Festival Season in Preston County is here!

Festival season is among us here in Preston County and this year, with the addition of the Arts Fest, we have a packed summer of fun and activities in store!!   There are so many exciting things coming your way this summer.  This is just a look at some of the events in the line up!

Starting us off with a serious dose of summer fun is the Cheat River Festival May 5th & 6th.  This is the first year for the event to be held for 2 days, but it is such a fantastic fest, being 2 days was just a matter of time.  Start off Friday night with one of the largest mass start kayak races in the world, the Cheat River Massacrence!  Follow this up with live bands and camping Friday night.  Saturday morning is the Cheat Fest 5k and live music all day.  Along with vendors, food, art market, kid zone and more!!

Throughout the summer we have some classic small town fairs that you do not want to miss!!  There is the Good Neighbors Day Festival in Bruceton, the Valley District Fair in Reedsville, the WV Chestnut festival in Rowlesburg, The Terra Alta 4th of July Festival, the Labor day Ox Roast in Rowlesburg, and of course the Preston County Buckwheat Festival finishing off fair season the last weekend in September.

The Deep Roots Mountain Revival at Marvin's Mountaintop in Masontown, is July 20-22nd and has days full of amazing music line ups and so much more!  July 23-34th is the Jerry Garcia Birthday Bash at Tripps Farm in Terra Alta.  If you seriously love music festivals, you can camp at both and stay at DRMR Thursday -Saturday and the JGBB Sunday and Monday.  The festival love does not end there!  The following Saturday July 29th, grab the kids and head to the Cheat Fest grounds because we are hosting the 2nd annual Midsummer Kids Festival.  Another music festival with vendors, food trucks, and an entire day packed with kids activities and everything is FREE for the kiddos!!  The following Saturday August 5th, we are working with the PCAC on the 1st annual Arts Fest!  Live musicians and artisans, vendors, and more!

If you are a musician, vendor, artisan, artist, food truck owner, local non profit or kids organization and would like more information on how you can be a part of the Midsummer Festival or Arts Festival, please contact us, or the Preston Community Arts Center.  If you are a resident of Preston County and would like to help or volunteer for either of these events, or become a member/volunteer of either Preston County SPROUT or the PCAC, please contact us as well.

The tides are turning and great things are happening in Preston County.  Come be part of that change and help us bring the community atmosphere and thriving small town life back to Preston County!

Preston County Coal Historical Info

We are currently seeking information on the coal industry in Preston County.  We are focusing mainly on the areas between Kingwood and Tunnelton for now, including the Borgman area.  We are also looking for information on the founding families in some of our coal towns.  In Particular, we are looking for information on the Greaser, Borgman, Arns and Kortes families of the German settlement area and other families who settled there shortly after.  Information on the founding families of the Irish Ridge.  Also information on any mines that were along the tracks from Kingwood to Tunnelton, WV.  We are looking for genealogies, pictures, artifacts, stories, historical documents topographic maps, and more.

Our hope is to compile this information and be able to provide a public exhibit of the information provided.  We have a few thoughts for how to display this information, but it all depends on how much history we discover.  If you have ANY information regarding the coal history in Preston County, please contact us on social media, reply here, or email pcsprout@gmail.com.

Anyone wishing to assist in the historical research, please contact us as well.  We are always looking for volunteers!!

May 2017

There is plenty to get excited about coming up in May!!   The first weekend, 5/5 & 5/6 be sure to get out and enjoy Cheat Fest!!  The downriver race, the Cheat River Mass Occurrence, is Friday night, we are excited to have the chance to help sponsor the race this year!!  Also for the first time, they have added a music line up to Friday's festivities!!  The Cheat Fest 5K is Saturday Morning.  If you would like to volunteer, I am sure they could still use people.  If not, make sure you make it to Albright the first weekend in May.  On Sunday, May 7th to continue the Cheat River activities, there is a River clean up from Riverview lounge to the Rowlesburg park.  BYOBoat!!  or register ahead of time to secure a canoe!!  Meet at the Rowlesburg park @11am.  

May 7th also holds a few other exciting events for Kingwood!!  There is a Touch a Truck event at Walmart from 12-2.  At 2pm there will be open Auditions for the movie Kecksburg held at the PCAC on Price street.  This movie is being filmed in Preston County and locals will be cast!!  This is a fantastic opportunity!!  DO NOT miss out!!

May 13th we will hold round 2 of our trivia night series!!  Which team will win and which team will be the grand prize winners in November??  Get your team registered!!  Also on May 20th we will be hosting a trivia night for Relay for Life!  you can register your 4 person team for $20 and all proceeds go to Relay for Life of Preston County!!

May 4th the PCAC has a The Early Mays with Rachel Eddy CD Release.  May 12th @ 7pm the PCAC has the High Street Jazz Band and the 20th @ 7pm, Sam Roller & Dave Long.

Preston County Sprout will also be holding a community yard sale towards the end of May, further details to follow!

Please follow us on all social media platforms to stay up to date on our events as well as other community events!

1st year in review

When we started Preston County SPROUT a year ago, we had no idea where it would take us, but we knew that Preston County has been on the decline in the recent past, along with the majority of the rest of WV, and that we wanted to start an organization to help revitalize our wonderful community.  Over the decades we have seen so many opportunities vanish from our area.  In the not so distant past, Preston County had a movie theater, multiple bowling alleys and skating rinks, pools, parks, arcades, local hang outs, small businesses larger corporations and more.  Today, our children have a limited amount of opportunities here and they are dwindling.  We knew we wanted to help change this......

Over the past year we have met with and had to opportunity to assist some wonderful organizations .  In meeting and working with these people, we see that everyone has the same vision for this area.  Everyone has a dream of what Preston County could be.  We truly believe that working together, uniting together, for the common goal of progress, we can see many of these projects and ideas come to fruition much faster.  Right now we are all tackling the  mountain from different angles.  If we continue working together, we can find the path to the top much faster.

A few of the events that we have helped host have been trivia nights, our Disney Trivia night helped raise proceeds for the Wades World of Wonder Playground.  We have also held a few open mic nights that have showcased some amazing talent from Preston High School!  We have held numerous vendor markets and donated proceeds from our winter market to the hat and glove tree at PHS.  We want to not only support local organizations, especially the kids, but also to give our support to local businesses and small business owners.

trivia night

trivia night

We are looking forward to our 2nd Annual Midsummer Festival on July 29th!  This is a day packed full of kids activities and its free for the kiddos!!!  There is also a kids talent contest and live musicians from 1-7pm!  Stay tuned for a detailed schedule closer to the event so you don't miss any of the fun!!

Also we are working with the Preston Community Arts Center on scheduling Zumba classes, Karaoke nights, and more.  Scheduled for 6/2, we are hosting The Cool for the Summer, 18 and under dance party at the PCAC.  We are currently accepting parent volunteers as well as donations for concessions and sponsorship of prizes.

We have WV trivia on 6/20 for WV's Birthday celebration!  Get your 4 person team together and come show off your WV knowledge!!  We have 3 more events in our team trivia competition, and other trivia nights coming up including relay for life trivia events!!  Please like and follow our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to stay up to date on all of our events.

We also have a few other long term projects in the works that need some research and historical compilation completed.  We are excited about where some of these projects could lead and the opportunities they could bring to the area!

We are a community organization that wants to work with you, for the growth of our county.  If you have any ideas or events that you would like to see happen around here, please contact us and we will work on trying to get it scheduled.  We have many ideas in the works and can always use volunteers!!  If Preston County Sprout sounds like something you would like to be a part of, Please, join us!  We are always taking members!

We are working on a community calendar!  If you would like your event added to the calendar please email us or message us on one of our social media accounts.

pcsprout@gmail.com