None of Them Had Ever Been to West Virginia
“Country Roads, Take Me Home
To the Place I Belong”
It’s believed that the particular road the song is referring to is Clopper Road, which begins in Gaithersburg, Maryland and leads into West Virginia through Montgomery County (it’s now a busy four-lane road).
Photo by Rose Bell
A large part of the song was actually written by co-writers Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert – friends of Denver’s. Denver joined in later to finish writing it. As the story goes, they were looking to kill time as they drove along Clopper Road towards a family reunion in Maryland – not West Virginia. The funny, or ironic, thing about the song is that none of the three co-writers had ever been to West Virginia before making this song.