What struck me first about Wheeling was what I didn’t see. No Wal-Mart, no pawn or check cashing shops. Barely any strip malls. No obvious attempts at last-ditch downtown redevelopment. Almost like a cloak of invisibility descended over the city and kept it in stasis since the mid-1960s. No one ever thought about putting up “Old Town Wheeling” signs and turning all vacant storefronts into antique stores because that idea has never penetrated this far in. Welcome to Wheeling, West Virginia – it’s rural, poor, but it kept it’s identity intact.
When I get around to writing my “end of the world apocalypse” book, I’ll set it here. Assuming that Wheeling survives another kind of apocalypse.
‘Cloak of invisibility’=’Death of the domestic steel industry’. Youngstown and all the Ohio River steel towns (Wheeling, Weirton, Steubenville, East Liverpool) went to the canvas in the mid-late ’70s and have never really gotten back up.
Another good post-apocalyptic setting in that area is the abandoned VW plant near New Stanton, Pa.