Appalachian Community Histories – Westmoreland, Wayne County: Vinson Farmland, Streetcars, Camden Park, and the 1937 Flood
Westmoreland occupies an unusual place in West Virginia history. It belongs to Wayne County, yet generations of residents have known it as part of Huntington. Its streets grew outward from a city whose center lies in neighboring Cabell County, while its schools, taxes, elections, land records, and local identity remained tied in important ways to Wayne County.
That position between city and county shaped nearly everything about Westmoreland.
Before rows of houses covered the river bottoms and hillsides, much of the land belonged to one of Wayne County’s most prominent families. Streetcars later carried residents between Westmoreland and downtown Huntington. Camden Park developed along the same transportation network. New subdivisions, schools, factories, churches, and businesses appeared as Huntington pushed westward.
Then, in January 1937, the Ohio River rose over the community and nearly erased the landscape that decades of development had created.
Westmoreland survived the flood, gained federal flood protection, and continued growing as one of Huntington’s most distinctive neighborhoods. Its history is a story of farms becoming streets, streetcars becoming automobiles, a Wayne County community becoming part of a larger city, and generations of families building lives along the western edge of Huntington.
Before Westmoreland
Long before a community called Westmoreland appeared on maps and in newspapers, people were living along the Ohio River.
One of the clearest reminders survives inside Camden Park.
The large prehistoric mound there belongs to a much older landscape of earthworks and settlements once found throughout the Ohio Valley. A 1924 article preserved by West Virginia Archives and History described the Camden Park mound as one of the best surviving examples in the Huntington vicinity. The article also reported that another mound once stood east of the park but had been destroyed to provide right-of-way for the Ohio and Big Sandy Railroad.
The terminology used by writers in the early twentieth century often separated mysterious “Moundbuilders” from later American Indian peoples, an interpretation that archaeology has long since rejected. Modern archaeological scholarship instead places the great earthwork traditions of the Ohio Valley within Indigenous cultures that lived in the region centuries before European settlement. The Camden Park mound is generally associated with the Adena tradition.
Its survival gives Westmoreland a history stretching far beyond the neighborhood that eventually surrounded it.
By the nineteenth century, farms and large landholdings spread across this section of Wayne County. Among the families who became particularly important was the Vinson family.
The Vinson Lands
Samuel Sperry Vinson was born in 1833 and became one of the major landowners of northern Wayne County. The modern West Virginia Encyclopedia states plainly that Vinson owned most of the land that eventually became Westmoreland.
The scale of those holdings is important because Westmoreland did not begin as a traditional incorporated town centered around a courthouse, mill, or crossroads. It grew largely from the subdivision and development of acreage lying immediately west of Huntington.
Samuel Vinson died in 1904, but the family’s influence continued through his children, particularly Zachary Taylor Vinson. Z. T. Vinson became involved in business, transportation, land development, and the electric railway system that connected Huntington with surrounding Ohio River communities.
The arrival of electric streetcars changed what could be done with land west of Huntington. A person no longer needed to live within walking distance of downtown businesses or industrial plants. Families could live several miles away and ride into Huntington for work, shopping, school, or entertainment.
That transportation network helped transform what had been rural Wayne County property into valuable suburban land.
It also helped create one of West Virginia’s most enduring amusement parks.
Streetcars and Camden Park
In 1903, the Camden Interstate Railway established Camden Park as a picnic grove west of Huntington.
Streetcar parks were common during the era. Electric railway companies wanted people riding their cars not only during the workweek but also on evenings, Sundays, holidays, and weekends. Picnic grounds, dance pavilions, amusement rides, and other attractions provided a reason to purchase another ticket.
Camden Park became Westmoreland’s most famous landmark.
The park took its name from former United States Senator Johnson N. Camden, one of the principal investors behind the railway enterprise. Its location connected Huntington with communities farther west and with the broader streetcar system serving the Ohio River valley around Ashland, Catlettsburg, Ceredo, Kenova, and nearby areas.
What began as a picnic destination gradually became an amusement park. A carousel and other attractions followed, and by the twentieth century Camden Park had become deeply embedded in the childhood memories of generations of families throughout West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.
For Westmoreland, however, the streetcar was more than a way to reach the park.
It was part of daily life.
A West Virginia Supreme Court case involving a Westmoreland resident in the 1920s preserved an unusually detailed glimpse of that world. The woman involved regularly boarded an interurban car in Huntington to return to her home in Westmoreland. Fares were divided into zones, and after leaving the car she walked the remaining distance toward her home near Auburn Road.
That ordinary journey helps explain how Westmoreland grew. The neighborhood was close enough to Huntington for people to work in the city while living across the Wayne County line.
The rural edge of Huntington was becoming a suburb.
A Community Takes Shape
By 1920, Westmoreland was clearly established enough to appear regularly in Wayne County records and newspapers.
The Wayne County News described it that February as a Huntington suburb in the northern end of Wayne County. Another article from January 1920 reported that a junior high school had already been established there.
Land development was moving quickly.
On June 17, 1920, the Wayne County News reported one of the largest real estate transactions then recorded in Wayne County. Approximately 392 acres lying behind Westmoreland were sold for $50,000.
The property was known as the Westmoreland Farming Company tract.
According to the newspaper, the Westmoreland Farming Company had originally acquired the property from James H. Marcum before selling it to Z. T. Vinson in 1914. Vinson then sold the tract in 1920 to Huntington businessmen W. D. and U. G. Fitzpatrick.
Transactions like this marked the transition from large farms and family holdings toward subdivisions, streets, houses, and commercial development.
The West Virginia Blue Book for 1921 already listed Westmoreland in Wayne County, providing another indication that the place name had become firmly established.
During the same decade, Westmoreland’s relationship with Huntington became even closer. State court records described it as a suburban part of the city, and a 1927 Wayne County News report discussing proposed Huntington expansion toward Ceredo and Kenova stated that Westmoreland had previously voted itself into the corporation of Huntington.
That produced the geographic arrangement that still makes Westmoreland unusual. Huntington became a city spanning two counties, with most of the city lying in Cabell County but Westmoreland extending into Wayne County.
Schools for a Growing Suburb
Few records illustrate Westmoreland’s growth better than the school crisis of the 1920s.
By September 1924, local classrooms could no longer comfortably hold the children arriving each morning.
The Wayne County News reported that voters overwhelmingly approved a $109,000 bond issue for a new Westmoreland school building. Approximately $100,000 was intended for construction, while the remaining money would pay for land, playground equipment, and related expenses.
The numbers reveal how quickly the neighborhood had grown.
There were already 490 pupils enrolled in the first six grades, taught by thirteen teachers. Another 125 children from Westmoreland were being sent to junior high schools in Huntington, with the local board paying their tuition and streetcar fares.
Temporary buildings had been erected to relieve overcrowding, yet even those were considered inadequate.
The newspaper attributed the problem directly to the rapid growth of Westmoreland.
The proposed school was expected to contain approximately fourteen rooms and was planned for Hughes Street, where an older building had burned earlier that year. The bond passed by an overwhelming margin, including 328 votes in favor and only 13 against at the Westmoreland precinct.
Education became one of the anchors of neighborhood identity.
The Vinson name eventually became permanently associated with the local school system. Vinson Junior High was redesignated Vinson High School in 1934. Its first graduating class followed in 1935 with only four students, but later generations would fill its classrooms, athletic teams, clubs, bands, and yearbooks.
For decades, saying that someone had graduated from Vinson was another way of saying that person belonged to Westmoreland.
Homes, Factories, and a Neighborhood Economy
Westmoreland was primarily residential, but it was never simply a collection of houses for people commuting into Huntington.
Industry developed along the railroad and transportation corridors nearby.
A 1927 letter published in the Wayne County News described efforts to bring additional factories into the Wayne County side of Huntington. The writer discussed a stove factory operated by A. F. Thompson in Westmoreland and industrial sites near the Ball Brothers glass works.
The letter also revealed a rivalry that accompanied Westmoreland’s unusual geography. Businessmen debated whether companies should locate in Cabell County or Wayne County, and taxation became part of the argument. Thompson, according to the letter, defended Wayne County as a good place to operate a business.
By then, Westmoreland contained residential additions, industrial property, schools, stores, and transportation infrastructure.
Its connection with downtown Huntington remained strong, but the neighborhood was developing institutions and a community life of its own.
Addresses began appearing regularly in newspapers. Residents belonged to local churches, opened businesses, attended Westmoreland schools, worked in nearby factories, and rode streetcars into Huntington.
The neighborhood had moved far beyond the days when nearly all of the land could be associated with a few large farms.
Then the river rose.
The Flood of 1937
In January 1937, days of rain across the Ohio River watershed produced one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the valley.
Westmoreland stood directly in its path.
The Wayne County News described Westmoreland, Ceredo, and Kenova as among the communities hit harder than Huntington itself. At Lock 28 opposite Westmoreland, the Ohio River reached 67.03 feet, more than seventeen feet above flood stage.
Old markings showing the height of the devastating 1913 flood disappeared beneath more than two additional feet of water.
In Westmoreland, almost nothing remained dry.
A contemporary report stated that only a few homes along Piedmont Road escaped the floodwaters.
Streets became channels. Boats replaced automobiles. Families abandoned homes or moved possessions to upper floors while rescue crews worked through the flooded neighborhood. Houses that had represented years of savings stood surrounded by muddy water.
The destruction was recorded not only in newspaper columns but also in photographs.
Marshall University’s archival collections preserve images labeled “Westmoreland from Ohio River” and “View taken of Westmoreland,” photographed during and immediately after the disaster. The United States Army Corps of Engineers also photographed the flooded western end of Huntington, creating a remarkable visual record of streets, factories, houses, and transportation routes disappearing beneath the Ohio.
The photographs show why the flood became a dividing line in Westmoreland history.
There was Westmoreland before January 1937, vulnerable to an unpredictable river.
There would be Westmoreland after it, increasingly protected behind a massive system of federal flood control.
Building the Floodwall
The 1937 disaster changed federal flood policy throughout the Ohio Valley.
Huntington and Westmoreland could not simply rebuild and hope that another flood of similar size would never arrive.
Planning soon began for permanent protection.
Contemporary reporting in 1938 described a proposed Westmoreland floodwall project costing millions of dollars. Local committees worked to obtain rights-of-way, identify affected properties, and prepare for federal construction.
The Huntington flood protection system was ultimately planned in separate sections protecting Huntington, Westmoreland, and Guyandotte.
Construction began on the Huntington section in 1938.
After completing that portion, crews moved toward Westmoreland.
The work represented a dramatic reshaping of the riverfront. Earthen levees, concrete walls, gates, pumping facilities, and related structures changed the relationship between neighborhoods and the Ohio River.
Before the floodwall, the river was always physically present as both a transportation corridor and a threat. Afterward, much of that immediate connection was interrupted by the infrastructure built to prevent another 1937.
The wall did not erase Westmoreland’s flood history, but it allowed residents to rebuild with a greater sense of security.
Westmoreland After the Flood
Westmoreland continued developing through the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Vinson High School became one of the neighborhood’s most important institutions. Businesses served families along Piedmont Road and the surrounding streets. Churches, youth sports, school activities, and neighborhood organizations helped create a local identity distinct enough that residents often described themselves as being from Westmoreland rather than simply Huntington.
Camden Park continued drawing visitors.
The automobile gradually replaced the streetcar that had helped make the neighborhood possible. Houses spread farther into the surrounding hills and along roads that once marked the edges of development.
Yet Westmoreland remained tied to both Huntington and Wayne County.
That dual identity survived in government records. Westmoreland continued as a Wayne County magisterial district even while part of Huntington lay within its boundaries. Decades later, the West Virginia Supreme Court would still have reason to discuss the unusual situation created by Huntington extending across the Cabell and Wayne County line.
The arrangement can confuse anyone looking at a modern map without knowing the history.
Westmoreland may have a Huntington mailing address.
It may be part of the city.
But it is also part of Wayne County.
Both are true.
A Neighborhood Built Between Boundaries
Westmoreland’s history is easy to overlook because it sits in the shadow of a larger city.
Yet its story explains something important about how Appalachian cities grew.
Huntington did not stop at an invisible county line. Transportation, industry, housing demand, and land speculation pulled development westward into Wayne County. Large family holdings were divided. Streetcars made suburban living practical. Schools struggled to keep pace with population growth. Factories and businesses followed new transportation corridors.
Through it all, older layers of history remained.
A prehistoric mound survived within an amusement park created by a streetcar company. The Vinson name moved from land deeds into the name of a school. Country roads became residential streets. Farmland worth tens of thousands of dollars in a single 1920 transaction disappeared beneath neighborhoods.
Then the Ohio River covered nearly everything in 1937, forcing Westmoreland to rebuild behind one of the largest public works projects the area had ever seen.
Today it is possible to drive through Westmoreland without realizing how many versions of the community occupy the same ground.
There is the Indigenous landscape represented by the Camden Park mound.
There is the nineteenth-century landscape of farms and Vinson acreage.
There is the streetcar suburb of the 1910s and 1920s.
There is the Westmoreland of crowded schools, new houses, industrial expansion, and Camden Park excursions.
There is the flooded neighborhood of January 1937.
There is the community rebuilt behind the floodwall.
All of them remain part of the same place.
Westmoreland may be the Wayne County section of Huntington, but its history is more than an extension of the city next door. It is the story of a community created at the meeting point of a river, a county boundary, a growing Appalachian city, and generations of people who turned old farms west of Huntington into a neighborhood of their own.
Sources & Further Reading
Casto, James E. “Floodwall History.” Huntington Quarterly, September 27, 2018. https://huntingtonquarterly.com/2018/09/27/issue-76-floodwall-history/.
Chambers, S. Allen, Jr. “Camden Park.” SAH Archipedia. Society of Architectural Historians. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-WA1.
Daniels, Willard F., Jr., and Paul Fulks. The Gate to Westmoreland. 2004.
Hotchkiss, Jedediah. Map of Huntington, W. Va., and Vicinity, the Ohio River Terminus of the Virginias Railway. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005625220/.
Johnson, Leland R. Men, Mountains, and Rivers: An Illustrated History of the Huntington District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1754–1974. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977. https://catalog.freelibrary.org/Record/263830.
Lewis, Stephen. An Overview of the History of Wayne County. Wayne, WV, 1997. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html.
Marshall University Special Collections. Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection. Accession 1975/06.0099. Huntington, WV: Marshall University. https://mds.marshall.edu/cabell_wayne_hist_soc_collection/index.27.html.
Marshall University Special Collections. Dunn-Henderson Family Papers, 1892–1947. Huntington, WV: Marshall University. https://mds.marshall.edu/sc_finding_aids/249/.
Marshall University Special Collections. “View Taken of Westmoreland, Huntington, W. Va., Feb. 7, 1937.” Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection. https://mds.marshall.edu/cabell_wayne_hist_soc_collection/index.27.html.
Marshall University Special Collections. “Westmoreland from Ohio River, Huntington, W. Va., Jan. 29, 1937.” Cabell-Wayne Historical Society Collection. https://mds.marshall.edu/cabell_wayne_hist_soc_collection/index.27.html.
Marshall University Special Collections. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1937 Flood Photograph Collection. Huntington, WV: Marshall University. https://mds.marshall.edu/sc_usac/index.3.html.
Massey, Tim R. “Wayne County.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. West Virginia Humanities Council. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/897.
National Archives and Records Administration. “Circa 1930 City Directories Available at NARA.” https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930/city-directories.html.
Neekamp v. Huntington Chamber of Commerce. 99 W. Va. 388, 129 S.E. 814 (W. Va. 1925). https://openjurist.org/99/wva/388/neekamp-v-huntington-chamber-of-commerce-4228458.
Oberholtzer, Frances W. “Cabell County Once Rich in Relics of Early Race of Moundbuilders.” Huntington Sunday Advertiser, April 13, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/nativeamericans/cabellmounds.html.
A Pictorial History of Wayne County. Kenova, WV: Wayne County Historical Publications, 1988. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html.
Platania, Joseph. “Z. T. Vinson.” Huntington Quarterly, April 21, 2004. https://huntingtonquarterly.com/2004/04/21/z-t-vinson/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia. 1898. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn09409_004/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia. Vol. 1. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1931. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3894hm.g3894hm_g09409193101/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia. Vol. 2. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1931. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3894hm.g3894hm_g09409193102/.
Taylor, Mildred. History of Wayne County, West Virginia. Wayne, WV, 1963. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html.
Thompson, Robert Michael. Pioneers, Rebels, and Wolves: A History of Wayne County. 2010.
United States Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1930. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1930/metropolitan/03450421ch1.pdf.
United States Post Office Department. Post Route Map of the State of West Virginia. January 1, 1920. Washington, DC: U.S. Post Office Department, 1920. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3891p.ct009455/.
United States Post Office Department. Post Route Map of the State of West Virginia. July 1, 1920. Washington, DC: U.S. Post Office Department, 1920. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3891p.ct009456/.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District. Solid as Stone: A History of the Huntington District, 1974–2022. Huntington, WV: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/collection/p16021coll4/id/444/download.
“Camden Park.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. West Virginia Humanities Council. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/781.
Wayne County News. “Bonds Authorize New $100,000 Westmoreland School Building.” September 18, 1924. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers1924.htm.
Wayne County News. “County’s First Rural High School.” January 22, 1920. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn200122.html.
Wayne County News. “Death Takes Woman Age 108 Years.” May 15, 1924. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn240515.html.
Wayne County News. January 28, 1926. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn260128.html.
Wayne County News. January 13, 1927. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn270113.html.
Wayne County News. January 20, 1927. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcn270120.html.
Wayne County News. “Record Flood Desolate Ceredo, Kenova and Westmoreland.” 1937. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201937.htm.
Wayne County News. “Westmoreland Land Transaction.” June 17, 1920. Wayne County Genealogical and Historical Society. https://waynewv.com/wcghs/oldsite/Old%20Newspapers/Newspapers%201920.htm.
Wayne County News. “Westmoreland Woman Is 105, Well, Active, but Won’t Vote.” September 9, 1920. West Virginia Archives and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcntoc.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Place Names in West Virginia.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/placenames/placnamw.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Wayne County Historical Sources.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/archives/counties/wayne.html.
West Virginia Archives and History. “Wayne County News: Table of Contents.” West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. https://archive.wvculture.org/History/wcn/wcntoc.html.
West Virginia State Archives. Wayne County Deed Books and Deed Indexes. Charleston: West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html.
West Virginia State Archives. Wayne County Commissioners Records, County Court Orders, and Chancery Records. Charleston: West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html.
West Virginia State Archives. Wayne County Surveyors Entry Book, 1849–1875, and Surveyors Book, 1842–1857. Charleston: West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html.
West Virginia State Archives. Wayne County Wills, Appraisement Books, Fiduciary Records, and Estate Settlements. Charleston: West Virginia State Archives. https://archive.wvculture.org/history/archives/bluenote.html.
White v. Ohio Valley Electric Railway Co. 98 W. Va. 378, 127 S.E. 65 (W. Va. 1925). https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/white-v-ohio-valley-electric-railway-co-wva-1925.
Author Note: Westmoreland’s history can easily disappear inside the larger story of Huntington, even though the community has a distinct Wayne County past of its own. I hope this article helps preserve the people, places, transportation networks, schools, and disasters that shaped this unusual corner of the city.