Everyone talks about making a mountain out of a molehill, but it took a town in West Virginia to do it.

      Actually, CBS Radio was looking for a publicity stunt to increase "The Borden County Fair" ratings when they learned of Mole Hill in Ritchie County, West Virginia. At the time Mole Hill was a small, remote rural community on a winding dirt road that pretty much went nowhere.

      A radio publicity director with Kenyon & Eckhardt Inc. Advertising called up Florence Haymond, a resident of Mole Hill, in May 1949.

      Herbert Landon with "The Borden County Fair" CBS Radio show proposed making a Mountain out of a Mole Hill. State and local officials and the radio show would broadcast the town's name changing ceremony nationwide.

      Still, Mrs. Haymond asked how it could help the town.

      Maybe getting all those officials there would make them realize that Mole Hill deserved a better road, in addition to getting the radio show ratings.

      Florence Haymond called together her Farm Woman's Club and they began the petitioning process to make a Mountain out of their Mole Hill. The club agreed that it would be worth changing their name to get improvements made to the road, a road on which residents had to ford Brush Run Creek just to get to the post office.

      Before long, the paper trail of letters between Mrs. Haymond and Landon began.

      It seemed as though Mrs. Haymond's hope of a new road was in the works.

      "As I told you on the telephone, I spoke with officials in the county, to people at the State Road Commission, Mr. Kincaid, assistant to Governor (Okey) Patteson, and to Congressman Cleveland Bailey," Landon wrote in a letter dated May 20, 1949. "They all agreed to do all they could to help."

      A few weeks later, Landon came to West Virginia to meet with Mrs. Haymond and her family. He returned home and continued writing her letters, the next one written on June 3, 1949.

      Landon told Haymond that by changing the town's name to Mountain it could become a big tourist attraction in "the Mountain State." He suggested capitalizing on the name by selling souvenirs.

      To add to the hyped emotions in Mountain, Landon wrote another letter to Mrs. Haymond on June 13, 1949, telling her that the radio broadcast planned to be in town on July 2, along with state and local officials, to change the town's name. He said Life Magazine photographers would be on hand, along with other reporters, and that broadcaster Win Elliot of "County Fair" would emcee the ceremony. He also suggested having a carnival in town to make the town appear more picturesque.

      The radio broadcast played up the stunt as large as they could. They made it seem as though they were performing a miracle by changing the name of the town, and even asked a listener to travel there to help them. He had won a contest and his goal was to make a Mountain out-of-a Mole Hill.

      Meanwhile, Mrs. Haymond was creating controversy back in her small town. She had 114 (nearly the whole town) signatures on the petition, but not everyone in town was excited about giving up their Mole Hill in exchange for a Mountain.

      Local folks Helen and Dale McCullough refused to sign the petition to change their town's name. They knew the town's name had been changed before - from Federal Hill to Mole Hill - without any noticeable benefits to the community.

      "Our family refused to sign the petition because we relished the name of Mole Hill," Helen McCullough recalled in a local newspaper article. "We had been Mole Hill since 1863, when the post office was opened here. It was a unique name and we never had any trouble with the mail getting mixed up."

      McCullough later became postmaster of Mountain.

      Looking back on the event, she still wishes the name hadn't been changed. "We were the only Mole Hill in the country," she said. "Now we're just another Mountain."

     (At least five Mountains exist in the United States.)

      Marlyn (Jones) Smith was one of the youngest signers of the petition. She was 16 then. Today, she is the only petition signer who still lives in Mountain.

      Smith remembers July 2, 1949, well. She was 16 years old and carried her heavy, bass drum in the nearly all girl Pennsboro High School Band.

      "That drum got kind of heavy sometimes," Marlyn recalls.

      So she was glad to put it down and take her turn on the carnival rides or pitching balls at the exhibits set up across the road from her house.

      To Smith, signing the petition wasn't a hard decision to make.

      "I certainly think Mountain is a more dignified name than Mole Hill," said Smith, a retired school teacher. "It didn't do much, but it sounds better."

      Marlyn Smith was the niece of Mrs. Florence Haymond. Her whole family supported the publicity stunt.

      "You might say Mountain became notorious with all the publicity we had," she said.

      The month following the event, Landon continued to write to Mrs. Haymond. But that was the end of the miracle. Mole Hill had become a Mountain, although some residents had believed the name change would only last one day.

      The road wasn't paved until years later.

      Mary Gay Morrison, who served as postmaster of Mountain until the post office closed in 1996, said she sometimes wished the name hadn't been changed, mostly for the same reasons that Mrs. McCullough wanted to keep her hometown a Mole Hill.

      "I would have liked to have seen it stay Mole Hill because there was only one Mole Hill in the United States. There are other Mountains," Mary Gay said. "But I understand it gave the town recognition."

      While the oil boom of the early 1900s ended years ago and left the town nearly vacant, residents still support the Mole Hill Union Chapel or the Mole Hill Cemetery.

      The bustle from 50 years ago has died down. Mountain never became a tourist attraction. For that, the people who live there are thankful.

      They like their Mole Hill Cemetery high on top a hill overlooking Mountain. It's a small place where a bluebird can be found resting on a fence post feasting on cicadas. It's a cemetery with a mailbox near the gate. Since there is no one there who gets mail, it has been designated for donations. The occasional bird uses it as a safe haven to nest.

      Even with the post office gone, local folks can still get their mail in a post office box. A cluster of 15 post office boxes sits by the town sign, but some of the 15 are vacant.

      Troy Kirk, a farmer who still considers himself a newcomer in Mountain after living there just 10 years, said he is glad the promises of national recognition only lasted for a few days in Mountain.

      "I like everything about Mountain," he said while working on the hay baler on his green John Deere tractor. "It's kind of slow around here. I like the slow pace life."

      Mary Gay Morrison also loves the town because of the slower lifestyle. She says it is mostly her neighbors that she enjoys. She recalls one of her favorite memories of Mountain. Right after she and her husband had moved there, she left laundry out on the clothesline and went to work. It rained that day and she worried that she would have to re-wash all of the clothes when she got home.

      But a few of the women in town noticed the clothes. When the sprinkles started to fall, they ran over and took the clothes off the line, folded them, and put them in a basket on the front porch. "You don't find too many people who will do things like that for you," Mary Gay said. Nor many places.

      And there's nowhere else but West Virginia where they've actually made a Mountain out of a Mole Hill.

Torie Knight is a reporter for the Ritchie Gazette.