Vanita Salisbury at Smithsonian Magazine:
A deeply rooted Irish tradition, road bowling might seem a little archaic: In matches, or scores, teams take turns hurling a small cannonball down a course, while others watch from the sidelines. In Ireland, there’s now a campaign underway to include it in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. And the game is gaining traction stateside. The sport asks for little more than a ball—called a bullet, or a bowl—and a road, and West Virginia has plenty of both, plus its own road bowling history. Dan Harvey, an Irish military historian, concluded that troops of Irish origin most likely bowled on the streets of West Virginia, passing time between battles during the Civil War. Since then, the sport lay dormant in the region, until about 30 years ago, when it was revived by environmental journalist and documentary producer David Powell. These days, thanks in major part to evangelist Powell, and to the visuals afforded by social and traditional media, it has become part of the state’s identity.
More here.