After Decade Of DIY, Martinsburg Skateboarders Look To Land Public Park

North Raleigh Street funnels traffic from downtown Martinsburg to U.S. Route 11. But peel onto a half-paven path near the train tracks and you will find pops of color peeking through the overgrowth.

For more than a decade, skateboarders walked this route, boards in tow, to reach the local skate spot. The city’s indoor skating venue had closed due to financial concerns in 2013, just four years into operation. Skaters were not ready to put down their boards, so they scouted out the abandoned lot uptown.

And Martinsburg’s “do-it-yourself” skatepark was born.

Local skaters regularly gathered on the empty stretch of pavement, and reached an understanding with its property owner to keep the space clean and trouble free. Then came the rails and hand-poured concrete ramps, all on their own dime.

More than ten years later, the DIY park is a sight to behold, with sprawling spray-paint murals and features of all kinds. Just one thing is missing: the skaters.

A recent change in the property’s ownership led the park to fall out of use. But it has also reinvigorated county-wide calls for something permanent.

A skate scene, but no skatepark

Many of Mark Peacemaker’s early skateboarding experiences began with a carpool; his buddies piling gear into minivans and bumping elbows in the backseat.

Parents took turns driving them to skating venues in Frederick, a city in Maryland about forty miles east of his hometown. The trips were fun, but today they remind Peacemaker of how far he had to travel to access action sports as a preteen in Martinsburg.

“Growing up in the panhandle of West Virginia at the time I did, there weren’t as many amenities around,” he said.

Back in the 2000s, Peacemaker said skaters were viewed as trouble, a sentiment that traces back decades.

In 1991, the City of Martinsburg banned skateboarding on public property. This meant police could snatch boards from skaters doing tricks in the local park, or nail them with fines just for riding down the street.

“I ended up with some stuff on my record that really didn’t help me out, and took some other friends of mine in some bad directions,” he said. “The first strike of that was skating in public places.”

When the city skatepark closed in 2013, Peacemaker and his friends said gathering someplace else seemed obvious. They did not necessarily have bigger plans in mind.

“We were all kids, so I think everyone within the scene just congregated back there and organically started to make stuff to skate on,” he said.

But news about the spot spread, giving rise to a whole community of DIY skaters, like those that have popped up around the world in areas without public skate spots. From a run-down tennis court in Maryland to an abandoned strip mall in Texas, skaters far and wide have converted derelict urban spaces into grassroots parks.

Martinsburg Mayor Kevin Knowles said the local DIY skaters never caused problems, and were not the city’s responsibility to monitor.

“It didn’t affect us one way or another, because the liability wasn’t falling on us,” he said. “The liability was falling on the individual that was allowing them to do that.”

The DIY skatepark became well known in the local community, hosting recurring park cleanups and competitions called “skate jams.” The events brought out dozens of community members, at times even including Mayor Knowles.

“Watching what they’ve been doing over there at the DIY, they made some really great progress,” he said. “But they didn’t own the property.”

For Knowles, a lack of formal ownership over the skatepark put its long-term viability into question. When a new owner bought the property last year, the city got an answer.

Under new ownership

In November 2023, Tim Pool, an online conservative commentator based in Harpers Ferry, purchased the DIY skatepark property.

This September, Pool made national headlines when the Justice Department said a company he was affiliated with had taken money from Russian state media to spread propaganda. Pool has stated he was unaware of any such scheme.

Back in West Virginia, Pool’s profile was growing, too. He and skatepark regulars disagreed about how the spot was used, but no Martinsburg skaters who spoke to West Virginia Public Broadcasting for this story agreed to discuss the situation.

Regardless, the fallout again left Martinsburg residents with nowhere to skate. Knowles said he is unsure where they ended up.

“I don’t know where anybody is going at this point. I’m not seeing a huge running, within the city, of people on skateboards,” he said. “So they’re going somewhere. They’re not coming to the city of Martinsburg right now.”

But Peacemaker said he knows where they went: back to out-of-state venues in Maryland and Virginia, like the ones he frequented growing up. Skaters in the Eastern Panhandle again must decide between driving tens of miles out of the city or simply putting away their boards.

“There’s tons of parks around, man. Martinsburg’s kind of like that center point that doesn’t have one,” Peacemaker said.

Peacemaker pointed to the Hagerstown Skatepark, a Maryland venue about 25 miles from downtown Martinsburg, as a vision of what local skaters want for their own community: a permanent place to skate, funded by local officials. And their idea is gaining traction.

Pushing for something permanent

Last month, the Martinsburg City Council revoked their no-skateboarding ordinance after three decades.

Mayor Knowles and Joe Burton, executive director of Martinsburg-Berkeley County Parks & Recreation, acknowledged that skateboarders have historically been seen as troublesome by some members of the community because of their ties to an alternative scene.

“Skateboarders are their own type of people. They dress differently, they talk differently and their activities are a little different than other people’s,” Knowles said. “People just identify individuals by what they see, not what they know. So they see something different. They don’t like it.”

But Burton said officials in the Eastern Panhandle today think recreational activities like skateboarding can keep kids safe.

“With drug use or kids getting in different kinds of trouble, everything suggests that more activities help those problems. They don’t make it worse,” he said. “So more safe, recreational activities are a good thing to add to the community.”

Joshua McCormick, another Martinsburg DIY skater, agrees. He said there is something meditative in the rhythm of the sport.

“You’re constantly falling. You’re falling, but you don’t give up,” he said. “It’s all worth it for that little bit of joy of landing a trick and having your homies shout you out and cheer for you.”

Knowles and Burton said the city and county governments are actively looking to secure property and funding to build a public skatepark for the local community. The project follows years of advocacy from people like Peacemaker, who have spoken to local officials about the benefits of increasing access to recreational opportunities like skateboarding.

Knowles said they have identified a potential location for the skatepark “close to the downtown corridor on the outskirts of our trail system,” but that a place has not been finalized. The project will be publicly funded by both the city and county governments, he said.

“It’s going to be a perfect addition, the one that does come to fruition,” Knowles said. “It’s going to happen, we just have to make sure we have the right land, and we have to make sure about the finances.”

The Martinsburg and Berkeley County governments have also not finalized a timeline for the park’s construction, but said they are in conversation with Peacemaker and other local skaters for the project.

McCormick said skaters are willing to travel far distances for a skatepark, which means the project could increase local tourism, too.

“We had people from Baltimore, Frederick — all over the quad-state area come to our little DIY,” he said. “Another public park in the area would be a great thing.”

It could be a while before a permanent park is actually up and running, but Peacemaker and McCormick say knowing one is coming is a relief. The DIY spot had charm, but did not supplant the community’s practical need for a public, government-funded park, they said.

For now, the skaters are glad they will not have to pour time, money and more concrete into the DIY skatepark.

“We’re finally going to have something new in a really beautiful setting that’s going to be personalized and public and open for everyone,” Peacemaker said. “It’s a safe space that’s legal, and it’s never gonna go away.”