By Del. David Elliott Pritt, The Fayette Tribune
FAYETTE COUNTY, W.Va. — Growing up in Fayette County, I had the honor of knowing and being raised by members of our nation’s “greatest generation.” My great-grandma Dorothy and other older family members who lived through the Great Depression and World War II always told me stories of their childhoods here in Fayette County. I grew up hearing stories of infamous hunting and camping trips on Beury Mountain, miners’ strikes in the Minden Coal Camp, wild-west style tales of turn of the century Thurmond back in its hey-day. I even shifted my first “stick shift” gears on my dad’s old hard-body Nissan pick-up truck right there on Beury Mountain Road sitting on my dad’s lap as a child. I can trace my family roots in Fayette County as far back as the early 1800s — before King Coal even hit the scene in a big way. My family was always there as far back as collective family memory can recall.
Hearing these stories of Fayette County captivated me as a child, and I know they instilled within me the love for our local history that I have today. I would spend hours and hours as a child leafing through my grandma’s copy of “The History of Fayette County,” imagining myself there among those people — many of them my own family members. Every year, my grandma Janet and great-grandma Dorothy would allow me to tag along with them to the annual Minden Reunion. I even have memories of walking from Minden to Thurmond along the train tracks with the other participants, as this was the big event of the reunion every year.
Most of those people are gone now; all that remain of them are some things they left behind and the stories we were privileged enough to be told. All we have left are those cherished family stories and some physical remains of a time that is now gone. Our collective history is falling down all around us as the forest takes back buildings from historic coal camps, or arson and fire claim what is left. And now, our very own National Park Service seeks to expedite this process in the Thurmond area by demolishing over 30 structures — some of them even on the National Historic Register!
