Boomer did not get its name from any anticipated boom. It took the first name of Boomer Huddleston, an area pioneer. EMCO purchased the town, originally a coal-company camp, in the 1930s to build houses for employees at its Alloy plant, just upstream. By 1940 the company owned more than 300 houses at Boomer, many of them built by the Minter Homes Corporation of Huntington. The largest concentration of Minter houses is located southwest of U.S. 60, between the railroad tracks and the Kanawha River. The carefully planned urban setting is similar to that employed upstream at Falls View ( FY28). Between the river and a street that has never been named (because no houses face it) are five one-block streets, labeled A, B, C, D, and E. Ten or more one- and two-story houses line both sides of each short block. EMCO sold the houses to its employees in the 1950s, and, although the basic designs are still evident, new wings and porches have proliferated ever since. About forty garages, each formerly assigned to one of the houses, still stand in relatively unaltered condition on the northeast side of the street without a name.