Clay County High School offers a class called Travel WV.
The students in that class have been exploring options and are going to be perusing a goal to open a Clay County Visitors Center. Here is information that was given on the class and the visitors center during a presentation to the Clay County Commission:
The Travel West Virginia Class is part of the Career and Technical Education at Clay County High School. It gives the students the opportunity for experiences outside of the classroom. It increases the knowledge of the many different career options and opportunities that are available in the real world. It allows students to learn real-world skills and apply them to realistic circumstances, and, they said, it is fun.
The next part of the presentation outlined the benefits of a visitors center for Clay County. The visitor’s center would hopefully attract more people to Clay County. It would connect the current residents with activities that the county offers and will promote tourism for the county and state. It will promote and preserve local culture and history, increase the county revenue, promote local businesses, promote local events and county clean-up projects and it will act as a central location to spear-head projects.
Why have a visitors center? Why put all this work into a place for people to find information, etc.? This class has taught manners, generated an appreciation for the county, attitude changes toward circumstances, and it shares a new perspective with the rest of the county and residents.
The visitors center will offer brochures, maps/directions, water, free WiFi, a visitor’s center website and Clay County apparel/panther gear.
A facility is being requested by the group to place the visitors center and they hope to be able to offer public restrooms, internet, phone, computer, printer, candy machine/pop machine, signs, display cases for local artifacts
Having a visitors center for visitors to go to gather information about our beautiful county would be a great asset to this county. Visitors, and even some residents, do not know all the benefits this county has to offer, all the beautiful places to travel to and explore and all the history this county has had. Students in the Travel WV Class would also like to clean up the put-ins and take-outs along the Elk River and provide and maintain trash cans for those to help keep our county clean.
In summary of what the students were asking the county commission for was this: Does the commission have a space available to initiate a visitor’s center in Clay County? Would it be allowed to dump trash in a county dumpster from the put-ins and take-outs along the Elk River? Is anyone able to assist and support the class in writing grants? Would the commission support establishing a user fee for commercial use on the Elk River?
