Mannington, WV

Mannington is a Marion County city where Pyles Fork meets Buffalo Creek, a valley town whose street map was drawn by the B&O Railroad. The line arrived in 1852, and the place took the name Mannington in 1854 for Charles F. Manning, a B&O civil engineer. It was chartered by Virginia in 1856, by West Virginia in 1871, and incorporated as a city in 1921. Rail workers, oil and gas crews, and pottery employees all passed through the same narrow valley.

The industrial years left a lot behind. Mannington became a service and distribution center for nearby oil, gas, and coal fields, and its pottery works grew into what was described as the world’s largest toilet-ware plant. Electric service arrived in 1898, streetcars connected the city with Fairmont and Clarksburg by 1905, and the historic district still carries that early twentieth-century shape. Today the Mannington District Fair keeps an annual local rhythm, while the creeks, hills, and old B&O corridor show why this small city developed where it did.