Moorefield, named for Charles Moore, who owned the townsite, is one of the oldest towns in the state. Its 1777 act of establishment required purchasers of lots to build a house measuring at least 18 feet by 18 feet, with a brick or stone chimney, within three years. Charles...
Mineral County, one of five formed after West Virginia was created, was established in 1866. At the time, coal mining was rapidly expanding, and the county was named as an allusion to its chief mineral. Settlement in what was originally Hampshire County came much earlier. Fort...
On October 30, 1811, a post office named Paddytown was established on the east bank of New Creek in Hampshire County, Virginia. Patrick McCarty, whose brother was the first postmaster and whose father built the town's most imposing house several years later, provided the name....
Piedmont owes its existence to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which reached the townsite on its way westward in June 1851. David Hunter Strother, writing for the April 1857 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, described what Piedmont was all about: “This remote...
This small crossroads town was pivotally located where the Northwestern Turnpike and the Patterson Creek Turnpike, traversing a fertile valley between Knobbly and Patterson Creek mountains, intersected. Main Street (Patterson Creek Road, Mineral County 11), south of U.S. 50/220...
West Virginia's oldest county was formed in 1754 by partitioning portions of Frederick and Augusta counties, which remain in Virginia. Subsequently, its area was reduced as other counties were formed from it. Hampshire County's rolling hills are particularly suitable for...
Romney, established eight years after Hampshire County, shares honors with Shepherdstown as West Virginia's oldest town, inasmuch as the Virginia General Assembly created both on December 23, 1762. In both cases, settlement had already begun. Romney's act of establishment noted...
From colonial times this gently rolling area provided easy passage for explorers and pioneers. Of its three counties, Jefferson and Berkeley constitute the lower, or northern, limits of the Valley of Virginia, one of the nation's major paths of early migration. Morgan County, to...
Long before Morgan County was established, the town that would become its seat was a mecca. Many came for a cure, more to see and be seen, most simply to have fun. One of America's oldest resorts, Berkeley Springs contains the majority of the county's buildings of...
Berkeley County, formed in 1772 from Frederick County, Virginia, once encompassed the entire Eastern Panhandle. Named for Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, colonial governor from 1768 to 1770, it was the second county formed in what is now West Virginia. In 1792 John Pope...
Major General Adam Stephen platted a town on Tuscarora Creek in 1773, the year after Berkeley County was formed, and named it for Thomas Martin, nephew of Lord Fairfax. Stephen planned the town to be the county seat, donating the acre of land on which the courthouse was built...
Originally known as Middletown, this small crossroads settlement was established southeast of Mills Gap, an important early crossing of North Mountain. David Gerrard laid out forty lots in 1784, and the Virginia General Assembly incorporated the town three years later. The...
In 1832 Josiah Hedges platted the town that bears his name. Strategically sited on the Warm Springs Road (West Virginia 9), Hedgesville served as a welcome way station for travelers on their way to and from Berkeley Springs. Incorporated in 1854, Hedgesville still maintains a...
West Virginia's easternmost county is closer to five other state capitals than to Charleston and closest of all to the nation's capital. Washington, D.C., is only fifty miles southeast, a distance that figuratively becomes ever shorter as more and more of Jefferson County's...
Charles Washington, George's youngest full brother, established Charles Town in January 1787 on eighty acres taken from his extensive land holdings. In an unusual clause, the Virginia legislature let him plat the half-acre lots “in such manner as he may judge best.” In...
Most of the Washington family houses are west and southwest of Charles Town. All are privately owned, but are easily seen from public roads. Except for Harewood, none has received serious architectural study, although all have been the subject of antiquarian interest...
Civil War artist James Taylor made several sketches here, noting that “the roadway was narrow with time-worn houses of stone, brick and wood.” In 1941 the WPA guide called Middleway “a quiet village with aging gable-roofed buildings of white-washed stone, faded brick, or logs,...
Shepherdstown is one of the two earliest towns in West Virginia. On December 23, 1762, the Virginia General Assembly established Mecklenburg, as it was first called, and Romney. Shepherdstown claims primacy because Germans from Pennsylvania had established a settlement on...
Harpers Ferry, at the easternmost point of West Virginia, is the state's most famous town, thanks to a short-lived but seminal event, John Brown's October 1859 raid to capture the United States Armory. Although Brown's attempt failed, the armory was destroyed early in the...
Harpers Ferry's steep, picturesque site precluded any sort of grid plan. The Lower Town, at the tip of the peninsula, consists of Shenandoah and Potomac streets, paralleling the river for which each is named, and High, or Washington, Street. Washington intersects...
The Upper Town is also known as Camp Hill, for an encampment of army troops in 1799. Reached via High Street, it contains a cluster of mid-nineteenth-century houses erected for the upper echelons of the armory hierarchy. After the Civil War, Congress exempted these...
When one thinks of Wyoming, buildings are not the first images that come to mind. The state is known more for its majestic mountain ranges and seemingly endless expanses of sagebrush prairie than for its architectural monuments. With less than 600,000 residents occupying an area of 97,000 square miles...
