Hometown, WV

Hometown is a Putnam County community stretched along the Kanawha River and West Virginia Route 62. Its physical plan is unusually easy to picture: six streets intersect at one main street, with an elementary school and river corridor filling out the small grid. The location places Hometown inside the long working geography of the Kanawha Valley, where river landings, highways, industry, and floodplain communities have grown alongside one another. The riverfront keeps the valley’s industrial story close at hand.

The river is the main landmark, but the town’s shape gives it its own character. Hometown is not a loose scattering of houses across the hills; it is a compact place gathered around a single street pattern and the road that follows the water. The 2020 census counted 556 residents. Putnam County’s larger towns and services are close by, yet Hometown keeps a distinct identity as a small Kanawha-side community, the sort of place whose map can be understood in a sentence and remembered after one visit.