Historical Highway Markers
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West Virginia/Bland County
Z-214
(Obverse) West Virginia Z-214 Describing the contrast between both the placid and delightful Shenandoah and the wild and tremendous mountains in western Virginia, now West Virginia, Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia, This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. According to tradition, the first European pioneer to settle here was Morgan Morgan, a Welshman who immigrated to Mill Creek and acquired his land in Nov. 1730; German immigrants, however, were probably in the Shephardstown area in 1727. In 1861, many counties in western Virginia opposed secession. On 20 June 1863 Congress admitted fifty of them to the Union as the new state of West Virginia. (Reverse) Bland County Z-214 Probably named for Richard Bland, a leader of Virginia's colonial resistance to Great Britain during the 1760s and 1770s and a Virginia Revolutionary patriot, this mountainous county was formed in 1861 from Giles, Wythe, and Tazewell Counties. Sharon Lutheran Church, built about 1883 near Ceres, is noted for its cemetery, which contains many boldly carved headstones that reflect the area's German folk culture. Bland is the county seat. Built in 1889, the courthouse originally had pointed Gothic Revival-style windows on the facade; the windows probably were altered to their present form about 1929, when the portico was added.
Bland