West Virginia’s “Golden Trout”

One lone fingerling in a hatchery in 1955 sparked an idea to stock West Virginia streams with novelty fish, and Pennsylvania followed with it’s own brightly pigmented fish in 1967. Ben Moyer reports on the selective breeding and release of “golden trout

” in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“In West Virginia’s centennial year, 1963, Mountain Staters were seeking creative ways to commemorate their state’s birth midway through the Civil War, when 55 of Virginia’s western counties parted ways with the Confederacy and rejoined the Union as a separate state.”