A day trip to Grafton, WV to see the architecture of the original buildings from when the town was a booming railway hub. The B&O train station built in 1911 by JD Walsh & Son, donated by Colonel John T. McGraw, opened on August 22. At which time, it would see up to 33 passenger trains per day! It would also see John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in America at that time, arrive on December 7, 1915 while on a trip to inspect Fairmont, WV area coal mines. During WWI, soldiers bound for Europe would pass through the town; in 1922, President Warren G. Harding addressed a crowd of Grafton residents from the platform of his train car. The Willard Hotel, which was built in 1911 and opened to the public on May 13, 1912, was predicted to be "[t]he crowning glory of the town." by Grafton's The Daily Sentinel. B&O General Manager, Thomas Fitzgerald, was the first registered guest at the hotel. Mabel Normand and the cast and crew of Back to the Woods stayed at The Willard while filming at nearby Valley Falls State Park. The Manos Theatre, built on the site of The Strand Theatre, opened in 1912 as a 325 seat vaudville and moving picture theatre named The Hippodrome before being purchased by Lester Bush where it became The Strand. The Andrews Methodist Church is where the first Mother's Day was celebrated, outside on the side lawn is the Grafton Mother's Day shrine.
