Photo: Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The only surviving structure from the Civil War standing in Princeton.
Dr. Robert B. McNutt House is a historic home located at Princeton, Mercer County, West Virginia, United States. The original section was built about 1840, and is a classic I house configuration, with a two-story, three-bay main facade and a one-bay-wide, two-story centered portico. Later additions include a one-story, hip-roofed section and a two-story ell. The portico has curvilinear brackets and a second story railing in the Gothic Revival style. The house sits on a random ashlar sandstone foundation. Also on the property is a contributing stone storage building / well house. The house was used as a headquarters and field hospital by the Union Army in the spring of 1862.
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A performing arts center
Replica depot housing artifacts relating to the Virginian Railroad.
Locally known as "the Pyramids" for its unmistakable triple-pyramidal glass ceiling, the TIC also has a large repository of guides and brochures, as well as an extensive craft and gift shop featuring hand-crafted local souvenirs, including glass, coal sculptures, pottery, books, jewelry and foods. Free Wi-Fi.
An abandoned amusement park (1920s-1966) occupies a desecrated native burial ground which was the site of the 1783 Mitchell Clay settler farm. Three of the Clay children (Bartley, Tabitha, Ezekial) were killed by a band of natives; Mitchell Clay led a group of settlers in bloody retaliation, causing several fatalities. In the 1920s, businessman Conley T. Snidow purchased the site of the Clay farm for development as an amusement park; the park was abandoned in 1966 after two children were killed (a girl on a circling swing was hit by a truck and a boy drowned in the amusement park’s swimming pond). The park structures and rides stand in abandoned and deteriorating condition; tours of the "cursed" site are offered by appointment only, with a "dark carnival" in the days leading up to Hallow'een.