Qualla: Clarksburg Downtown Historic District

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the railroad reached Clarksburg in the 1850s, the town was small and county-seat sleepy. When natural gas and oil were discovered in the surrounding hills in the 1890s, it became one of the boomtowns of the Appalachian basin. The buildings the boom produced - bank towers, hotels, a Renaissance Revival courthouse, the Robinson Grand theater, the Waldo Hotel - still occupy sixteen blocks of central Clarksburg, in a remarkably intact concentration of late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century commercial architecture. The Clarksburg Downtown Historic District, added to the National Register in 1982, covers 76 acres around the Harrison County Courthouse and contains 119 contributing buildings. It is one of the more substantial intact downtowns of its size and era in the eastern United States.

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: From Crossroads to Railroad Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clarksburg was founded in 1785 at a crossing of the West Fork River, near where Elk Creek joins it. For the first sixty years of its existence it was a modest county seat, dependent on the agricultural economy of the surrounding hills. The decisive change came with the Baltimore ...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: Gas, Oil, and the 1907 Boom

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. The second wave came in the 1890s, when Pittsburgh-based geologists realized the country around Clarksburg sat atop major natural gas and oil reservoirs. Drilling began. Pipelines and pumping stations followed. By the early 1900s, Clarksburg had become one of the principal gas to...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: Architecture Across Sixty Years

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. The district's contributing buildings span styles and decades. The Stealey-Goff-Vance House at the edge of downtown is a 1807 Federal-period residence that survived as the city grew around it. Waldomore, an 1839 brick mansion, is the oldest substantial residence in the city core....

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: The Waldo and the Robinson Grand

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two buildings in particular have come to represent downtown Clarksburg. The Waldo Hotel, opened in 1904 and substantially expanded in 1907, was the largest and most prestigious hotel between Pittsburgh and Charleston for the first half of the twentieth century. Its lobby hosted o...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clarksburg Downtown Historic District: A Working Downtown

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 3.0. Unlike many small Appalachian cities, Clarksburg has not seen its downtown commercial core completely abandoned. The Harrison County Courthouse still operates; the Post Office still operates; the churches still hold Sunday services; the Robinson Grand still puts on shows. Several...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 3.0