Ancient Web: My West Virginia Home Kept Charleston’s Streets in Photographs

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A city's history usually appears in photographs of its big public buildings. Jerry's My West Virginia Home is also interested in a roller coaster that burned down, a department-store fire, and streets that disappeared during redevelopment.

Visit My West Virginia Home.

The introduction is addressed to people who left West Virginia to find jobs elsewhere, as well as those who remained. The author writes about the ordinary working people he wants to remember, then provides a very long list of photograph collections, local essays, and personal stories.

Its Charleston material stretches from turn-of-the-century panoramas through midcentury street scenes and photographs of the 1970s and 1980s. There are galleries of old schoolhouses in Kanawha County, the first downtown urban-renewal projects, Capitol Street, South Charleston, Dunbar, and Nitro.

The site's Capitol Street collection is exactly the kind of narrowly focused page that proves the value of independent local history. A single commercial street becomes the subject of a dedicated photographic record rather than a footnote in a municipal overview.

A town remembers its lost amusement park

The Luna Park gallery is particularly memorable. Hamrick says he spent 35 years looking for interior images of the old Charleston amusement park. He posts photographs showing concessions, a skating rink, crowds, and the Royal Giant Dips roller coaster, with annotations drawing attention to details visitors might overlook.

The page states that the park opened in 1912 and was destroyed by fire in 1923. A picture from roughly 1914 is offered in a large version expressly so people can study the background. The file-size warning feels like a greeting from another Internet.

The homepage also solicits photographs from other people, with rules favoring images that show something of shared community interest rather than only family portraits. That collaborative approach matters: local web archives survive because individuals keep material circulating when institutions may not hold or digitize it.

The page credits H. Hamrick and carries a 2021 copyright notice, but the site's founding year is not established by those details alone. It qualifies as a substantial historical photograph collection, not because an old-style layout automatically makes it old.

There are practical limits. Its reproduction policy requires permission, and captions and memories should be cross-checked when used as historical proof. Nonetheless, the site preserves views that may otherwise remain in boxes and closets.

Browse the Charleston photo index and Luna Park collection.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.