POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — The West Virginia Farm Museum is 50-years-old.
The museum’s start and continued success was part of a celebration Saturday at the museum and its grounds near Point Pleasant.
Museum board president Larry Jones said museum creator Walden Roush saw the old ways of farming being replaced and wanted the history to be preserved.
“He wanted people to remember the way it used to be and so he felt that if we could have a museum that would preserve that—and not only that but we have it where some of those old activities are carried out,” Jones told WMOV Radio.
The museum property has grown to 31 buildings since its 1976 opening that include not only the museum but a couple of log cabins, a one-room schoolhouse and church building complete with places where congregants would place their guns while listening to preaching.
State Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt said the museum plays an important role.
“We have to remember where we came from to know where we’re going in the future and agriculture certainly is changing in this world and it’s good to know the strife and the struggles of our founding fathers—what they went through—when agriculture was the mainstay of society,” Leonhardt said.
State Senator Amy Grady, R-Mason, is a fourth grade teacher. She said she takes her students to the museum to learn about the past.
“It’s always really interesting to them and many of my students are growing up on farms and they can look at it and say, ‘Hey, I have something similar to that but it’s newer technology but this is where it came from,'” Grady said.
The West Virginia State Farm Museum is located at 1458 Fairground Rd, in Point Pleasant.
MetroNews affiliate WMOV Radio contributed to this story.