Huntington is a city in Cabell and Wayne counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The seat of Cabell County, the city is located in SW West Virginia at the confluence of the Ohio and Guyandotte rivers. Huntington is the second-most populous city in West Virginia, with a population of 46,842 as of the 2020 census. Its metro area, the Huntington–Ashland metropolitan area, is the largest in West Virginia, spanning seven counties across three states and having a population of 376,155 at the 2020 census.
Collis Potter Huntington was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Huntington helped lead and develop other major interstate lines, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O), which he was recruited to help complete. The C&O, completed in 1873, fulfilled a long-held dream of Virginians of a rail link from the James River at Richmond to the Ohio River Valley. The new railroad facilities adjacent to the river there resulted in expansion of the former small town of Guyandotte, West Virginia into part of a new city which was named Huntington in his honor.
The Virginian Railway was a Class I railroad located in Virginia and West Virginia in the United States. The VGN was created to transport high quality "smokeless" bituminous coal from southern West Virginia to port at Hampton Roads.
The Norfolk and Western Railway, commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precision Transportation"; it had a variety of nicknames, including "King Coal" and "British Railway of America". In 1986, N&W merged with Southern Railway to form today's Norfolk Southern Railway.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town of Huntington, West Virginia, was named for him.
William Nelson Page was an American civil engineer and industrialist. He was active in the Virginias following the U.S. Civil War. Page was widely known as a metallurgical expert by other industry leaders and investors as well as state and federal authorities.
Williams Carter Wickham was a Virginia lawyer and politician. A plantation owner who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, Wickham also became a delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, where he voted against secession, but after fellow delegates and voters approved secession, he joined the Confederate States Army and rose to the rank of cavalry general, then became a Confederate States Congressman near the end of the American Civil War. Later, Wickham became a Republican and helped rebuild Virginia's infrastructure after gaining control of the heavily damaged Virginia Central Railroad, which he repaired and helped merge into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway company. Cooperating with financier Collis Huntington, Wickham developed coal resources and the Newport News Shipyard. He was also again elected to the Virginia Senate. His son Henry T. Wickham also became a lawyer and would work with his father and eventually twice become the speaker pro tempore of the Virginia Senate.
The Richmond and Alleghany Railroad was built along the James River along the route of the James River and Kanawha Canal from Richmond on the Fall Line at the head of navigation to a point west of Lynchburg near Buchanan, Virginia, and combined with the Buchanan and Clifton Forge Railway Company to reach Clifton Forge, Virginia.
Covington and Ohio Railroad was part of a planned railroad link between Eastern Virginia and the Ohio River in the 1850s. The mountainous region of the Allegheny Front of the Appalachian Plateau between an existing canal, railroads and navigable rivers represented a formidable obstacle.
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and is the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia.
The USRA 2-6-6-2 is a standardized design of 2-6-6-2 Mallet locomotives developed by the United States Railroad Administration during World War I.
Newport News has a long history dating back to the days of Jamestown, Virginia. The area which is now the city of Newport News has existed under different names and forms including Elizabeth Cittie, Warwick River Shire, Warwick County, Virginia, Warwick City, and the current independent city of Newport News.
Ensign Manufacturing Company, founded as Ensign Car Works in 1872, was a railroad car manufacturing company based in Huntington, West Virginia. In the 1880s and 1890s Ensign's production of wood freight cars made the company one of the three largest sawmill operators in Cabell County. In 1899, Ensign and twelve other companies were merged to form American Car and Foundry Company.
Huntington is the surname of three prominent families from the United States of America. The first was active in the eastern region; the second played an important role in the early Latter Day Saint movement, and pioneered and founded the State of Utah with Brigham Young; the third was active on both coasts and the regions linking them. All three lines descend from Simon Huntington and his wife, Margaret Baret Huntington, who immigrated to America from Norwich, England, in 1633.
The Peninsula Extension which created the Peninsula Subdivision of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) was the new railroad line on the Virginia Peninsula from Richmond to southeastern Warwick County. Its principal purpose was to provide an important new pathway for coal mined in West Virginia to reach the harbor of Hampton Roads for coastal and export shipping on collier ships.
The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway No. 1308 is an articulated 2-6-6-2 "Mallet" type steam locomotive built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1949. It was the next to the last Class 1 mainline locomotive built by Baldwin, closing out more than 100 years of production, a total of more than 70,000 locomotives. Its other surviving sister locomotive, No. 1309, has been restored to operation at the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad in Cumberland, Maryland.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Huntington, West Virginia, USA.
