Virginia divided the vast territory west of the Blue Ridge previously attached to Orange County into Frederick and Augusta counties. Their boundary ran from the head spring of the Hedgman River to the head spring of the Potomac, but uncertain geography and open-ended western claims made jurisdiction beyond the settled frontier indistinct. Land that eventually formed present-day Preston County passed through this shifting Frederick–Augusta borderland—and later Hampshire and West Augusta—before Monongalia County was created in 1776.
Brothers Samuel, Israel, and Gabriel Eckerlin—German-speaking religious dissenters formerly associated with Pennsylvania’s Ephrata Cloister—established a settlement at Dunkard Bottom on the Cheat River near present-day Camp Dawson. They are considered among the earliest recorded European settlers in what became Preston County. Sources disagree on whether they arrived in 1753, 1754, or 1756. Older Preston County accounts and the roadside marker call the leading brother Thomas Eckarly or Echarlin; modern research identifies him as Samuel Eckerlin.
During the French and Indian War, a Native war party allied with French forces attacked the Eckerlin settlement at Dunkard Bottom and captured Israel and Gabriel Eckerlin. They were delivered to the French, taken from North America, and later died in captivity. Samuel survived because he was away; after returning with a Virginia militia party, he did not reestablish the settlement. Older local accounts and the roadside marker say the brothers were killed at Dunkard Bottom, but later research documents their capture.
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the line that now forms Preston County’s northern boundary with Pennsylvania. Originally part of a colonial boundary settlement, the Mason-Dixon Line later became widely associated with the division between North and South.
Research status: Verified
Citation / research lead
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “Mason-Dixon Line”
Virginia divided the District of West Augusta into Monongalia, Ohio, and Yohogania counties. Much of the land that would later become Preston County fell within the new Monongalia County and remained under its jurisdiction until Preston County was created from its eastern portion on January 19, 1818.
Research status: Verified to source
Citation / research lead
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “West Augusta” and “Monongalia County”
The Virginia General Assembly created Preston County from the eastern portion of Monongalia County. The county was named for James Patton Preston, then governor of Virginia, and Kingwood became the county seat.
Research status: Verified
Citation / research lead
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “Preston County”
By 1818, the National Road connected Cumberland, Maryland, with Wheeling, Virginia, through southwestern Pennsylvania. Although it passed north of Preston County, its traffic created nearby markets for the county’s farmers and merchants. Oren F. Morton later described the road’s taverns as buyers of local farm produce and associated its busy years with Brandonville’s growth. Connections to this neighboring transportation corridor helped shape the economy of northern Preston.
Research status: Verified to source
Additional source
e-WV, Preston County — northern Preston’s trade connections
After years of temperance organizing, an attempt to place statewide prohibition in the West Virginia Constitution failed at the polls. The defeat shows that the state's eventual prohibition law emerged from a long and contested campaign rather than appearing suddenly in the twentieth century.
Research status: Verified
Citation / research lead
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “Prohibition”
The Elkins Coal & Coke Company's Bretz plant entered full production in 1907. The Morgantown & Kingwood Railroad connected the operation with its principal customer, the Maryland Steel Company plant and shipyard at Sparrows Point near Baltimore.
West Virginia acquired approximately 195 acres along the Cheat River in Portland District for use as a permanent military training ground. The installation was named Camp Dawson in honor of Preston County newspaperman and political leader William M. O. Dawson, who served as governor from 1905 to 1909. It became the West Virginia National Guard’s primary training site.
James J. Brown dates Oak Park’s opening near Masontown to June 9, 1909, although the exact opening date remains under review. Brown describes its entrance as facing the railroad tracks and says the amusement park generated excursion traffic for the M&K, including trains arriving from as far away as Pittsburgh. A July 22, 1909 newspaper notice advertised a Knights of Pythias basket picnic at Oak Park for August 26. The notice described cooperation with M&K Railroad officials, connections with B&O trains, and a special $1 round-trip fare from M&K Junction.
Geologist Frank Reeves purchased about 100 acres of old-growth hemlock and hardwood forest near the West Virginia–Maryland line in 1929. Beginning around 1930, he developed the Youghiogheny Forest Colony, an informal community of approximately twelve log cabins occupied by artists, writers, architects, musicians, physicians, and other residents during the Depression years before World War II.
Research status: Verified to source
Citation / research lead
Michele Moure, “Youghiogheny Forest Colony,” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Oak Park closed its gates in 1930. e-WV attributes the park’s decline to the growing popularity of automobile travel, the weakening rail and coal industries, and the onset of the Great Depression. Peggy Ross’s 1994 Goldenseal article preserves an eyewitness recollection that the park likely closed around 1929, when the Bretz mine and the powerhouse supplying Oak Park shut down.
Research status: Verified to source
Citation / research lead
Brad Martin, “Oak Park,” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, last revised February 8, 2024
After Eleanor Roosevelt visited depression-stricken coal communities in northern West Virginia, the federal government acquired Richard Arthur's farm near Reedsville on October 4, 1933, for its first experimental subsistence-homestead community. The Preston County Journal reported the following day that the purchased farm comprised 1,017 acres and that the price was understood to have been $35,000. These figures refer to the Arthur farm purchase, rather than the larger project tract assembled through additional acquisitions. Initially called the Reedsville Experimental Community, the settlement was subsequently named Arthurdale for the former landowner.
A new school was constructed at Arthurdale in 1935 under educator Elsie Ripley Clapp. Its progressive curriculum emphasized hands-on learning, handicrafts, manual arts, agriculture, and practical community life alongside academic study.
The last 40 houses, a group of stone-veneered homes begun during the summer of 1936, were finished in 1937. Their completion brought Arthurdale's three-phase homestead construction program to the 165 houses originally planned.
The federal government began selling Arthurdale property in 1941. By 1947, all of the community's homes had been sold, most to the homesteader families occupying them. Public land, community buildings, and businesses were sold or transferred separately to private owners and institutions, ending Arthurdale's federal-project phase while the settlement itself continued.
Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall designated Cranesville Swamp Nature Sanctuary a National Natural Landmark. Straddling Preston County, West Virginia, and Garrett County, Maryland, Cranesville was one of nine sites included in the program’s first group of designations and protects a rare boreal wetland ecosystem.
Cathedral State Park was designated a National Natural Landmark in recognition of its old-growth hemlock forest. The Preston County park preserves West Virginia’s only remaining stand of virgin hemlock forest.
Persistent northwest winds brought repeated snowfalls during West Virginia’s coldest month on record. Terra Alta measured 104 inches of snow during January, establishing a state monthly snowfall record.
Research status: Verified to source
Citation / research lead
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia, “The Weather”