Capon Valley Sampler: Sketches of Appalachia from George Washington to Caudy Davis

In 1968, the U.S. Secretary of Labor and his wife purchased a farm in the Capon Valley in Appalachia's foothills, a hundred miles west of Washington, and began taking weekend refuge from political aggravation. Relieved a few months later ("by popular demand" the ex-Secretary puts it) of formal obligation, the Wirtzes found themselves dropping out more and more from capital affairs and becoming increasingly attached to the little community of Yellow Spring, West Virginia, unincorporated. Wirtz, w…