Qualla: Logan County, West Virginia

Logan County, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 3.0 us. The county that voted for secession in April 1861 took the name of a Native American chief whose family had been murdered by white settlers eighty years before. Chief Logan of the Mingo lost his wife, brother, and nephews in the 1774 Yellow Creek Massacre, and the speech he gave afterward — recorded by Thomas Jefferson, taught in nineteenth-century classrooms — became one of the most famous pieces of Native American oratory in American letters. Logan County, West Virginia, formed in 1824 from parts of Giles, Tazewell, Cabell, and Kanawha counties, carries his name across some of the steepest and most heavily mined country in Appalachia.

Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 3.0 us

Logan County, West Virginia: Becoming West Virginia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Corn, Public domain. When West Virginia broke from Virginia in 1863, Logan County went along, but reluctantly. The county had voted for secession in the convention of April 4, 1861, and was made a West Virginia county only by executive order of Abraham Lincoln, who needed Unionist counties wherever h...

Image: Jack Corn | Public domain

Logan County, West Virginia: The Battle of Blair Mountain

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 4.0. On August 25, 1921, between 10,000 and 15,000 armed coal miners began marching from the Kanawha Valley toward Logan County, intent on breaking the open-shop control of the southern coalfields by force. Their immediate trigger was the assassination of Sid Hatfield on the Welch cou...

Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 4.0

Logan County, West Virginia: Coal Towns That No Longer Exist

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser Malepheasant, CC BY-SA 3.0. Logan County contains the ghost addresses of dozens of coal camps. Buffalo Creek, in the eastern part of the county, was the site of the February 26, 1972 dam failure that killed 125 people and destroyed sixteen communities. Lorado and Lundale were among the towns swept away enti...

Image: Tim Kiser Malepheasant | CC BY-SA 3.0

Logan County, West Virginia: From Solid Blue to Deep Red

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Before 2008, the only Republican to carry Logan County in a presidential election was Herbert Hoover in 1928, when anti-Catholic feeling cost Al Smith the votes of this Bible Belt region. Even George McGovern, in his nationally lopsided 1972 loss, won Logan County — the only coun...

Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0