Qualla: Upshur County, West Virginia

Upshur County, West Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carson Maynard / (WT-en) Haem85 at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. Abel Parker Upshur was on a pleasure cruise down the Potomac River with President Tyler and most of the cabinet when the Navy's largest experimental cannon, the Peacemaker, exploded during a demonstration salute on February 28, 1844. The Secretary of State was killed instantly. So was the Secretary of the Navy and several others. Tyler himself, below decks at the moment of the blast, was unhurt. Seven years later, when Virginia's legislature carved a new county out of Randolph, Barbour, and Lewis, they named it for the dead diplomat. Upshur had been a Tidewater jurist who had never set foot in the rough mountain country that took his name - which puts him in the company of most Virginia governors and statesmen whose names ended up on western counties.

Image: Carson Maynard / (WT-en) Haem85 at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Upshur County, West Virginia: Carved Out in 1851

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The county was formed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1851, when westward population growth was steadily fissioning the existing counties into smaller, more manageable units. Upshur ended up at 355 square miles - small by West Virginia standards - with Buckhannon as its only ...

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upshur County, West Virginia: The Strange Stubbornness of a Republican County

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerius Tygart, CC BY-SA 3.0. Upshur County's political history is one of the more interesting in West Virginia. Most of the state's rural counties have followed a long arc from Democratic dominance through Civil War realignment to renewed Democratic strength in the early twentieth century, then to the rapid ...

Image: Valerius Tygart | CC BY-SA 3.0

Upshur County, West Virginia: Inside the Radio Quiet Zone

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jae69376, CC BY-SA 3.0. Upshur County lies inside the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area in West Virginia and Virginia where radio transmissions are restricted to protect the radio astronomy observatory at Green Bank, several counties to the southeast. Inside the zone, ce...

Image: Jae69376 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Upshur County, West Virginia: The Sago Mine

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coal town guy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Upshur County entered international news on January 2, 2006, when an explosion in the Sago Mine - a small underground coal operation just east of the unincorporated community of Sago - trapped thirteen miners about two and a half miles inside the mine. For almost two days, the wo...

Image: Coal town guy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Upshur County, West Virginia: Wesleyan, Wildlife, and a Strawberry Festival

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Beyond the dramas of disaster and politics, Upshur County's economy and identity rest on three substantial anchors. Buckhannon hosts West Virginia Wesleyan College, a private Methodist liberal arts college and a steady source of cultural energy and employment. The West Virginia S...

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