By Rick Steelhammer
for HDMedia
Three West Virginia barns that served as rustic billboards for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco in one of America’s earliest outdoor advertising campaigns are among eight properties from across the state that have been added to the National Register of Historic Places, the state Department of Tourism announced Monday. Find all of West Virginia’s NRHP listings, by county, at bit.ly/WV_NRHP_Listings.
The Wilson Mail Pouch Barn along W.Va. 62 at Leon, in Mason County, the Hutchinson-Parsons-Fulk Mail Pouch Barn fronting W.Va. 21 at Sandyville, Jackson County, and the See Mail Pouch Barn along W.Va. 55 near Mingo, in Randolph County, are among more than 20,000 barns in 22 states painted between 1891 and 1992 to advertise the main product of the Wheeling-based Bloch Brothers Tobacco Co. To stand out from other companies selling similar products, Bloch Brothers came up with a new twist on outdoor advertisements — using barns instead of billboards to showcase their product. One or more sides of a barn visible from a highway were emblazoned with the slogan, “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco. Treat yourself to the best.”
While Bloch Brothers initially hired local painters to begin their campaign, “by 1925, the company contracted a team of six painters, working in two-man crews, to fan out through the countryside,” according to a 2020 article posted on the state’s website.
Find it at bit.ly/WV_MailPouchBarns. “Each crew decided which barn to paint and offered the farmers $1 or more a year for the ad space,” the article continued. While the company got a virtually free advertising site, once the barns were painted, “the farmers were glad for the cash and the protective coat of paint,” which was touched up every few years.
Nationally, fewer than 2,000 of the more than 20,000 barns painted by Mail Pouch crews remain standing, including — as of 2025 — only 62 of the nearly 1,000 barns that were painted in West Virginia, according to the Mail Pouch Barnstormers preservation group.
The other new additions to the National Register announced Monday include:
- The 130-year-old George McComas House in Barboursville, Cabell County. Known for its asymmetric design, this two-story, Queen Anne-style home, featuring a gabled tin roof, a distinctive tent-shaped turret and a wraparound porch, has been continuously occupied by five generations of the same family and is a stop on the Historic Barboursville Walking Tour.
- The Henrietta Dismukes Hospital Nurses’ Home in Kimball, McDowell County. The last remaining component of Dismukes Hospital, the largest privately owned African American hospital in the nation from 1929 to 1932, serving Black coal miners and their families in the McDowell County coalfields. The hospital building was destroyed by fire in 2013, leaving just the detached, 11-room nurses’ quarters.
- Old Hill Cemetery, also known as Arnold Cemetery, in Weston, Lewis County. Established in 1820, the year after Weston was founded, as the town’s first burial ground, this triangular, 1.5-acre hillside tract includes more than 230 burials, including early settlers and Civil War veterans. Within a family plot in the center of the cemetery, one of West Virginia’s largest yellow poplar trees grows, standing 120 feet tall with a circumference of 120 inches, estimated to be 230 years old.
- The Capon Bridge carrying U.S. 50 over the Cacapon River at the town of Capon Bridge, Hampshire County. This iconic green steel-truss span, built in 1933, underwent significant rehabilitation in 2014
- Citizens National Bank of Belington, Barbour County. It was the first of three banks to open within three months of each other in 1902 and 1903 during Belington’s heyday as a hub for three railroads and the site of a steel mill, brick plant, and coal mine, as well as three hotels, three churches and 14 businesses. In addition to providing financial services, the three-story Citizens National Bank building housed a jewelry store, barber shop, professional offices and a meeting hall. The bank was bought out by a competitor in in 1925, which occupied the building before going out of business in 1931, following the stock market crash of 1929 and he start of the Great Depression. The bank building, built in Romanesque Revival style, was later converted into apartments.
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