A West Virginia family with ties to the Audra area for over 175 years donated 47 acres to Audra State Park. In September, the Thacker family signed over the property at the state Capitol, along with a $15,000 donation for trails and signs on the new property, known as the Thacker Addition, according to a report by West Virginia Explorer News. This is a significant boost for a modest park nestled between two counties in the Appalachian foothills.
On September 3, the family of Victor and Mary Thacker formally donated their property in a ceremonial deed signing at the West Virginia State Capitol. These 47 acres of land will provide space for future trail development, according to officials. the gift points to the family’s enduring ties to the region While park officials did not specify whether the donated land itself stayed in family hands throughout those 175 years. The landscape around it was logged; later, Barbour County 4-H groups used the area as a camp between 1919 and 1923. Audra State Park formally opened in 1950, with additional acreage added over the following decade as the park took shape. With the Thacker family’s 47-acre donation, the park will see an extension without erasing any of its past.
‘West Virginia State Parks is deeply grateful for this extraordinary gift from the Thacker family,’ Dillard Price, acting chief of West Virginia State Parks, said. By then, five families occupied the spot along the Middle Fork, according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia. The Thacker family made the donation in honour of Victor Thacker’s great-great-grandparents, Jacob Johnson Thacker and Sarah Ann DeMasters Thacker. The Thacker family’s foothold in Barbour County, where the park sits, goes back nearly two centuries. Audra itself traces back to a small river community that emerged around the 20th century. A gristmill and sawmill anchored the settlement in those early years. Later, the state acquired the property.
Today, it is known chiefly for the river gorge, the forest canopy and those established trails.
