YEAR THREE: Berkeley County, West Virginia

It's been a few weeks since I took this trip. Since then, we've been to Philadelphia and back, are planning a move in May, and are preparing for Passover. Busy.

My plan since we moved here in July 2012 has been to visit one county per month, within three hundred miles. I missed January because I was sick half of the month, and in February, I waited to find a time when I had two days free, the weather would rise above freezing and it wouldn't be snowing. Those three things never happened. The first week in March we had a short stretch of decent weather, and that is when I took off.

Martinsburg is the county seat of Berkeley County. If you are on I-81, you drive south from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania to Hagerstown, Maryland, to Martinsburg, and then to Winchester, Virginia.

It's one hundred fifty miles from Morgantown to Martinsburg. I stayed one night free with points from our expensive stay in New York with the same chain.

Like much of this part of the world, the Civil War plays a major role in the town's history. One of the main landmarks in Martinsburg is the B&O Railroad Station, now restored. It was rebuilt after the Civil War. Confederate troops coming south from Antietam, just over the Potomac in Maryland, burnt it to the ground. The Union had pressured Berkeley County to join West Virginia and not secede, mostly because of the railroad. The Eastern Panhandle, as it is called here, is cut off from the rest of the state. To get from Morgantown, one drives eighty miles through Maryland before returning to West Virginia.

Martinsburg is a "boomberg," a term I picked up from Joe. He learned it from a professor of demography in rabbi school. It means somewhere far from a major city that is growing rapidly with commuters. In Martinsburg, the MARC, Washington's commuter train network, runs trains from Martinsburg. This has caused the county population to explode, unlike most of West Virginia, where the population is shrinking. There are new apartments and town homes springing up all around Martinsburg.

I spent the afternoon of my arrival looking at historic places in town. The next morning, I drove out into the countryside to look for more history. I came home that afternoon.