Talcott is an unincorporated community

Unincorporated area

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...

 in Summers County

Summers County, West Virginia

Summers County is a county located in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 13,927. Its county seat is Hinton. Summers County was created by an act of the West Virginia General Assembly on February 27, 1871 from parts of Fayette, Greenbrier, Mercer and Monroe...

, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

It lies along West Virginia Route 3 and the Greenbrier River

Greenbrier River

The Greenbrier River is a tributary of the New River, long, in southeastern West Virginia, USA. Via the New, Kanawha and Ohio Rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of...

 to the east of the city of Hinton

Hinton, West Virginia

Hinton is a city in Summers County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 2,880 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Summers County. Hinton was established in 1873 and chartered in 1897. Hinton was named for John "Jack" Hinton, a prominent lawyer of Summers County and husband of...

, the county seat

County seat

A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....

 of Summers County. Its elevation is 1,526 feet (465 m), and it is located at about 37°39′2"N 80°45′4"W (37.6506762, -80.7511921). Although it is unincorporated, it has a post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

, with the ZIP code

ZIP Code

ZIP codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, is properly written in capital letters and was chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the...

 of 24981.

John Henry legend

Talcott has gained some notoriety for being what many in the area consider to be the home of the John Henry

John Henry (folklore)

John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. Henry worked as a "steel-driver"—a man tasked with hammering and chiseling rock in the construction of tunnels for railroad tracks. In the legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer,...

legend. Henry was an African-American railroad worker in the 1800s who supposedly competed in a legendary race with a steam powered drill bit, and won, dying in the process. Historian Louis Chappell traveled to Talcott in the 1920s and interviewed railroad workers who claimed to have worked with Henry when building the Big Bend tunnel on the C&O line through Talcott. The accounts of the surviving workers seemed to corroborate that Henry was, in fact, a real person, although the other aspects to the legend were impossible to confirm or deny based on the interviews conducted by Chappell

The Hilldale-Talcott Ruritan Club raised a statue of Henry atop Big Bend mountain in 1972 to commemorate the legend. Talcott now hosts an annual John Henry Days festival each July that features re-tellings of the famous legend, duck races, craft booths, and other festivities.