Marlinton — West Virginia

The seat of rural Pocahontas County, where a converted rail line runs straight through the middle of town and the old train depot still looks ready to sell you a ticket. Lia and I biked out of Marlinton and didn't see another soul for an hour.

Marlinton is small enough that you could miss it doing sixty on Route 219, but slow down and it reveals itself as one of the more graceful little towns in the Alleghenies, built along the Greenbrier River and organized, quite literally, around a converted rail line. The Greenbrier River Trail — one of the longest rail-trails in the country — runs directly through town, and the restored depot that once served the old Chesapeake and Ohio line now functions as a visitor center, its waiting room still fitted out with wooden benches and a ticket window that looks like it closed yesterday rather than decades ago.

The depot and downtown

We parked near the depot on a weekday morning and had the platform mostly to ourselves, just a couple of trail cyclists refilling water bottles before heading south. Marlinton’s downtown, a few blocks of brick storefronts along Eighth Street and Main, still carries the modest civic dignity of a county seat — the Pocahontas County Opera House anchors one corner, a handsome early-1900s building that still hosts films and live performances for a county with barely nine thousand residents scattered across it. We ducked in during a matinee and sat in seats worn smooth by a century of use.

The restored Marlinton train depot along the Greenbrier River Trail in West Virginia

The Greenbrier River Trail and Droop Mountain

From the depot, the Greenbrier River Trail runs nearly eighty miles along the old rail grade, flat and easy, tracing the river through farmland and forest. We rented bikes and rode a stretch south of town, the Greenbrier running alongside us the whole way, herons lifting off the shallows as we passed. A short drive south of Marlinton, Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park preserves the site of the last major Civil War engagement in West Virginia, its quiet meadows and split-rail fences giving little hint of the fighting that happened there in 1863.

Cyclists riding the flat, forested Greenbrier River Trail near Marlinton, West Virginia

Getting There

The nearest airport with regular service is Yeager Airport in Charleston (CRW), about two hours west by car on winding mountain highways. From Washington, D.C., it’s closer to a four-hour drive via I-64 and Route 92. A car is essential — Marlinton is deep in rural Pocahontas County, and the roads in are slow, scenic, and occasionally short on cell signal.