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History
& Terrain
The West Virginia Turnpike
is a four-lane toll highway, 88 miles in length, between Princeton
and Charleston, West Virginia. The entire length of the Turnpike
carries Interstate 77; Interstate 64 is carried from Charleston
to south of City of Beckley.
Described as “an engineering
achievement of heroic proportion,” the Turnpike traverses mountainous
terrain that required grades of up to five percent and the movement
of 70 million cubic yards of earth. The Turnpike climbs from an
elevation of 600 feet at Charleston to an elevation of 3400 feet
at Flat Top Mountain.
The Turnpike has 116 bridges
- more than one every mile. Three of its major bridges were named
for native West Virginia military heroes - two Congressional Medal
of Honor winners, Sergeant Cornelius Charlton and Sergeant Stanley
Bender, and one noted aviation pioneer, Brigadier General Charles
E. (Chuck) Yeager, the first to penetrate the sound barrier.
In addition to providing
the traveler with the most direct route south from the Great Lakes
and regions of Canada, the Turnpike carries Interstate 64 to south
of Beckley, where it provides a much needed east-west route as well.
Nature’s vistas - the view from Flat Top Mountain, the Bluestone
Gorge, spring’s buds and blossoms and fall’s panoply of color -
add aesthetics to the list of conventional values of economy and
time found on the West Virginia Turnpike
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