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Mustard Seed Mountain is West Virginia’s first street newspaper, bringing you stories from and for the poor, working, and misunderstood.
Located on Chapline Street in Wheeling's Centre Market is a small 10 foot by 20 foot photography studio. It is the “home base” of Melody Rae Petras’ artistic passion – specifically analog photography. Melody works with film, VHS, and tintypes.
Hey you! Did you know that you can get 50% off your produce and grocery items when you pay with SNAP at the Public Market, Wheeling’s premier nonprofit grocery store downtown?
The Public Market, a project of Grow Ohio Valley, partners with local and regional farmers to bring fresh produce, eggs, meat, and dairy products to Wheeling. The Market receives funding through the WV Food and Farm Coalition as well as a private donor for their SNAP Stretch program, which allows them to offer extensive discounts for SNAP/EBT customers on a wide variety of grocery items and produce.
Wheeling natives Mike and Devin are lifelong best friends who can often be spotted around Wheeling “horseplaying around,” as Devin likes to say. They are also two of Mustard Seed Mountain’s hardworking vendors, who sell the paper on the street and at several locations around town.
Mike and Devin’s moms were childhood best friends, so the pair met when they were in diapers and spent much of their time growing up together. Now, both in the latter half of their thirties, Mike and Devin say they’re still more like brothers than friends.
“What to do about all these poor people!? Especially in the face of a new age of American innovation, prosperity, and wealth?” We are asking it today, in Wheeling and across the country, too often fraught with overwhelm at the unsurmountable complexity of the seemingly unprecedented situation.
When I first moved to Warwood, no one knocked on my door.
That's not an indictment of Warwood. I've lived in many places in my adult life, and there's rarely been more than a wave from our porches, a smile in passing, and a quick retreat to our own private lives. But I moved to Wheeling for a sense of community, so I’d be damned if I didn’t cultivate that in my own little piece of the city.

As the sun rises over Ohio County, J. Arnold steps out her front door overlooking the southern portion of Warwood, a Wheeling neighborhood two miles north of the city’s urban core. It’s a quiet neighborhood, all things considered. Arnold can see the mighty Ohio River with the town of Martins Ferry, Ohio, to the west. Through her neighbor’s yards, she can see a shopping complex close enough to hear conversations held in the parking lot. South of the former Save-a-Lot, Arnold sees the historic Centre Foundry and its gray-blue walls.
When Arnold first bought her home, Centre Foundry was still an operating steel mill – the same steel mill that lasted some 183 years since its founding before West Virginia was even a state. In 2023, the foundry quieted as its furnaces ran cold, parking lots emptied, jobs evaporated, and its doors closed for one final time. Now, a new business is preparing to move in; and it’s a neighbor Arnold, and other Warwood residents, are concerned about.