Elkins is a small mountain town in the Tygart Valley, useful not because it is polished but because it sits right where West Virginia starts to feel high, forested, and musical. It is the county seat of Randolph County and a good base for the northern Monongahela National Forest, with Davis, Thomas, Blackwater Falls, and the higher Allegheny ridges within an easy drive.
The town's best anchors are clustered around the old rail depot and the hill above it. The West Virginia Railroad Museum and excursion trains give Elkins its travel hook, while Halliehurst and the Davis & Elkins campus show the timber-and-railroad wealth that built the place. Downtown is modest, but it has enough brick storefronts, old mills, and mountain-town grit to make a wander worthwhile.
Elkins is also one of the state's better places to hear Appalachian music without turning it into a museum piece. The Augusta Heritage Center brings old-time, bluegrass, Cajun, blues, and craft traditions to town each summer, and the local festival calendar is stronger than you might expect from a place this small.