Day 12 – Moundsville. WV – Louise and Brian McLeod Travel Blog

The campgrounds we were in last night and tonight is indeed brand new and opened in the spring of 2022. It’s a lovely spot with excellent facilities.

Today is an interesting day with 2 activities in the area diametrically opposed to each other: a Krishna temple / retreat and the Penitentiary.

We have seen almost everything now that we wanted to see in West Virginia. There is one thing left .. the Giant Teapot. That is located in the ‘stick ‘ portion of WV. We will travel a little out of our way tomorrow.. spending a couple of days for a leisurely trip home.

This afternoon is a lovely warm day. We arrived back at the campsite to enjoy a quiet afternoon, or what is left of it. It’s Sunday and almost everyone has left.

Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold

This location is called the Palace of the Winding Path in Fallout 76. Not sure if that refers to the road getting up to it or the spiritual one. It is under renovations at the moment and the beautiful golden domes are under plastic or something similar. The rose garden is spectacular. There are many people here mainly families. It is a festival weekend. We toured the monument, walked the grounds and had lunch in the vegetarian restaurant. Best samosas I’ve eaten in the U.S.

Peacock window in the monument to Prabhupada

New Vrindaban, began in 1968 as a project of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The society, a Hindu organization, was founded in New York in 1966 by Srila Prabhupada. In his native India in 1944, Prabhupada had founded Back to Godhead, an English-language magazine devoted to the Hindu god Krishna. In 1959, he took vows of renunciation and was named A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. He arrived in New York in 1965 at the age of 69. His International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) flourished in the American counterculture of the 1960s.

The Palace is the jewel of New Vrindaban, founded in the late 1960s by the followers of Hare Krishna. At first it was to be a simple residence for Krishna’s spiritual leader, Srila Prabhupada.But under the guidance of Keith Ham (a.k.a. Kirtanananda Swami) the humble house grew into a Palace fit for a raja. Land was cleared at the top of McCreary’s Ridge, and the devotees learned how to stain glass and lay bricks. They imported 52 varieties of onyx and marble for walls and floors. They carved furniture out of teak, constructed crystal chandeliers, painted elaborate murals on the ceilings and adorned the 10 rooms with crystal chandeliers, marble floors, stained glass windows and mirrored ceilings. Gold leaf and semi-precious stones accent its architectural flourishes. Surrounded by fountains, fragrant gardens, and a lily pond, it is utterly out of place on a back road in West Virginia. ref Roadside America.com. But in 1977, Prabhupada died — the Krishnas, who believe in reincarnation, would say he left his body. Now the palace was to be a majestic memorial and 2 years later it opened to the public.

The Gold Palace in FO76 aka the Palace of the Winding Path

Like Pricketts Fort, this location is more elaborate in the game than in real life. There are several quests and an event here. My log cabin C.A.M.P. is on a small pond immediately to the north of it on the ridge.

West Virginia Penitentiary, Moundsville, WV

Built on ancient Adena burial grounds, this place is thought to be haunted. Paranormal seekers come here almost weekly to search for ghosts. Many movies have been filmed here.

Now serving as a tourist destination, this former prison once was housed some of the most violent inmates in all of the country. This ominous Gothic structure, built in 1866, stopped being an active prison in 1995 and has since been a historic landmark and tourist attraction in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Its Gothic structure “exhibited as much as possible, great strength and convey[ed] to the mind a cheerless blank indicative of the misery which awaits the unhappy being who enters within its walls.”

The first building constructed in the prison built of hand cut sandstone by the prisoners themselves.

The administration block. The warden and his family lived on the top two floors.

Rotating entrance cage, one of 2 in the world.

South Hall for the ‘general population’.

It’s seen riots, fires and the execution of nearly 100 prisoners through either hanging or electrocution.

Toward the end of its life as a prison, the facility was marked by many instances of riots and escapes. In the 1960s, the prison reached a peak population of about 2,000 inmates. With the building of more prisons, that number declined to 600 – 700 inmates by 1995. The fate of the prison was sealed in a 1986 ruling by the West Virginia Supreme Court which stated that confinement to the 5 x 7-foot (2.1 m) cells constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Within nine years, West Virginia Penitentiary was closed as a prison.