Free Republic

PARKERSBURG - A Meigs County native has written a book about the Battle of Point Pleasant and whether it was the first fought in the Revolutionary War. Charles S. Badgley of the Badgley Publishing Co., Canal Winchester, Ohio, says he often heard while growing up along the river in Meigs County that the battle was the first in the war, the basis of his most recent novel, "A Point of Controversy." Conventional wisdom was the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 were the first in the war of independence. "The controversy has been around a long time, it actually...

The establishment of the Shenandoah National Park displaced the traditional communities of Backcountry folk who had lived for generations in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Front Royal and Rockfish Gap. By and large, the houses, barns, and stores which were within the Park boundaries were not spared -- they were razed. [Vintage photographs]