Around Morgantown

Around Morgantown is a "picture history" of our home town, Morgantown, West Virginia. It is part of Arcadia Publishing Company;'s Images of America series.

It is a 128 page paperback containing about 220 pictures dating from about 1850 to the present. List price is $19.95. It will be available starting 8 May 2007 in Morgantown area bookstores as well as through on-line book agents. It can also be ordered directly from Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or www.ArcadiaPublishing.com

Morgantown was settled before the American Revolution and became the seat of Monongalia County, VA, just south of the Mason-Dixon line. The arrival of railroads and reliable river transportation along with the discovery of oil and gas brought new industries to the area. Since 1960, Morgantown has increasingly become a post-industrial city as growing federal laboratories and an expanding university has made research, teaching and scholarship the primary employment base. Around Morgantown illustrates a variety of historic scenes and activities within a 15-mile radius of the courthouse and shows why several magazines have recently named Morgantown one of the best small cities in America.

The book is essentially a series of short stories tied to pictures. We tried to focus on pictures capturing places and events rather than forgotten people of historical importance. We have included stories about glass, coal, tourism, and West Virginia University as well as a general history of the town. Although Morgantown is often mis-portrayed as a town with little respect for historic structures, readers will recognize many of the buildings shown in photos and postcards from over a hundred years ago.

Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States. Norma and I had worked on several local books produced as private press editions. I was very impressed by the way in which Arcadia Publishing has helped authors develop and market books which illustrate community histories. I felt that Morgantown should not be left out of their long list of West Virginia titles. Far too often local history books fail to receive good distribution because there is no real business sense behind them. Arcadia provided us with good guidelines on preparing pictures and writing captions, and also has the commercial skills which we lack.

I had been collecting Morgantown stories and pictures for several years as part of my activities with the Riverfront Museums project. The book provided an excuse to widen my search of the local libraries, and to explore the Internet, looking for images which have not been recently published in other works. Of course Earl Core's five volume Bi-Centennial book The Monongalia Story provided a ready reference for details.

We have included stories about glass, coal, tourism, transportation, and West Virginia University as well as a general history of the town. This includes many photos of both exteriors and interiors of Morgantown area glass plants, life in the “coal camps” of Scotts Run just outside of Morgantown, and historic photographs of West Virginia University and local schools.