Driving through Mannington, West Virginia

Описание: Mannington is a city in Marion County, West Virginia, United States, located in the hills of North-Central West Virginia. In its earliest years it was called Forks of Buffalo or Koon Town, but has been called Mannington since 1856. The population was 2,063 at the 2010 census.
The earliest population concentration did not occur in what is now Mannington, but rather approximately two miles west of Dent's Run. Most of the land now falling within the city limits, some 1,360 acres (5.5 km2), was owned by Robert Rutherford, a Revolutionary War financier and an intimate friend of George Washington. In 1799, Rutherford sold his Forks of Buffalo holdings to James Brown of Berkeley County, Virginia, who, after experiencing financial setbacks, eventually sold the property at public sale in 1824 to a group of Baltimore, Maryland, investors which included William Baker. Baker apparently bought out his partners and, in turn, sold the parcel to James Hanway, a surveyor living in Monongalia County, who parceled the land and began selling it. This final transaction occurred in 1840 and it was then that the area now known as Mannington had its genesis.

After the parceling of the land around the Forks of Buffalo, interest in the area increased as did the population. A number of log houses began to be built, with the accompanying entrepreneurial activities that one might expect in an early settlement. By 1850 a tavern owned by George and Samuel Koon appeared in the heart of the burgeoning town. Not long after the tavern was opened, the Forks of Buffalo began to be known as Koon Town. While the local inhabitants may have used the newer name, the United States government failed to do so, in 1850 naming their first postal office in the community the Forks of Buffalo Post Office. It was not until 1856 that the village officially became known as Mannington, named after Charles Manning, a civil engineer with the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad. Manning was well liked by the community and the inhabitants were eager to have a more "dignified" name for a growing town on the new railroad line.

The coming of the railroad heralded the introduction of heavier industry in the Mannington area. Logging and coal were two of the obvious industries which were developed along the railroad line, but there were a great many peripheral industries which appeared as well. Tree bark was used by the tanneries, which, in turn, produced a wide range of leather goods. New planning mills, sawmills, and woodworking plants were started, and the availability of transportation also witnessed an increase in cattle, sheep and crop production.

During the American Civil War, the B&O railroad, of vital interest to both of the conflicting sides, sustained more damage than Mannington proper did. While Confederate forces succeeded in burning several of the railroad bridges at the very beginning of the conflict, reinforcements from the Union insured the integrity of the Mannington section of the line for the remainder of the war.