HURRICANE — On a Tuesday evening in August, hundreds of people packed the conference center of Valley Park in Hurricane.
People trickled in and out, filling out comment cards and dropping them off.
In an age where community involvement for some is a Facebook post, hundreds of people took their time to have their voices heard.
The issue at hand was the Meeks Mountain Trails, a privately owned mountain biking system stewarded by volunteers from across Putnam County. The trail system sees use by people from the Hurricane-Teays Valley area, as well as mountain bikers from Huntington, Charleston and beyond.
But Appalachian Power proposed running transmission lines right through the middle of it – and this night was the first of two public comment nights.
Outside the building, volunteer Robert Lemons stood in the shade of a canopy handing out information about the proposed lines.
“The community loves it. I think we see 300 to 400 users, and that’s not just mountain bikers – mountain bikers, hikers, runners,” Lemons said. “So that’s a really nice place. We hope we don’t see it taken down.”
Lemons, a native of western Kentucky, moved to the county 20 years ago. He said he enjoys having the amenities of a metro area – shops, restaurants and the like – while still retaining a small town feel.
“It’s a community that comes together on everything,” he said. “If there’s something to be done, people get behind it.”
Putnam County is also one of the most affluent counties in West Virginia, with a median household income of $75,000, well above the state median of $54,000.
But despite the high incomes, there are still rural parts of the county waiting for water lines.
With more than 71% of eligible voters coming out to cast their votes in 2020, the county had one of the highest voter participation rates in the state. Statewide, the turnout was 63%.
That’s in keeping with trends seen across the nation – according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the higher the income, the more likely a person will vote.
The county has historically trended conservative – it hasn’t voted for a Democrat for President since 1964. That’s translated to Republican gains in down ballots races. Today, all delegates and state senators from the county are Republican – as are the County Commissioners, the assessor, the sheriff, and the county clerk.
That too jives with voter trends – Pew found in a study of affiliation and income that while people with lower incomes are more likely to vote for Democrats, the middle class is pretty evenly divided. However, the upper middle class, according to the study, votes solidly Republican.
And the Republicans elected in Putnam County are some of the most conservative, holding powerful positions in the legislature. State Sen. Eric Tarr chairs the finance committee and has consistently proposed measures restricting needle exchanges and recovery homes.
During the last legislative session, Del. Geoff Foster sponsored a bill to remove an exemption in a law restricting gender affirming care for minors. Fellow Putnam County Del. Kathie Hess Crouse pushed for the “Women’s Bill of Rights”, which would’ve defined men and women legally by their reproductive parts in state law.
On the local level, the county commission passed an ordinance in 2023 banning minors from attending drag shows in unincorporated areas.
Local resident Heather Sprouse said while she appreciates the relatively cheap land she was able to buy to start a farm, these developments give her concern.
“Vague ‘obscenity’ laws exist to create fear of queer people,” she said. “It’s disappointing because I’d love for my queer daughter to have the option of staying close to home as an adult, but I don’t feel right hoping they’ll stay in a place passing ordinances that make them feel unwelcome and unsafe.”
Over in Teays Valley, traffic is fairly thick even at midday, as SUVs and minivans jockey to hang a left into the Starbucks drive-through or a right into the Target parking lot off state Route 34.
There’s shopping centers on top of shopping centers – gyms mere parking lots away, corporate chain restaurants right next to each other competing for hungry diners.
Tucked away between a gas station and a hotel is the Putnam County Convention and Visitors Bureau, where executive director Kelli Steele works.
Her desk is made of reclaimed wood, as is the light above it, all from a shop in downtown Hurricane. Originally from Logan County, Steele has called Putnam County home for the last 15 years.
She said the county’s location, situated between population centers in Charleston and Huntington, has led workers in those cities to move here. But, she noted, it’s more than just a bedroom community.
“That is historically how we’ve been viewed, but it’s a very active community with a lot to do here,” she said. “I think people are sometimes surprised at how much there is available right here in Putnam County.”
While tourism is her bailiwick, Steele observes there’s not one sole industry or attraction that keeps the county growing. Putnam has manufacturing, agrotourism, and even travel baseball that brings in dollars.
But infrastructure is having a time catching up with the growth. Teays Valley and Hurricane suffer gridlock traffic when school lets out. Tie ups are frequent on the Interstate – even after years of construction on the Donald M. Legg Bridge in the Nitro area.
The traffic is a common gripe Steele said she hears in the community.
“Here in the valley, we’re pretty crowded. Things are tight and still growing. And so people do like to complain about traffic, but, I mean, it’s Teays Valley traffic. It’s not Washington, DC. We’re all going to be alright,” she said.
Lemons said, for him, that’s the biggest issue he sees in his community.
“I think the community is just like, ‘it is what it is.’ It would be nice to see it (state Route 34) expand,” he said. “That would be the only thing I would have any complaint about, but that’s just life living with people.”
A trip northbound on state Route 34 out of Teays Valley, past the law office with a Cybertruck, costing six figures, parked out front, the retail parking lots quickly turn to forest, interspersed with the occasional warehouse, graveyard or house.
Out this way, just a few miles from the hustle and bustle of the interstate, there’s farmland.
Up past the Winfield Locks and Dam, where fishermen try their luck catching hybrid stripers on minnows, sits a family with a produce stand.
They’ve got peaches and green beans and apples. Inside a van, Franklin Cooper, the patriarch of the family, chews on a few cherry tomatoes.
Cooper has lived in Putnam County on and off his entire life – his family once owned a farm off North Poplar Fork, which was sold off years ago for a subdivision.
“When I was a kid, we had 123 acres over at the old home place,” he said. “We farmed every ounce of it – if you could stick a plow in it, we did.”
Ever since then, he’s always been growing something. Even when he had just a yard down in South Carolina, he raised a little garden. This time of year, he gets up before dawn to help pick the produce and get the van loaded up to take to market.
“It’s hard work, but hard work never killed anybody,” he said.
But Cooper said he feels like all too often, basic governance, like an infrastructure project or a stop sign, can depend a little too much on partisan politics.
“If you got the pull, if you got the collateral, you vote the right way, you get stuff done,” he said. “You know, all my uncles and mom and dad, everybody voted Democrat. They got all kinds of stuff. It’s the same way now.”
Except today, it’s voting Republican.
Retired attorney Billy Jack Gregg lives out in another rural part of the county, down towards Hurricane. He said the issues his neighbors face aren’t very different from the types found in Calhoun or Lincoln counties.
“It’s the same problems – people still trying to get water, trying to get broadband, just the same old problem that you have all through West Virginia,” he said.
And an old problem has become a new problem once again – the brouhaha over the Meeks Mountain powerline isn’t the first time Putnam Countians have fought the power company over land use practices.
Back in the 1970s, Gregg and some neighbors were embroiled in a Public Service Commission case about a large transmission line that was set to go through his family farm. When they lost, they took it to the state supreme court.
The justices on the court declined to hear it, so the powerline came through.
He said the difference between those two fights is the impact – the Meeks Mountain powerline would affect a lot more people and a lot more properties.
“You have houses built up against it. A lot of it goes through recreational areas and other parts, so it’s going to be a very complicated issue,” he said. “Our line mainly went through rural areas.”
While it resulted in a loss, Gregg said there were some lessons he learned from it and carried with him when he worked as director of the Consumer Advocate Division of the PSC when it was established in 1981.
“No matter where it is, the people that are going to be affected by it need to show up,” he said.
And in Putnam County, they tend to do that – a lot.