City View, Logan County, WV Photo Gallery
City View Big Rocks
City View Big Rocks
City View Big Rocks
City View Big Rocks
Mt. Carmel Freewill Baptist Church
Mt. Carmel Freewill Baptist Church
Logan from City View.
My special thanks to Linda Gentile for use of her porch.
My special thanks to Linda Gentile for use of her porch.
Logan from City View.
My special thanks to Linda Gentile for use of her porch.
My special thanks to Linda Gentile for use of her porch.
The old Aracoma High School (1929-1962) at Coal Branch taken from City View.
The old Aracoma High School (1929-1962) at Coal Branch taken from City View.
Sabrina Berry (niece) and Peggy Berry. Taken on City View. The house in the Background belonged to Regana Drenner. Courtesy of Peggy Berry Borth.
Sabrina Berry (niece) and Peggy Berry. Taken on City View. The house in the Background belonged to Regana Drenner. Courtesy of Peggy Berry Borth.
You can help preserve a bit of Logan County history by sharing your vintage photos with us. To share a photo, please email it to the admin at loganwv.us@gmail.com. Please note that you must own the photo you are submitting or ensure that no one has a copyright claim on it. Preferably, photos of individuals should be earlier than 1980.
We moved to Coal Branch from Cicero, IL, the summer before the second grade. We lived in a duplex, (housed two families with a wall separating the two halves). I was so young and only remember the last name of a neighbor that lived on up into Coa Branch, the Twodores or Todoors. My blind grandmother lived there and welcomed us into her home, or we would have been homeless due to my sperm donor leaving my mother with six children in Cicero. His family the Curtis’s hid his whereabouts and identity, until I was a young adult. His mother Anna Curtis maiden name Swims, lived at Monitor. My sperm donors brother tried to have a relationship with me (because I really wasn’t a part of their family). Looking back, I am blessed that he didn’t want to support and take care of us, just imagine the possibilities. I referred to my grandmother Margaret Burgess, maiden name Chafin, her best friend was Sarah Thompson she too was blind. I can remember Mammaw and Sarah climbing the steps to go to bed, mammaw would say, “the blind leading the blind.”
We lived in Coal Branch in the early 50’s went to school there had a teacher named Bias and Mrs. Daniels—-
I have four lots that I could sell on city view hill for the right price.
I Was Very Happy To Have Seen This Site, I Was Born At Gyuan Valley Hospital, Spent Alot Of My Child Hood On City View Hill. My Grand Mother Was Effie Rainwater. The Happiest Times Of My Life Were There. Just Like I Remember In My Mind! Sweet!
My name was Sharon miller. I had a cousin Brenda Rainwater that Effe Rainwater was her grandmother. I would go with her to visit her grandmother. those were my carefree days. good memories.
Sharon: I remember you and your family, the Rainwater’s on City View. We lived across the road from you and below your grandmother Effie’s house. Although we moved to California in 1963, I vividly remember those times on City View like they were yesterday. Your brother, Steve, was my friend, and we spent a lot of time together. I’ve regularly visited Logan throughout the years and will be returning this October (2022). Hope all of you are doing well.
I am related to the Rainwaters on City View. Maxine Rainwater was my great aunt. My grandmother and grandfather, Royce and Jaunita Jones, lived there too. I haven’t seen Logan in 25 years.
i just want to thank you for all the photos and history. i was born in logan in 1948. i lived there until i was 9 yrs old when my mother passed away. i was back and forth for several yrs after that . i really loved my life there. when i read your memories it takes me back in time and the thoughts make me feel closer to my past as no one else can understand. thank you again so very very much.
My mother, Carolyn Sue Saunders, was born there in 48 as well.
My grandmother lived in the last house on city view hill, out from the cemetery, We played on the cemetery all the time. I remember a lady would pay us to bring cemetery flowers to her from the cemetery. Then she would resale them. Boy, when my mother found out it was on……..I was just about 7 years old, didn’t know better. Remember standing on my grandmothers porch looking at the city with all the lights, Watching the buses come and go, You could hear the announcing where they were coming from and where they were going. Those were memories I’ll never forget…….
Do you remember the Hodge’s? Lived in the Double house with the two porches? They were my grandparents.
Seeing the pictures of City View where I spent most of my childhood makes me cry. My childhood home is still standing on top of the hill and thankfully is not as run down as the houses near the bottom of the hill.
Most folks do not realize the rich history of this region. City View overlooks the area where some of the first settlers cleared the land and built their cabins when our nation was in its infancy. From the top of City View, you can see where the very first white child (William Anderson Dingess) was born to his parents, Peter and Sallie (Farley) Dingess. You can see where our Thompson ancestors, Patton & Judy (Farley) Thompson called home (Ellis Addition). I would bet that Patton Thompson hunted game where City View is located and probably sat on those same Big Rocks where I sat many times as a child. Patton died by August 1814, so that would have been 200 years ago that our ancestor Patton Thompson lived there and hunted in those hills that later became “City View Hill”.
The house where the blue jeep is in the yard is where I grew up. If the roof was clean and house freshly painted, it wouldn’t look much different, except that when we lived there, there were banisters around the front porch, a swing hanging on the left side of the porch, and beautiful blue morning glories climbing up the banisters all the way to the roof. The house is larger than it looks in the picture, because like most, it was built on the side of the hill and had a basement as well as two bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs.
We owned the vacant hillside lot next door and that was where our clothes lines were and where my mother had a beautiful well tended garden and flowers everywhere you looked. From our back porch (we had two of them, one downstairs and one upstairs off the kitchen), you could see almost all the way to Mount Gay on the right and the entire city of Logan and the Backbone on the left.
The gray building trimmed in red next door, perhaps a garage, sits on the property where the grand parents of Roger Gertz, a national award winning coach at Logan High School lived, long before Roger’s parents Fred and Margie even met each other.
The largest home on the hill (just below our house) was the home of Paul “Rink” Hefner, former coach at Logan High, and his wife, Becky and children Susan and “Lucky”. The Hefners moved in the 1940s and Monie and Hobart Young purchased the house. It is the house in the picture with the large deck overlooking the city of Logan.
Thank you so much, Frank, for taking the time to drive all the way to the last house on top of City View so that I could see what sixty years (since I left City View) and the ravages of time has done to what was at one time a lovely well kept community. Many of the houses are close to being a hundred years old (built in the 1920s). At least the road is now blacktopped all the way to the top of the hill.
I’m anxiously awaiting the pictures of the old cemetery at the end of the road, where I used to play as a child and especially the pictures of the BIG ROCKS, where we often hiked with a picnic lunch of PBJ sandwiches. We would sit on the rocks and could see Mud Fork, Cherry Tree, Mount Gay, etc. and watch the trains hauling coal from all directions out of the various hollows of Logan County. Thank Goodness the mine companies have not destroyed the BIG ROCKS! That mountain and those rocks are the only things that have not changed.
The author, Thomas Wolfe was right, “You can’t go home again.” We can, however, go home in our dreams and I send a special “THANK YOU, Frank, for this web site which allows us to share our memories of a different time and to keep those childhood memories alive. Our mutual ancestors, Patton Thompson and Judy (Farley) Thompson would be proud of you.