Qualla: Ravenswood

Ravenswood: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. In 1957, Henry J. Kaiser opened what was then the world's largest aluminum refinery six miles south of Ravenswood, West Virginia. He needed people - twelve thousand of them - to staff the plant, and the town that existed had only a few thousand. So Kaiser hired a young planner named Bill Finley to design a company town for twenty-five thousand. Finley sketched neighborhoods, schools, parks, the whole kit of postwar suburban America transposed onto an Ohio River bottomland. The aluminum plant got built. The town for twenty-five thousand did not. Today, Ravenswood has 3,865 residents. Finley went on to plan Columbia, Maryland, for the Rouse Company. The boomtown that Ravenswood almost became is a useful frame for understanding the town that actually is - a place that has spent three generations almost transforming.

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

Ravenswood: Before Aluminum

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. The first town election was held in Bartholomew Fleming's house in 1840. Ravenswood incorporated in 1852, sitting at the mouth of Sandy Creek where it joins the Ohio River. For most of the next century, the town's life followed the river - a stop on the Ohio River Rail Road after...

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Ravenswood: Kaiser's Big Idea

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Henry Kaiser was already legendary by 1957 - he had built Liberty ships during the war at a pace that astonished even the Navy, he had founded a healthcare system, he had pushed aluminum into civilian markets after wartime overcapacity left him holding it. The Ravenswood refinery...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Ravenswood: Famous Visitors and a Failed Rebrand

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. John F. Kennedy campaigned through Ravenswood during the 1960 Democratic primaries - West Virginia was crucial to his nomination, and small Ohio Valley towns like this one got more presidential attention than usual that spring. The Ravenswood exit of I-77 opened in 1964, finally ...

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Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ravenswood: The Devil's Baby

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among Ravenswood's quieter attractions is the grave of George Elwood Sharp, a two-year-old who died in 1917 and is buried in the local cemetery. The ceramic photo plate on his stone has weathered badly over a century, and at some point in the late twentieth century, the deteriora...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ravenswood: Flying Over the River Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air, Ravenswood reads as a small, neat grid pressed against the Ohio River with Sandy Creek defining its southern edge. The Ravenswood Bridge crosses the river to Ohio just upstream. South of town, the aluminum plant sprawls along the bottomland - a long string of low in...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0