Cass Scenic Railroad State Park
Twenty minutes east of Snowshoe, the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park is a throwback to the turn of the 20th century, when the railroad first came to town and steam engines carried lumber from Bald Knob, West Virginia’s highest peak. The 11-mile track and its century-old locomotive are still functional, but these days they’re used to ferry tourists, not spruce, through the mountains.
Cranberry Mountain Nature Center and Highland Scenic Highway
From mid-April to mid-October, you can take a cruise along the Highland Scenic Highway and wind up at the 750-acre Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, home to the largest concentration of cranberry bogs in the state and the strange carnivorous plants that grow in them. Visit the Nature Center to learn more about this fascinating ecosystem and arrange a guided tour of the bogs.
Green Bank Observatory
Up here in the mountains of West Virginia, scientists are listening. Using a massive radio telescope the size of two football fields, they try to detect signals so faint that all other frequencies across the vast 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone must be silenced in order to hear them. Some nearby residents can’t even use wi-fi or own microwaves. This silence has allowed for the discovery of pulsars, neutron stars, and other space phenomena. Here on earth, visitors can take a self-guided walking tour and explore its network of bike trails.