Another School Report

The West Virginia History Museum

The WV State Museum is a museum of WV history in Charleston, WV. It is set up so the entire museum is a giant walk through time. It also has oral explanations of the exhibits via speakers in the ceiling. The line starts at 300,000,000 B.C., and then goes through various time periods up to current times. Each exhibit explains how the time period affected West Virginia as a state.

In the beginning, there was a room that was prehistoric and had a lot of fossils of ferns and other plants. These fossils eventually decomposed and became coal. West Virginia is rich in coal deposits. In that same room there is a 4000 pound block of coal that was used as a desk in an AEP office.

In a room for the Civil War there is an actual Civil War Stars and Bars Confederate flag, and a Civil War cannon. This room had cool sound effects that sound like a battle from the Civil War. West Virginia during this time became a state when Virginia succeeded from the Union.

There is a room in the middle of the walk that has an old fashioned switchboard from the 1930’s 50’s. Across from that is an old movie theater that for some odd reason had leopard print seats.

Near the end there is an exhibit of all the military uniforms from The Spanish American War until The War on Terror. This was also interesting because in the wall they had mini TVs that showed first hand accounts of West Virginians who had fought in the wars.

At the end there was a room that had a box of 27,000 marbles all made in WV. Slightly past that room, there was a slide show of photos of West Virginia that has some cheesy John Denver playing in the background. WV must like cheesy music, oh well.

An interesting point is that the floor shows the main mode of transport in the era. For example, at 300 million B.C. the floor was covered in dinosaur tracks, and as time progressed there were human tracks, horse tracks, cobble stones, railroad track, brick, cement, and asphalt.

This museum is a very interesting museum that showed the history of WV very well. It was as informative as it was interesting. The cool displays matched with hard fact. A history museum that rocks!