Ghent, West Virginia

The name Ghent, here in Mercer County, commemorates the treaty signed in the Belgian city of Ghent on December twenty-fourth, eighteen fourteen, ending the War of eighteen twelve between the United States and Britain. Dozens of American towns planted in the decades after that war took patriotic names, and Ghent was one of them. The community later found an unlikely second identity as a mountain recreation hub.

In nineteen fifty-eight, Bald Knob Ski Resort opened nearby but failed within three years. A successor resort on Huff Knob opened in the mid-nineteen seventies and eventually became Winterplace Ski Resort, still operating today. Along this stretch of Interstate Seventy-Seven, where the highway runs through the Appalachian highlands, Ghent marks the edge of Mercer County's higher ground, and in winter, the mountain above it still draws skiers from across the region.