The winners of the 2024 PBS Kids Writers Contest at WVPB have been announced!
Nominate an exceptional West Virginia teacher today!
On Demand
On Demand
Watch locally produced documentaries & more.
On Demand
On Demand
West Virginia Morning
Inside Appalachia
West Virginia Week
Mountain Stage
Us & Them
The Legislature Today
Send us your comments and questions.
Stream our board meetings.
Come and meet us!
Check out the latest WVPB news.
Meet the WVPB staff.
WV Educational Broadcasting Authority, the WVPB Foundation, and the Friends of WVPB.
Come work with us!
Sign up for our newsletter and get weekly updates.
Sponsor impactful and engaging media and entertainment.
Use your IRA to make a gift to WVPB.
Become a member with your gift of $1,000 or more.
On June 25, 1980, Nancy Santomero and Vicki Durian, who were apparently hitchhiking to the Rainbow Family reunion in Webster County, were murdered on Droop Mountain, in southern Pocahontas County.
The Rainbow Family is a loosely organized group, variously characterized as hippies and drifters, or as peaceful nature lovers and ecologists.
The annual gatherings, first held in Aspen, Colorado, grew from popular social, political, and cultural movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. The name “rainbow” signifies the diversity of people involved.
In the weeks before the 1980 gathering and the murders, West Virginia Secretary of State A. James Manchin and a group of Marlinton residents filed suit to bar the Rainbow Family from Monongahela National Forest. Manchin was quoted as saying that West Virginia didn’t need “this bunch of derelict misfits.” The federal court suit was dropped.
Despite the murders, about 6,000 gathered at the Rainbow Gathering in Webster County. In 1993, Pocahontas County native Jacob Beard was convicted of the murders. He was later acquitted and received a $2 million settlement after Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist and serial killer, confessed to the murders.
