Eleanor, WV

Eleanor is a Putnam County town on the north side of the Kanawha River, with Charleston and the Teays Valley region within the larger daily orbit. The 2020 census counted 1,548 residents. It began in 1934 as Red House Farms, one of West Virginia's New Deal resettlement communities, built to give selected families houses, land, roads, and a chance to start over during the Depression. The town was later named for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The original layout still matters. Streets, modest homesteads, the river, and the older community buildings make Eleanor feel more planned than a typical rural town, while newer homes fill in around the first settlement.

The town's story is tied to the Kanawha Valley and to the families who stayed after the federal project ended. Eleanor is a small West Virginia town with a New Deal beginning, a river at its edge, and an unusually clear connection between its street plan and the people it was built for.