Beartown State Park, A Forest and Geologic Wonder

By Steve Nix, About.com Guide

West Virginia's Beartown State Park is a natural area of 107 acres purchased in 1970 with funds from the Nature Conservancy and a donation from Mrs. Edwin G. Polan, in memory of her son, Ronald Keith Neal, who lost his life in the Vietnam War. Although it is West Virginia's smallest state park, it is probably their most beautiful one in autumn.

Beartown State Park is located on the eastern summit of Droop Mountain, seven miles southwest of Hillsboro, West Virginia. It is on the same mountain where the only major battle of the American Civil War was fought in West Virginia in 1863. Pearl S. Buck's birthplace in only minutes away.