War, West Virginia

Her story

She's named for War Creek — the creek took its name from a battle near its source around 1788 — and she's been fighting to stick around ever since. The railroad came in 1904 and the coal camps followed — Caretta, Coalwood, Berwind — and for a while in the 1950s she was four thousand people strong with three movie theaters on Main Street.

She sent her kids to Big Creek High, where the Rocket Boys learned to look up. She buried her miners, survived the floods of 2001 and 2002, and kept her churches full. The mines slowed, the people left, and she's down to 690 — but she's still here, still standing on Route 16 where the old War Path ran.