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Huntington residents, what are some pros and cons of the city. I hear negative things about the city but I’ve been through the town and it actually has some nice neighborhoods and some nice restaurants. I’d like to know about things to do, job market, crime, climate, etc.
Huntington is a great area to live in from my experience. The people here are typically very warm and welcoming as there is more of a southern influence in the area. As to the weather, it tends to be very mild in the winter. On a typical year, we might get a couple of snows of 6 inches or less but otherwise, just a dusting or a couple of inches. Once every 5-10 years we'll get a larger snow of 10-12 inches but it is usually gone in no more than 2 weeks. Even when the temperature gets cold, it doesn't last long here. And cold for this area is still in the positive range. We don't often get temps in the negative range. Summer temps usually get into the 90s with some humidity but the time frame of those temps doesn't last terribly long. Spring and Fall are delights here with the temps and overall weather. Spring brings some beautiful blossoms with it and fall brings the changing of the leaves. Those 2 are definitely my favorite times of the year here.
Working in the medical field as you mentioned, there is a lot of opportunity here. Just in Huntington, we have Cabell Huntington Hospital, St Mary's Medical Center and the VA Medical Center. There is also HIMG here which is one of if not the largest private practice in the state. Having the Marshall School of Medicine here also adds to this area greatly. Moving out a little further, you have Kings Daughters in Ashland, KY and SOMC in Portsmouth, OH.
For things to do, there is a great live music scene here and there is a pretty good art scene here as well with the Huntington Museum of Art as well as Marshall University's Visual Arts Center in the heart of downtown. For the nerd in you, we have the Huntington Comic and Toy Convention which has recently been expanded to a 2 day event. The Big Sandy Arena offers frequent concerts and shows and has been named one of the best venues for its size in the world. The Marshall Artists Series is the second oldest University artist series in the country and also brings in several national touring acts throughout the year. Marshall University athletics also offer Division 1 football and basketball programs. They are also about to start building a new baseball field in the spring that will bring more opportunity with it as well. Between everything that the city offers and the events that Marshall has through its various programs, there is almost always something to do in town.
For outdoor activities that you mentioned in your other thread, there are lots of areas very close by. Mensa guy mentioned some of the local parks that are scattered throughout the city. Beech Fork is about 20 min from Huntington and is the largest campground in the state. It offers lots of fishing and some boating opportunities as well. Carter Caves in Kentucky is also only about 45 min away and offers some great outdoor opportunities. There are also lots of other areas close by in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. New River Gorge in WV, Red River Gorge in KY and Hocking Hills in OH are some of my favorites. There's a lot of really nice outdoor areas within a 3 hour radius of Huntington.
With regards to crime, we have crime here just like any city. There are some pretty thefts that happen and you will see some occasional shootings but these are rarely random. From my experience, Huntington is only dangerous if you participate in risky and dangerous activity. If you pay close attention to the news reports when something does happen, it involves people doing things that are typically against the law. I've lived in the city proper for 11 years now, walking to work every day and walking many other places I've needed to go and I've never had an issue. If one simply takes some precautions and uses common sense strategies that most law enforcement agencies will tell you to use, it's pretty easy to avoid crime. Most crime seems to be centered in the West End and the Fairfield East neighborhoods but they currently have strategies in place to help bring those numbers down.
Hopefully this helps to answer some of your questions. I'll provide a few links below as well. Let me know if you have any other questions.
We just moved here this year from near Seattle. People trash talk the local area quite a bit, while there everyone talked up the surroundings as a paradise. All in all, I'd say our standard of living improved from the move.
The locals talk up the drugs and crime from the drugs quite a bit, but I think they sometimes overstate it. In Washington our local city government was having trouble keeping some street lights on because people kept stealing the wiring overnight and burglary was incredibly common. Things seem both more peaceful and scarier here. People regularly get shot between the hours of 1 AM and 3 AM, they mostly seem to be drug dealers. There is the occasional bit of what I almost consider to be antiquated crime, the sort of thing I rarely saw in Washington as the risk just didn't equal the reward, two masked men try to rob a convenience store in the middle of the night with guns out. Personally, we try not to be out on the streets after midnight and in the daylight feel quite safe here.
We are big fans of delivery culture, and Huntington is great for that. Instacart serves us here, as do Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Doordash. The local food is pretty good, you can find decent barbecue, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese. There is this weird fascination with hot dogs and hot dog stands I really don't understand, but you do have options besides those.
City and state government can be strangely antiquated in some ways. Most websites look like they were designed in the eighties and never updated, but, they function. You'll get a lot of, what feels to me bizarre, instructions to go to an office to drop off a form for this or that.
It is a pretty city. Huntington was part of the city beautiful movement back when and it shows, lots of pretty city parks, tree lined boulevards. There are even more iterations of it downtown like the tug boat art. I couldn't fairly describe Huntington as having a thriving art scene, but the creatives I have seen do seem to have a very close knit community and it is a side of Huntington I think will grow in the future.
City government seems competent. With a population that rapidly shrank, they managed to stabilize the budget and keep the downtown store fronts mostly occupied and business going. The heart of the city remains strong and mostly healthy.
For us, the greatest thing about moving here has been the decrease in traffic and the lower cost of living. We now live in a beautiful home for less than we were paying for a two bedroom apartment out west. Eating out and our grocery bills are around half what they were. The worst traffic during the daylight here approximates what I'd see at three AM out that way.
What Huntington lacks can be found easily in an overnight trip. Columbus is just 2.5 hours away with a symphony, one of the countries better zoos, and touring shows.
We just moved here this year from near Seattle. People trash talk the local area quite a bit, while there everyone talked up the surroundings as a paradise. All in all, I'd say our standard of living improved from the move.
The locals talk up the drugs and crime from the drugs quite a bit, but I think they sometimes overstate it. In Washington our local city government was having trouble keeping some street lights on because people kept stealing the wiring overnight and burglary was incredibly common. Things seem both more peaceful and scarier here. People regularly get shot between the hours of 1 AM and 3 AM, they mostly seem to be drug dealers. There is the occasional bit of what I almost consider to be antiquated crime, the sort of thing I rarely saw in Washington as the risk just didn't equal the reward, two masked men try to rob a convenience store in the middle of the night with guns out. Personally, we try not to be out on the streets after midnight and in the daylight feel quite safe here.
We are big fans of delivery culture, and Huntington is great for that. Instacart serves us here, as do Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Doordash. The local food is pretty good, you can find decent barbecue, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese. There is this weird fascination with hot dogs and hot dog stands I really don't understand, but you do have options besides those.
City and state government can be strangely antiquated in some ways. Most websites look like they were designed in the eighties and never updated, but, they function. You'll get a lot of, what feels to me bizarre, instructions to go to an office to drop off a form for this or that.
It is a pretty city. Huntington was part of the city beautiful movement back when and it shows, lots of pretty city parks, tree lined boulevards. There are even more iterations of it downtown like the tug boat art. I couldn't fairly describe Huntington as having a thriving art scene, but the creatives I have seen do seem to have a very close knit community and it is a side of Huntington I think will grow in the future.
City government seems competent. With a population that rapidly shrank, they managed to stabilize the budget and keep the downtown store fronts mostly occupied and business going. The heart of the city remains strong and mostly healthy.
For us, the greatest thing about moving here has been the decrease in traffic and the lower cost of living. We now live in a beautiful home for less than we were paying for a two bedroom apartment out west. Eating out and our grocery bills are around half what they were. The worst traffic during the daylight here approximates what I'd see at three AM out that way.
What Huntington lacks can be found easily in an overnight trip. Columbus is just 2.5 hours away with a symphony, one of the countries better zoos, and touring shows.
I'm interested in your response-I'm also currently in the PNW (Sandpoint, Idaho) and am considering WV for retirement. The cost of living, particularly housing, is a major reason. While not as extreme as the Seattle area, housing costs here are still very high (like so much of the west). I like what I see of WV-still plenty of mountains, lower COL and (compared to my area anyway) shorter winters. I'm a little concerned about the relative proximity to DC-but some of that comes down to the overall shorter distances and smaller states of the east.
I'm interested in your response-I'm also currently in the PNW (Sandpoint, Idaho) and am considering WV for retirement. The cost of living, particularly housing, is a major reason. While not as extreme as the Seattle area, housing costs here are still very high (like so much of the west). I like what I see of WV-still plenty of mountains, lower COL and (compared to my area anyway) shorter winters. I'm a little concerned about the relative proximity to DC-but some of that comes down to the overall shorter distances and smaller states of the east.
Why in the world would you be concerned about proximity to DC? Huntington is more than a 7 hour drive from DC.
Why in the world would you be concerned about proximity to DC? Huntington is more than a 7 hour drive from DC.
Well, that's not specifically a Huntington issue (I shouldn't have posted in this thread) but parts of WV are only 70 miles from DC. I don't want to get into political stuff here-but there is a lot about DC and large metro areas I want to avoid. I grew up in rural western NY state. The politics of NYC impacted the whole state. In a good way or bad is up to individual desires, but there is no denying it happens. Same as what is happening to rural VA. But really-I shouldn't have commented on it.
Tim's post has some great information and a good snapshot of Huntington. The weather is generally good as we don't experience a lot of severe weather and as Tim mentioned, our winters are more on the mild side compared to say twenty years ago. The area has crime but nothing too severe and with the Marshall Health expansion continuing, hopefully it will serve as the catalyst to redeveloping the Fairfield neighborhood.
Huntington is doing better than it was but it still has a long way to go to regain a lot of it's former glory. Yes, the city and area has lost a lot of population in the last 40 to 50 years. Along with jobs and industries. As mentioned early, the city has made progress in terms of leadership and a better effort in keeping businesses and looking to land others.
As for the comment about traveling to Columbus and other major cities to experience the things Huntington lacks, a lot of folks in the area do just that. It's a blessing and a curse in my opinion. It's nice to have access to many shows and such but also a burden in that many times you have to add in the expense of an overnight stay for the experience. It's something to keep in the back of your mind when planning.
As Tim mentioned, the MU Artist Series and the Mountain Health Arena do a good job of bringing in a wide variety of shows to Huntington. Also, as a region the Clay Center in Charleston and the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland bring in some good shows and concerts as well.
Well, that's not specifically a Huntington issue (I shouldn't have posted in this thread) but parts of WV are only 70 miles from DC. I don't want to get into political stuff here-but there is a lot about DC and large metro areas I want to avoid. I grew up in rural western NY state. The politics of NYC impacted the whole state. In a good way or bad is up to individual desires, but there is no denying it happens. Same as what is happening to rural VA. But really-I shouldn't have commented on it.
I lived in NYC for years and without NYC that state would be dead. You shouldn’t judge an area by the politics that you perceive to be there. Neither group is perfect and blaming one for a reason not to move somewhere is silly.
Heritage Farms Museum (the Smithsonian Institute borrows from them) They hold "Wayback Weekends" occasionally and all exhibits are open during those events. Loads of old Appalachian stuff here to see. It's near the "Central City Antique District".
I haunt some RV message boards and tell people about these two places. I get a lot of "OMG !! responses and "who would have dreamed such a place exist".
In my trip across the country I went to a lot of museums and historic locations, I did not do social spots of night life, I used the google map filter to find thrift stores and museums. I wanted to visit living history events but I missed them all by 1 to 3 days.
The Museum of Radio Technology is on my list, don't tell any one but a lifetime ago I had a year of radio and TV school, it has been 30 years since I DJ'd or was on TV every week. Asides from the Nerd cons I have living history evens booked marked such as the farm and the civil war days events
Cobblestone streets are so quaint I want to die but one con I have to mention is the pot holes. The one house I could have bought on time as the title holder was an out of state millionaire and just wanted to get it off his books the road was so bad I could not get to it and would have been stuck in the house in the winter. And sometime in the last two weeks I bent a rim on a pothole and my tire only holds air for 2 days
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