When I began my AmeriCorps service year, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I knew I wanted to give back to my community and grow in my own skills, but I couldn’t have predicted just how much this experience would shape me.
Great Story on AFNHA Snorkeling
By Emma Hamilton
Serving With US Forest Service
The past eight years of my life have been defined by a recurring two weeks. Two weeks, a seemingly minute fraction of the year, has made all the difference in my life. Ten years old, with braids and braces, my mom drove me to summer camp, car winding down the country roads of Pocahontas County, tires crunching on gravel as we pulled through the gates. We were greeted by friendly smiles and welcoming words in eclectic accents. I was just a child, however on my first day at Camp Twin Creeks, a gut feeling told me that I was in a special place.
Two weeks later, my instincts were proven right. I had met friends from Washington D.C. to Tunisia, learned how to play cricket, woven friendship bracelets to adorn my wrists, sung songs that would be forever ingrained in my memory, and was fully immersed in the natural beauty of West Virginia. I realized that camp was not just a dot on a map, but a community, a family, a second home.
This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote seven years ago. A lot has changed in the past seven years, however one thing has, and always will, stay the same—my love for West Virginia and the community I have always found here. As written above, Camp Twin Creeks has been my second home since I was ten years old. It was at this special place that I was first introduced to river snorkeling in the wild and wonderful streams of West Virginia.
As a watershed and fisheries AmeriCorps member with the U.S. Forest Service, I had the privilege of returning to my favorite place to lead snorkeling events for the campers. It was truly a full-circle moment, as I saw their eyes light up when they surfaced from underwater after spotting mottled sculpin, smallmouth bass, northern hogsuckers, and fantail darters. I remember having the same feeling every summer at Camp.
This beautifully wild place is what fueled my passion for conservation and working in the wildlife and fisheries sector. In a world that is driven by technology, organizations like the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area, U.S. Forest Service, and Camp Twin Creeks provide an escape to the natural world.
It has been an incredible experience working to directly restore the watersheds of the place that has sculpted my life. At ten years old, this small piece of heaven nestled in the Appalachian Mountains became my sanctuary, and 15 years later, nothing has changed.
Historic Sites Homestead and Heritage Garden
Great Story for AFNHA Birds
Lumberjills: A Legacy Carved in Timber
This project began one day as I was sitting at my desk, looking around the museum. It suddenly struck me—there wasn’t a single mention of women lumber jills in our collection. That moment sparked a deep curiosity and led me to begin researching the role of women in the timber industry. Fittingly, my lumber jill display came together just in time for the 60th anniversary of the woodchopping festival in my town Webster Springs. The display will be featured in the upcoming Lumber jill documentary set to be released next year.
Stories Told and Retold: Upshur County Historical Society’s Summer 2025 Exhibit
Each summer the Upshur County Historical Society cordially opens the doors of its History Center & Museum inviting the public to a new rendition of its annual summer exhibit. This year’s exhibit, Stories Told and Retold, highlights a selection of the county's key photographers, woven and quilted handicrafts, memorabilia, and industry, with stories drawn from UCHS’s vast and diverse artifacts collection.
Spring Brings New Life to the Heritage Garden
Spring has arrived at the historic Sites Homestead, and our Heritage Garden is off to a great start. Everything we grow in the Heritage Garden connects back to our mission: to keep the history of this land and the people who lived here alive. We hope you’ll come by, take a walk through the garden, and see how it’s growing. There’s always something new to discover!
Don’t Miss Discover Nature Day!
Get ready for some outdoor fun! Discover Nature Day is an annual family-friendly event hosted by the USDA Forest Service at Seneca Rocks Discovery Center. People of all ages are welcome to get out and explore our natural world. This event will be held on Saturday, June 7th, from 10 am-3 pm and will be taking place rain or shine.
Alumni Story: Tucker Riggleman
Exploring the Blackwater Canyon: PeasantWalk 2025
Historians say a medieval peasant would walk up to twenty miles in a day to reach a market. This single fact enraptured us since it was first mentioned by Tucker on a long trek through the bog of Dolly Sods one fall afternoon. While at first it gnawed benignly like a worm in the back of our heads, it swelled to an obsession during the winter until it burst into being on a warm afternoon in March as PeasantWalk 2025.
Tucker Community Foundation: Uniting Nonprofits Across 9 Counties
Part of my scope of service as an AmeriCorps member serving the Foundation is to aid in the expansion and outreach within our serviced communities. With a small staff and a large rural region to cover, maintaining personal connections with individual communities remains challenging—something that technology alone cannot fully address. The major project I recently completed consisted of eight nonprofit information sessions designed not only as a 101 course to community foundations and applying for grants, but as regenerative networking opportunities for volunteers and staff in the nonprofit sector who often experience isolation and burnout.
125th Audubon Christmas Bird Count
Each year between December 14 and January 5, naturalists and bird lovers across the western hemisphere mobilize in the longest-running community science project in the world. Volunteers go out on one day to count birds in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The data collected by thousands of volunteers has been used as a valuable resource to understand trends in bird populations over the past century. On December 14, we ventured out for a Christmas Bird Count in Pocahontas County.
Reviving an Ancient English Caroling Tradition in Elkins, WV
On Saturday, December 7th, I helped organize and uphold a unique and ancient English caroling tradition in Elkins, where we recreated this ancient English tradition at the Kump House in order to bless their apple trees, chasing out harmful spirits and waking the trees up for the coming winter so that they will have a bountiful harvest next fall. While this sounds strange, the event itself is more about bringing the wider Elkins community together in an evening of song and creating a fun tradition that will hopefully become a yearly event!
2023-24 AmeriCorps Highlights
In our 2023-24 member service year, we supported 34 AmeriCorps members at 20 organizations whose sites, programs, and activities were visited by 39,860 individuals. These members delivered educational programs to an audience of over 5,000 individuals, treated and improved 1,052 acres of public land, and managed 1,501 hours of volunteer service. 1,184 individuals who participated in our stewardship education programs reported increased knowledge of environmental stewardship.
West Virginia Instrument Anthology at The Augusta Heritage Center
Madeline Ricks is an AmeriCorps member with AFNHA, serving as the Collections Preservation Coordinator for The Augusta Heritage center in Elkins, WV. She has begun writing a new blog series for the Augusta website. Beginning with the African origins of the banjo, Madeline will take readers on a journey through the histories and cultural impacts of the instruments played in West Virginia’s musical traditions.
The Stories They Tell: Upshur County Images, Objects, Voices, and Places
There are many interesting and unique materials housed in the Upshur County Historical Society Document Repository that have never been displayed in an exhibit. Some materials have been overlooked because, while interesting, they relate to a topic that is too narrow to warrant an entire exhibit. This year’s exhibit gives space for these materials to shine.
Preserving Black History for the Next Generation at Pleasant Green
On June 19, Pleasant Green Church in Hillsboro underwent two restoration projects in collaboration with the Forest Service, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, AFNHA AmeriCorps, and Cultural Heritage in the Forest. The Forest Service creates partnerships like these within local communities to help support efforts of preservation. This partnership is overwhelmingly meaningful to us here at the Forest and AFNHA - connecting with Black students and sharing with them our state’s history is invaluable to the future of diverse involvement, public awareness, and funding for these sites. There is no West Virginia History without Black History, and it was our honor to share with them this part of their cultural past.
My Journey Through 4-H
This term in 2023-2024, my involvement with the 4-H History Round-Up project and my participation at 4-H Camp evolved together as the theme of this year’s camp was “A Journey Through 4-H”. The theme took campers through the past and into what may be the future of 4-H in 2115. That faraway date marked the 200-year anniversary of the world’s first 4-H Camp in 1915, “Camp Good Luck”, which took place in Randolph County! This theme gave me the role of putting all the Randolph County 4-H history I’ve learned in my service to direct use.
Citizen Science Education Program on Non-Native and Invasive Species
Every March the WV Division of Forestry organizes 4 citizen science lessons for 5th graders at Petersburg Elementary School. These lessons are about Non-Native and Invasive Species (NNIS). We teach these students what non-native and invasive species are, how they spread, how to identify specific species, and how to use GPS data to locate, track, and record information on them.
Sharing Upshur County History with "An Occasional Newsletter"
The Upshur County Historical Society: An Occasional Newsletter was just published mid-April. The annual journal is dedicated to providing educational articles on historical topics related to Upshur County. As the AFNHA member serving with the UCHS this year, I had the opportunity to contribute an article on Bush’s Fort, the primary frontier fort in the region that would become Upshur County. Readers have requested an article on this topic for years, and so I was glad to help see that request fulfilled.
