-[Woman] This place has a heartbeat of its own.

-[Man] You just get a vibe that you hear at home.

-[Woman] It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

-[Woman] It's a magic little place in the mountains.

-[Narrator] Made with the state fruit of North Carolina, Mighty Muscadine offers a line of superfruit supplements and juices made from the muscadine grape, including the Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, Vinetastic.

More at mightymuscadine.com ♪ ♪ ♪ -[Joshua VO] West Virginia, where the mountains don't just rise, they breathe, a land of rugged peaks and winding rivers that cradle communities full of grit and grace.

This is where John Denver's words still echo, "Country Roads take me home."

But it's more than a song, it embodies a cultural ethos.

Here, the land shapes the people as much as the people shape the land.

It's a bond forged in coal dust, tempered by struggle and polished by an unshakable pride.

From its agricultural backbone to its crafts people, its educators and its small businesses, this county thrives on a self-reliant community first mindset.

In Greenbrier, the soil feeds more than crops.

It nurtures a shared identity.

Local farmers rise with the sun to sustain a robust farm to table tradition, while artisans and entrepreneurs channel the spirit of the land into their work.

Here, what's grown, crafted and built often stays within the community, reinforcing a bond between people and place that's as enduring as the mountains themselves.

It's a story of resilience, ingenuity and the enduring beauty of a place that feels truly like almost heaven.

♪ ♪ ♪ I've heard it said where we are affects who we are.

Makes sense, right?

I've always believed you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

Hi, I'm Josh, and I'm hosting this series with PBS Appalachia to explore the places people still call home their hometowns, and to uncover the stories that make them unique.

Hometowns is about exploring the communities that give America its character.

This season, we're going off the beaten path on a journey from Virginia to Wyoming.

Now, don't get me wrong, many of these places have their flaws, warts and all.

But if that's all you focus on, you're missing the bigger picture, the raw, untamed beauty of the land and the depth and complexity of its culture.

These are the things that speak to the heart of understanding what it really means to be an American.

It's a journey worth taking, trust me.

To really get what this place is all about, you've got to meet the people who live it.

And the first stop on this journey, Mountain Steer Meat Company.

Here, Frank Ford is co-owner, butcher, and as much a part of these hills as the rock and the dirt.

This guy's got the kind of spirit you only get from being born and raised in West Virginia.

He doesn't ask permission, he just does it.

And if you try to get in his way, he'll find another damn way.

-[Frank] Through Greenbrier County, and mainly, Lewisburg is a super like they--they, they like to focus on local food, like local, local businesses, small businesses, farm to table stuff, because Greenbrier County, just on the cattle side, we have the most cattle in the state.

So super high population of cattle.

A lot of farm ground, a lot of farmers, like generational farmers or first year farmers that have greenhouses, they have sheep, they have all these things that the restaurants in Lewisburg can take advantage of that a big city in New York doesn't have.

They don't have a greenhouse laid down the road that they can pick carrots or spinach from fresh.

They have to buy from somewhere else.

So it's a pretty cool, like little, little like local food community to where everybody kind of benefits off of each other.

We started in 2020, great time to start a business, really stupid time to do a business.

But COVID actually allowed us to start our business because the local grocery store that we're still doing business with now, they couldn't get beef because of the supply chain issues.

So our buddy, who's one of the owners at the grocery store, he calls us up.

We're the cattle farmers.

We're the cattle guys.

Can you get us beef for the grocery store?

So Jamie and I, my business partner, we looked at each other and said, "Why not?

We'll try one time, see if it works."

We did it.

Never stopped supplying them with local beef since that day.

We've been working out of the back of grocery stores, worked out the back of a refrigerator truck for like a year and a half.

-[Joshua] Okay.

-[Frank] So we started from ground zero.

-[Joshua VO] But Frank isn't the only one I spoke with who embodies the rugged, resourceful spirit of West Virginia.

Meet Josh Bennett, founding owner and CEO of Hawk Knob Appalachian Cidery, a man who knows a thing or two about honoring tradition while forging his own path.

Josh grew up on the border of Virginia and West Virginia, in the heart of the Allegheny Highlands, where the measure of age wasn't just birthdays, but the ability to chop wood, make hay and, of course, craft hard cider.

-[Joshua Bennett] Well, a lot of people don't realize pre-prohibition, cider was the number one consumed beverage in the United States, actually.

And when prohibition came along, they actually took out and a lot of the apple orchards.

There's that old saying that, "An apple day keeps the doctor away."

That's actually, that was coined by Liberty High Bailey, the father of American horticulture, as an effort to get them stop cutting down the orchards, actually.

-[Joshua] Okay.

-[Josh] But, so after prohibition, there was, you know, not a lot of cider being made in the rest of the states, but up in Appalachia, little farther outside Uncle Sam's Eye, we just kind of kept the tradition alive.

And so where I grew up, people have been making hard cider since early 1800s, something like that.

And so I've kind of been making it in the same fashion ever since.

-[Joshua] How do you go from just carrying on a tradition of making hard cider, just saying, "Hey, I'm going to do Hawk Knob Appalachian Hard Cider."

Like, how do you go from that to this?

-[Josh] I don't know.

I think maybe because I'm just stubborn, but, I was dead set on-- When I got out of college, I wanted to get back to doing something agrarian, living on the farm and planting orchards and raising apples.

We're kind of part of that, and it tied into, you know, keeping that tradition of cider making alive.

So and also, at the time, cider was kind of, that's when it first started coming back in the States and really growing as an industry.

And so there wasn't a whole lot of it going on in West Virginia yet at the time, either.

So Hawk Knob was the first commercial cidery in the state.

I have a deep focus on sourcing all of my apples and all of my raw materials as locally as I can source them.

And so to do that, it means we're going to grind them and press them ourselves, and which kind of, you can see in the end product makes a different-- a different quality cider.

-[Joshua] It sure does.

It sure does.

I mean, it just tastes different.

You know, it's like when you eat a fresh tomato right out of the garden, you can just tell.

-[Josh] No, you can't beat it.

We're here in the Greenbrier Valley.

There's a-- it's almost like there's a, a network of entrepreneurs that go out of their way to help support one another.

And the local restaurants are sourcing from the local beef suppliers.

And I mean, our restaurant here, we're sourcing everything from local bakers, local butcher shops, etcetera.

And it is pretty unique, because there's a lot of community support amongst one another, amongst the other business owners, and just kind of trying to bring the whole thing up together, so to speak, -[Frank] We're slowly becoming 100% vertically integrated company.

From raising them as calves to backgrounding them on grass, to get stock weight, putting them on a feed lot, feeding them up to finish weight.

It's like 1,500 pounds.

And then we slaughter, we process and we distribute.

So it's a whole, whole thing that we have control over.

But everyone says farming is mainly like loving what you do.

It's not about being profitable in your business.

It's mainly, it's kind of gotten twisted to just being a lifestyle, which it is.

But why not have a lifestyle and also get return from your investment.

-[Josh] Absolutely, man.

Absolutely.

[Frank] We were pretty blessed with some angel investors that wanted to-- the moment they saw what we were doing, they saw that we're a couple young farmers wanted to start something new in our area.

And I hate to say it, but you got to spend money to make money.

And it's true, it's very true.

I mean, we've-- we invested a lot into this.

We invested our lives into this.

So we're putting our lives into it after.

We're making sure that it works.

We're taking it and running with it.

-[Bennett] I think it's very much characteristic of what it means to be a West Virginian.

I think what you find is a lot of what the outside world thinks about this state is from something they read, or as it was defined by a set of outside eyes looking in.

And very rarely does anybody on the ground here that actually has experienced it or understands it for what it actually is.

If you're here, then you're part of this community, and people are going to watch out for you.

And I think that that even applies to the business world here, amongst other entrepreneurs, and despite what anybody thinks about us from the outside, we're building our communities, and we're living a pretty good life.

And I don't think you're going to find a more capable and caring people in your travels, you know.

So people really look out for one another, and that means a lot.

-[Joshua VO] Lewisburg, it's been called the coolest small town in America.

And after spending a little time here, you understand why.

As the county seat of Greenbrier County, it's a place that seems to effortlessly blend charm with substance.

Wander down its streets, and you'll find coffee shops buzzing with conversation, boutique lodgings that feel like home, and restaurants where menus reflect both tradition and innovation.

It's not just the food or the shops, though.

There's a vibe here, something unspoken, yet undeniable.

Lewisburg's history isn't confined to textbooks, it's carved into gravestones and whispered in the halls of its buildings.

♪ ♪ ♪ Lewisburg doesn't hide from its past.

Instead, it embraces it with all its contradictions and complexities.

As I walked its streets, I was struck by the balance this town strikes between honoring history and fostering progress.

From the Greenbrier College for Women to one of the world's largest active Carnegie halls, Lewisburg is a place where culture thrives alongside memory.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Janice] I started the work on producing this exhibit, and I worked on it for about six months, and it was called Invisible Roots of Legends, and it was a photographic history of African-Americans who had contributed to the growth and development of Greenbrier County.

It was probably one of the most significant opportunities for all peoples of the community that came together and celebrated the history.

And I had people coming to me, mostly whites, that came to me and said these stories needed to be told.

And from that, Echoes of Slavery was born.

I was amazed that when I first came back and I started working on the exhibit, there were people that were saying, "We didn't have slaves in Greenbrier County."

Yes, we did.

-[Joshua] Yeah.

-[Janice] We didn't have plantation slaves.

You know, when people thought of slavery, they always thought of, you know, the large plantations, -[Janice] the cotton plantation.

-[Joshua] Right, Deep South.

-[Janice] The Deep South.

Louisburg had a lot of house slaves.

You know, it was a status thing.

Now, West Virginia, never really had Jim Crow Laws officially on record, but the state of Virginia did.

Because we're in such close proximity to Virginia, Greenbrier County, and it was kind of Confederate territory, those laws were practiced here.

-[Joshua] I got you.

-[Janice] When I was a young girl growing up here, we were not allowed to go to the restaurants.

The movie theater, we had to sit in a certain place.

Believe it or not, we had to go through the back door of restaurants to get something to eat.

We didn't go in.

We had to sit outside.

So, you know, that's not that too long ago.

♪ ♪ ♪ Families were coming to me and saying, "These stories needed to be told."

-[Joshua] Yeah.

-[Janice] In some ways, I think there's-- when we do things like this, it helps people with some of the guilt that they may have and generational guilt.

-[Joshua] Okay, okay.

That goes from generation to generation families, and until you do things like this to educate people about the history, so that hopefully, the young people and even the older people, can see what the real message is and what really happened in history.

We're not meant to push back on people or to make people feel insecure, you know, because that's what's going on now, as far as wanting to take history out of the classroom.

-[Joshua] Right.

-[Janice] And but we're here to just point out the facts.

This is what happened in our history.

-[Joshua VO] If there's one lesson to take from this town, it's that our stories matter, the good, the bad, and the in between.

We don't build a better future by erasing the past, we do it by learning from it.

And maybe, just maybe, if we approach each other with kindness and curiosity, we can create something truly extraordinary ♪ ♪ ♪ In a state that runs deep with history and grit, there's one event that's about as West Virginia as it gets, the West Virginia State Fair.

♪ ♪ ♪ In 2025 marks a milestone, 100 years of bringing people together.

This isn't just another county fair, this is where the past meets the present, where old traditions clash with new, and where the essence of this place comes to life.

For 100 years, this fair has been a snapshot of what it means to be from here, hard working, unapologetically real and fiercely proud.

[applause] From livestock to carnival rides, the smells of fried food to the sounds of country music, it's all wrapped in a kind of gritty, genuine charm that you won't find anywhere else.

The West Virginia State Fair isn't some shiny, polished event for tourists, it's the soul of the state on display.

-[Kelly] I grew up coming to the state fair show and livestock.

It's my favorite time of the year, still is.

-[Joshua] Yeah.

-[Kelly] Yeah.

-[Kelly] I feel like, as a kid, you spend half your time trying to get out of your small town, and the day I got out, I wanted to come back home.

So went to college for six years, got a graduate and post-graduate degree and worked out of town for about a year, and saw a job open up at the State Fair, and I knew that I had to take it.

I remember I was like, 13 years old, 12, 13, years old, and I'd always been at the fair showing livestock, and my dad and I were sitting just outside the sheep barn and having a conversation about how the week had gone.

And, I mean, I remember the exact location that we were sitting, and I told him, I said, "You know, Dad, I think I want to run the State Fair one day."

And so to be able to get to do that now and look back on that moment is something, it's so special to me.

-[Joshua] Yeah, now you really do.

-[Kelly] Yep, and it's fun.

-[Joshua] That's crazy.

-[Kelly] I mean, who gets to do this for a living?

It's, it's a blast.

-[Joshua] For the state as a whole.

Like, this is pretty big deal, right?

-[Kelly] It is.

You know, we're coming up on our 100th anniversary, so the fact that we've made it 100 years, you know, it started as the Greenbrier Valley Fair in 1921 and it was a group of farmers that got together that they were so proud of their community.

They wanted to showcase their agriculture and the homemade products that were made in town, and, yes, for the local economy, but it was really the agriculture and the community pride that started the state fair.

And while we're still here, I mean, we wouldn't be here without the community.

It's, you know, for me, it's so special to be able to give back to the community that helped raise me.

Our state fair, it's a 10 day event.

We start about the second week of August each year, and it's, you know, a celebration of our agriculture.

But of course, we've got carnival rides, we've got musical entertainment, we've got free entertainment, shopping.

It's a chance for our local artisans to showcase and sell their products too.

We average about 165 to 185,000 people a year.

-[Josh] That's a lot of people.

-[Kelly] It is.

-[Josh] That many people.

-[Kelly] It's a lot of people.

And you know, you know what folks don't understand is there's 10 of us year round on staff, and we jump up to 200 on staff just for our employees during fair week.

The fair, to me, is pride of our state.

So it's a showcase, that's why we're here.

We wanted to showcase agriculture and homemade products and its people.

And you know, if you look at the folks that help organize the fair, the folks that come to the fair, everyone's proud.

You know, it's a place where you can just walk out and see folks smiling, and that's what we want to continue over the next, hopefully 100 more years, or beyond that is to be that place where people can come and have a good time with their family and see the pride of their state.

Lewisburg is--is community.

You know what, I personally have seen this community stand behind me on several occasions, whether it be, you know, not having a fair during the pandemic, or losing my father at a young age, or being an athlete.

This town truly embodies what a community is.

We, unfortunately, have been not--no strangers to natural disasters, whether it was a derecho or a 10,000 year flood.

And to see those or the people in the community, come together and put differences aside is truly special.

Because you don't get that in a lot of areas.

So, you know, I know that I can make a phone call and somebody will be here to help me.

-[Sarah] The story of West Virginia, yeah, like, it's a beautiful place, but it's also a troubled place.

You know, the Appalachian story, the story of people who've had to fight for what they have.

It's a hard place to live, and I think it's historically been a hard place to live for various different reasons, socio-economic these days, but it's a rough, rugged place, which is interesting for how close it is to everything else.

We're close to, I don't know, two thirds of the US population, but it's this almost untouched place that people seem not to even really have a good idea of what it is here.

Work is what originally drew us here, what keeps us here, what makes me want to raise my son here is the outdoors.

It's amazing.

We play outside, basically for a living.

We own Hammer Cycles, this bike shop.

Max is Max Hammer.

It's named after him.

Max has been on a bike his entire life, probably as long as he's been able to walk, he's been riding a bike.

So it's integral to who he is as a person.

And eventually I'm just pushy, and so I said, "You have to have a bike shop."

I forced him.

Downtown Lewisburg has shifted a lot in the time I've been here.

It's become a really cool place to visit, the shops, the vibe, the feeling of community that is unlike any place I've ever lived, and I've lived a lot of places.

That's what's unique about Lewisburg.

What keeps us here is the land and the potential for what's possible here.

We're really in a trail desert, but we've been doing a ton of work over the last five years or so, developing trails, making this a place where people can experience the outdoors.

And right now, the trail experience here is intense.

There is a huge barrier to entry for people getting into mountain biking because our trails go straight up a mountain.

It's intense.

There's a reason the World Cup keeps coming to Snowshoe-- it's crazy terrain.

So we're trying to put in purpose built trails that, you know,zigzag, and do fun stuff, up and down these amazing mountains we have.

We do a lot of community rides.

-[Sarah] We do a lot of rides.

-[Joshua] Okay, okay.

-[Sarah] Wednesday nights are church for us, out on the trail, dirt church.

Lewisburg is community, for sure.

The friends we have here are-- it's kind of hard to believe that the closeness of this community, how tight knit it is, but welcoming at the same time.

-[Janice] Greenbrier County is where my family has come from, has grew up, my parents, my parents' parents, my great, great grandparents were always here.

It's still home.

It's still family.

The beautiful mountains that makes me feel like I'm home.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Josh VO] Meet Marius and Adriana, two souls who've turned a chunk of West Virginia's rugged landscape into a sanctuary.

They're the masterminds behind Pomona Salt Cave and Spa, a place that feels like it was pulled straight out of a dream.

Step inside and the air hits you, clean, fresh, charged with those negative ions that science says works wonders for your health.

It's not just a relaxing retreat, it's a revival of body and soul.

Every breath you take in this place feels like a reset.

-[Adrianna] It was really the health challenges of our oldest was one of the reasons why -[Marius] We started to looking -[Adrianna] We started to look deeper and deeper into-- -[Marius] Natural therapies, and that's how we ended up doing more and more research on Halo therapy.

And we visited many salt rooms throughout United States and Europe.

And we said, how can we make it work and improve on it?

So that's why we built underground.

So it's not just the illusion of being in a cave, you actually go underground.

So it's more of an authentic experience.

We did not have a background in the spa industry.

However, we said, "Well, if we do research, we will be, in a way, tainted by what's been done.

So let's try to grow it organically and see where it takes us."

We do have the community that comes here regular basis, but we do have a lot of tourists.

We have been, I think, the number one attraction on TripAdvisor for years.

-[Adrianna] It was something about the mountains of West Virginia.

When we drove through it, there was an energy there.

There was a sort of, I don't know, it just felt like home.

The local population has always been so supportive and so sweet.

I will never forget when we first moved here, we didn't know anything from anything.

We didn't know, we didn't have WiFi up here.

We were with our van, and it was winter time, and we got stuck on the side of the road, and this didn't happen to us anywhere else, but here, where okay, we're like, "Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?

We're stuck."

Within five minutes, like seven vehicles stopped to help us out, out of nowhere.

And I'm like, wow, there's such a sense of community.

And everybody was just ral-- You just, you don't see that everywhere.

Greenbrier is the space that allowed us to grow in a way that we never imagined was possible.

It was wild and uninhibited in so many ways.

In that way, you didn't have the judgment or the busyness of society that was so oppressive and coming at you.

And so we--it gave us space to think, to feel, to decide, and it was very organic.

And you need that kind of space, that kind of like what we create in here, that space, to just let the body be.

And so when you're in that space, amazing things happen.

-[Marius] Besides the fact that it is home, in a way, does feel like a dream that has come true.

We all have many dreams, and sometimes, you know, you feel like you wish you went back a little bit longer into that dream, but we're still in it.

-[Sarah] It's growth.

There are more and more people coming here, realizing it's a really cool place to live.

-[Josh] I think Greenbrier Valley is an amalgamation of people from several different walks of life that have come to appreciate the natural beauty, of the region and the welcoming nature of the folks that live here.

-A lot of younger generation, people like myself that instead of taking their skills and their ideas to Salt Lake or New York, or somewhere down south, they're inputting their dreams and ideas and energy into Lewisburg.

They're keeping it home.

-[Joshua VO] Today, Greenbrier is a patchwork of communities.

The population might hover at just over 30,000 people, but what it lacks in numbers, it makes up for in character.

This is a place where people endure, where stories are passed down like heirlooms, and where every wrinkle in the landscape has a tale to tell.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[Woman] This place has a heartbeat of its own.

-[Man] You just get a vibe that you hear at home.

-[Woman] It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

-[Woman] It's a magic little place in the mountains.

[Narrator] Made with the state fruit of North Carolina.

Mighty Muscadine offers a line of super fruit supplements and juices made from the Muscadine grape, including the Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, Vinetastic.

More at mightymuscadine.com