A Preston County community
Arthurdale’s timeline follows the New Deal homestead community from federal land acquisition through construction, education, home ownership, and historic preservation. It also keeps the project’s racial exclusion visible within that history.
This overview is drawn from the timeline entries and the source trails on their individual event pages.Community timeline
October 4, 1933
After Eleanor Roosevelt visited depression-stricken coal communities in northern West Virginia, the federal government acquired Richard Arthur's farm near Reedsville on October 4, 1933, for its first experimental…
Open event and sourcesJune 1934
The first 50 homesteader families began moving into Arthurdale in June 1934. About half were miners, one-quarter were sawmill workers, and one-quarter were farmers. Although Eleanor Roosevelt wanted the community to reflect…
Open event and sources1934
Arthurdale's first homesteaders were selected without African American families. When Eleanor Roosevelt tried to support an integrated colony, local resistance blocked the effort. The episode exposed racial inequity inside the…
Open event and sources1935
A new school was constructed at Arthurdale in 1935 under educator Elsie Ripley Clapp. Its progressive curriculum emphasized hands-on learning, handicrafts, manual arts, agriculture, and practical community life alongside…
Open event and sources1937
The last 40 houses, a group of stone-veneered homes begun during the summer of 1936, were finished in 1937. Their completion brought Arthurdale's three-phase homestead construction program to the 165 houses originally planned.
Open event and sourcesMay 27, 1938
President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Arthurdale and delivered the high school's commencement address on May 27, 1938. The occasion is remembered as the only high-school commencement address of his presidency, placing the…
Open event and sourcesBy 1947
The federal government began selling Arthurdale property in 1941. By 1947, all of the community's homes had been sold, most to the homesteader families occupying them. Public land, community buildings, and businesses were sold…
Open event and sourcesFebruary 1, 1989
The Arthurdale Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 1989. The designation recognized the surviving New Deal community plan, homesteads, public buildings, industrial…
Open event and sources1995
An informal group of kayakers, rock climbers, anglers, and other creek supporters formed Friends of Deckers Creek, beginning with illegal-dump cleanups and water-quality monitoring. The organization serves the full Deckers…
Open event and sourcesThreads through time
Follow federal land acquisition, the arrival of the first families, and construction of the community’s 165 homesteads.
Explore Arthurdale’s experimental school, presidential graduation visit, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s close involvement with the project.
Place Arthurdale’s racial restrictions beside the later sale of homes to residents and recognition of the historic district.
A life in public service
Arthurdale’s first postmistress, Arzana Ward, also served at Reedsville. Explore her life, postal service, family-contributed photograph, and the records documenting her work.
Read Arzana’s storyPhoto courtesy of Sandra Ward Cummings and family. Clipping contributed by Nikki Ward Haines.
Jim McNelis’s recollections offer a glimpse of everyday life in Arthurdale’s early years. His family came from a coal-company house in Cassville, and he remembered the difference that running water and an indoor bathroom made in their new home. Families tended gardens and livestock, while neighbors shared equipment and helped one another with seasonal butchering. The Homesteaders Club organized celebrations, plays, and cooperative farming; as a boy, McNelis picked vegetables for 15 cents an hour. Shopping connected the community with Masontown—including Streets Store—and Morgantown, while catalog orders arrived by parcel post for collection at Arthurdale’s post office.
Jim McNelis, “Growing Up in Arthurdale,” Goldenseal, vol. 38, no. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 8–15, especially pp. 9–13. Written in 1999 and first published in Arthurdale Heritage’s newsletter, Restoring Yesterday for Tomorrow, January–July 2000.
Read “Growing Up in Arthurdale” in the Goldenseal Summer 2012 issue (pp. 8–15).
This account is a later personal recollection. McNelis acknowledged uncertainty about some dates. His remembered 1933 move differs from the June 1934 arrival of the first families documented in the timeline; this paragraph does not change that chronology.
Explore the original records of Arthurdale’s postal locations and the postmasters who served the community.
5 indexed National Archives images, with descriptions and research notes.
Explore postal recordsAppointments from the office’s establishment in 1935 through the early 1960s.
Explore postmastersMedia & recordings
Video · West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Produced and published by West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Explore Arthurdale through this West Virginia Public Broadcasting video, alongside the community’s dated history and source records below.
Watch on YouTubeEmbedded from West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s YouTube publication.
This recording is presented as related media. Historical statements in Preston County Through Time are documented through the sources cited with the individual timeline entries.