Let me preface this by saying I am not a good writer or blogger, but this Challenge Of Travel sounded like fun. I am always interested in seeing new places. Continue on if you'd like as this is as much about me as it is the town I live in, Harrisville, WV. Thank you, Erin, for including me and I hope you all enjoy it.
It's the fifth of August, a simply gorgeous day, so I thought I run out and get a few pics for this blog. This is the scene from my front porch. The parking lot you see across the street belongs to the Baptist Church you see in the picture below.
Harrisville is a small and very quaint town in rural West Virginia. It has a population according to the 2010 census of 1876 people. Some of our architecture is old and beautiful, while the new is quickly built, it is not nearly are pretty.
I was about four days out of high school from a neighboring county when I got my first job at Pineview Nursing Home. There were patients there in ages from their 40's to one or two that lived to their 100's. I loved each and every one of them that I worked with and cried many, many tears all the way home many evenings. Thirty some miles one way and I did that for almost a year. I promised my mom and dad that would never happen to them, but little did I know...
After the nursing home, I got a job at one of our blouse factories. Sadly, the one I worked at has long been closed down and now just looks like a storage shed, but a huge storage shed!
In it's heyday, there were busloads of people that would come down from Ohio and other places, I guess, to come to the outlet for fashionable clothes back in the 1980's or so. This is just one end, it is a huge building.
Just across from the factory was one of our grocery stores and and the second floor there are apartments. I lived in the first one along with a roommate that was one of my best friends in High School. We were so poor, but we had a good time! This building now is stuffed full of collectibles and antiques.
Harrisville High School is where my husband graduated from in 1955. The building now has doctors offices and I'm not sure what else. It is a beautiful three story building sitting high on a hill.
We actually have eight stop lights, but they are all in one intersection of Main Street...
We have several beauty shops, as well as several churches, two gas stations-one that has sandwiches, two auto body shops, a dentist, a couple Pharmacies, funeral home, a museum, a Laundromat, two flower shops, a radio station, two used car lots, telephone company, water plant, Courthouse, two hardware stores, even a Moose Lodge, a Napa store, five or more places to sit and eat or grab a sandwich, a Golf course, two eye doctors who share the same building, a volunteer fire department and emergency squad, a Dollar Store and Family Dollar, Shop and Save and IGA, elementary school, the list goes on, but it's fairly small.
I cannot go on without mentioning Berdine's Five and Dime. I'm sure you can Google it. Berdine's is West Virginia's oldest Five and Dime and quite famous in its own right. Check it out if you ever come to town, it will take you back in time all on it's own. There are wonderful things to purchase in a shop that hasn't changed much in all these years! By the way, I have nothing in it, just like the shop.
Harrisville is a nice place to live, quiet most of the time, but we do make the local News on occasion and if we do, it's usually not good, so I like it quiet. Almost everyone knows everyone else or is quick to find out who the newbies are. Everyone knows your name, who you are married to and sometimes they know more of your business than you do, but that's life in a small town for you...lol
North Bend State Park is just a few miles outside of town where you can camp or stay over in a nice Lodge or Cabin and you can fish in our newly built lake or just lounge around. The dam project was huge for us and this is just one picture of the lake that covers acres of ground, small hills and hollows.
A lot of people around here still have horses...here are mine. I worked on these this month. Horses brought people to Harrisville years ago as they did most everywhere else.
Check out the other blogs here:
http://treasures-found.blogspot.com/2013/08/2nd-annual-challenge-of-travel-stevens.html
So there you have it, Harrisville, West Virginia at it's best. Come on down, we'd love to meet you!
As always, thanks for stopping by and take care.
