The Blue People of West Virginia

Image source: November 1982 issue of Science

Continuing with more lighter weekend fare...

People find this site through all sorts of google searches. One of the most consistently odd ones is "Blue People of West Virginia". That got me wondering... is there really A Blue People of West Virginia?

Part myth, part legend and mostly reality, here's what I learned.

Yes, Virginia, there was once a clan, if not a race, of Blue People. No, West Virginia. They lived in Kentucky.

Dark blue lips and fingernails are the only traces of Martin Fugate's legacy left in the boy; that, and the recessive gene that has shaded many of the Fugates and their kin blue for the past 162 years.

They're known simply as the "blue people" in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks [Kentucky]. Most lived to their 80s and 90s without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. For some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. That was the pain of being blue in a world that is mostly shades of white to black.

Now, Troublesome Creek, near Hazard, KY isn't all that far from the border with West Virginia. Who knows, maybe some of that Fugate clan did make its into West Virginia...

There was always speculation in the hollows about what made the blue people blue: heart disease, a lung disorder, the possibility proposed by one old-timer that "their blood is just a little closer to their skin." But no one knew for sure, and doctors rarely paid visits to the remote creekside settlements where most of the "blue Fugates " lived until well into the 1950s. By the time a young hematologist from the University of Kentucky came down to Troublesome Creek in the 1960s to cure the blue people, Martin Fugate's descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau.

This entire article is well worth a read for its poignant telling of the not-so-distant history of rural living in Appalachia. Although the Blue People are of Kentucky, the story could have just as easy occurred in W.Va.

Addendum: if you landed here searching on "Blue People of West Virginia", we hope you'll read some more of West Virginia Blue, too. Our main page has the latest progressive viewpoint on West Virginia-related current events and our best of page contains timeless classics. If "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is more your speed, see our collection of West Virginia's favorite song!