security Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County and the Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County and on behalf of a juvenile at a detention facility in Boone County.

Berger found the plaintiffs had no standing to pursue the lawsuit, ruling there was no direct connection between the conduct of Justice and Sorsaia and the allegations in the lawsuit that overcrowding was ignored and that regular funding wasn’t provided for facility upkeep.

While the plaintiffs sought the spending of state budget surplus funds to address corrections staffing and deferred maintenance of prison and jail facilities, “Secretary Sorsaia’s budget authority extends only so far” because it requires legislative approval, Berger wrote.

Berger also said she could not order the Republican governor to use his discretionary power to commute sentences and pardon inmates to address overcrowding.

In May, Justice ended a nearly two-year state of emergency over staffing in the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state National Guard was used to help stop worker attrition at jails and prisons. Last summer, the vacancy rate was more than 30%. Just over 730 National Guard members worked in 17 correctional facilities while the state of emergency was in place.

Gen. William E. Crane, the state National Guard’s adjutant general, had said nearly 240 people have graduated from the state’s corrections academy since January, while 38 National Guard members assigned to work in the jails and prisons decided to stay on permanently.

Last summer, state lawmakers meeting in a special session approved over $21 million for correctional officer pay increases, along with two one-time bonuses of $2,294 for other jail staff who are not correctional officers, such as kitchen staff.

Last year, the state agreed to pay $4 million to settle a separate class-action lawsuit filed by inmates over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver.