West Virginia’s eastern panhandle proud of its scholastic Golden Horseshoe award

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. ( DC News Now ) — The Golden Horseshoe competition, an enduring tradition in West Virginia, has a special winner.

St. Joseph School 8th grade, Gabriel Campos, is one of the regional winners.

The history quiz bowl competition has been administered since 1931 and is the longest running program of its kind.

“[I learned] how West Virginia developed, how it became a state, what it did, for example, in hard times like the depression, the world wars,” Gabriel Campos said.

Since Martinsburg isn’t especially known, like other regions in the state, for extracting coal, Gabriel Campos said he was struck in his research how “there was a lot of bickering between work unions and mining companies.”

The middle schooler’s Golden Horseshoe award wasn’t too much of a surprise for his mom.

“Gabriel loves to read,” Marlene Campos said. “He loves to pick a book. He goes to the store. He’ll pass two, three hours there to read a book. It doesn’t matter the book. It can be science, it can be a story, it can be about West Virginia.”

Jason Allen is a former faculty member at St. Joseph, now at Shepherd University, who helped the Martinsburg school with the Golden Horseshoe competition.

“Being in the eastern panhandle,” Allen said. “Sometimes I think the students think they’re a little removed from the rest of the state. But with the Golden Horseshoe program you learn about all aspects of West Virginia history.

And why a Golden Horseshoe? It goes back to the 18th century, before West Virginia was a state, when an explorer from the Commonwealth of Virginia would reward his expedition with a Golden Horseshoe.

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