Before 1871, what would become downtown Huntington was farmland and small settlements. The older town of Guyandotte, founded by French settlers in 1799, sat just east at the mouth of the Guyandotte River. When Collis P. Huntington chose this stretch of the Ohio River as the western terminus of his Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, he did not absorb an existing town. He platted a brand-new one - a grid laid out on the wide floodplain, named for himself, designed to grow. Two decades later Guyandotte was annexed into the new city. The C&O made Huntington a major river-and-rail interchange almost immediately. By the early twentieth century the Jewel City had become an industrial center, with steel, glass, nickel, and chemical manufacturing taking advantage of the railroad and the river simultaneously.

Marshall University, the second-largest in West Virginia, occupies a 20-square-block campus directly east of downtown. The institution traces its lineage to Marshall Academy, founded in 1837 as a private subscription school by residents of Guyandotte and the surrounding area, named after Chief Justice John Marshall. It became Marshall College in 1857, a public institution in 1867, and a university in 1961. The school is now best known nationally for the November 14, 1970 plane crash that killed 75 people - the entire Marshall football team, coaching staff, fans, and crew - on a Southern Airways DC-9 returning from a game in Greenville, North Carolina. The story was the subject of the 2006 film We Are Marshall. The crash defined a generation in Huntington. The Memorial Fountain at the campus center is turned off every November 14 in remembrance.

Huntington claims to be the birthplace of the West Virginia-style hot dog, distinguished by its specific bun-meat-chili-slaw-onion configuration that has divided regional opinion since its first appearance. The world's largest rotating root beer mug, twelve feet tall and very orange, sits atop a Frostop drive-in stand on Hal Greer Boulevard, still serving root beer in heavy frosted glass mugs. Cam's Ham on First Street is famous for its flaked ham sandwiches with a mystery sauce that the kitchen will not disclose, served in dining-room decor that has not changed in decades. The food culture sits at the intersection of working-class Appalachian tradition and college-town energy, with a chef-driven restaurant renaissance in the past fifteen years gradually expanding what is possible to eat downtown.

In 2008, Huntington earned the dubious title of fattest and most unhealthy city in the United States. The 2006 data showed 46 percent of adults were obese. The designation was painful but ultimately useful. British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver visited and filmed his Food Revolution television series, focusing on school nutrition. The city organized a community challenge to collectively walk to the moon by tracking aggregate steps. Hospital programs targeted childhood obesity. A new farmers market expanded fresh-food access. Within a decade the obesity rate had fallen by thirteen percentage points to 33 percent. Huntington was no longer the fattest city in America or even in West Virginia. The shift represents one of the better-documented examples of community-scale public health response.

Three bridges cross the Ohio River from Huntington into Ohio: the East End Bridge from 31st Street in Highlawn, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge from 6th and 5th Streets downtown, and the West End Bridge on U.S. 52. The neighborhoods spread out from the central grid - Downtown with Pullman Square and the Marshall campus, the wealthy Southside around Ritter Park, the historically African American Fairfield, the working-class West End and Highlawn, the steep hills of South Hills and Park Hills where the Huntington Museum of Art occupies its Gropius-designed campus. Guyandotte preserves the city's pre-1871 history on the east side. From the air at night, the steamboat captains were right. The Jewel City is still a constellation of lights pressed against a dark river - the largest urban illumination between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati on the Ohio.