Qualla: Fayette County, West Virginia

Fayette County, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sfd martin, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1831, the Virginia legislature carved out a new mountain county from pieces of four older ones and named it for the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat whose Revolutionary War service had become legend. Fayette County's first century would belong to timber, salt boats on the Kanawha, and farms scratched out of the ridges. Its second century would belong to coal. Its third century - the one we are in now - has begun to belong to whitewater, to BASE jumpers, and to a national park designation that came through in 2020. The county seat is Fayetteville. The population, as of the 2020 census, was 40,488. The terrain has not changed much. Almost everything else has.

Image: Sfd martin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fayette County, West Virginia: From Lafayette to West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Fayette County was the second Virginia county to bear the name; the first, in what is now Kentucky, lasted from 1780 to 1792. The 1831 act creating the new West Virginia version drew from Greenbrier, Kanawha, Nicholas, and Logan counties to assemble 668 square miles of high plate...

Image: jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Fayette County, West Virginia: The Coal Years

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NKS22, Public domain. Coal made Fayette County into something it had not been before: a place where outsiders came to work and stayed. Operators threw up company towns along the New River and the Gauley - Nuttallburg, Kay Moor, Thurmond, Glen Jean, Red Ash, Lochgelly - and railroads followed the coal ...

Image: NKS22 | Public domain

Fayette County, West Virginia: The Park and the Pivot

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The coal seams thinned. The mines closed. By the 1980s, parts of the New River Gorge had been protected as a national river, and tourists began to discover what locals had always known - that the gorge is one of the great American landscapes. In December 2020, Congress redesignat...

Image: jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Fayette County, West Virginia: Famous Faces and Familiar Places

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Thomas, Public domain. Fayette County has produced an unusual mix of names. Julia Neale Jackson, mother of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, was born here. George Cafego was the first overall pick of the 1940 NFL draft. DJ Cheese won the first DMC World DJ Championship in 1986. Tunney Hunsaker, wh...

Image: Ken Thomas | Public domain