Teays Valley

Teays Valley is the Putnam County answer to anyone who finds Charleston proper too steep, too narrow, or too haunted by the coal economy's mood swings. Subdivisions sprawl along Route 35 like a Midwestern import, and the high school football is taken with appropriate seriousness. Dating here skews toward the chain-restaurant summit meeting: Texas Roadhouse on a Friday, Starbucks for the audition round. The upside is space, schools, and a reasonable commute east. The downside is that everything genuinely interesting still requires the drive into Charleston, which locals will cheerfully tell you they almost never make.