Clayton, West Virginia
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Clayton is an
unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in Summers County,
West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...
, United States. The community was first settled in 1813. Clayton once had a
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
, which opened in 1879 and closed in 1959.


Geography

Clayton is located at . It is situated in the
Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands division. The physiographic province is divided into three se ...
and has an elevation of . It is south of Keeney Knob, the tallest mountain in Summers County at . Other nearby mountains include Dempsey Mountain and Red Spring Mountain. Clayton is located on the Righthand Fork of Hungart's Creek, a branch of the Greenbrier River. The nearest post office to Clayton is located in Pence Springs, which is south of Clayton and has ZIP code 24962. The nearest incorporated town is Alderson, in neighboring Greenbrier and Monroe Counties, which is east of Clayton. Clayton is east-northeast of Hinton, the county seat of Summers County.


History

The first land grant in Clayton was made in 1786 to Colonel James Graham of Lowell. The first settlers in Clayton were Joseph Graham and his family, who settled at Clayton in 1813. Graham soon built a
gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...
in the community, the first in the surrounding area. The community earned its name in 1835, when
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...
balloonist Richard Clayton landed near the community after a , 9.5-hour flight; his flight set United States records for ballooning, and he stayed in the community for three days to see local visitors. A church which also served as a school was built in Clayton in the 1850s. The first settlers of Clayton practiced an agricultural lifestyle, but
lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...
became a prominent industry after the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis Potter Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Rich ...
opened a branch near the community. Clayton's
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
opened on November 3, 1879 on the site of Joseph Graham's home; the original postmaster was David Graham Ballengee. A new post office building was built in 1892. David Graham Ballengee served as postmaster until 1939; his 59-year tenure as postmaster made him the tenth-longest-serving postmaster in United States history. Ballengee was succeeded as postmaster by his son, Homer Ballengee, who served as postmaster until the post office closed on March 31, 1959.Robinson, p. 118.


Transportation

Clayton is served by two main county highways, Summers County Route 6 and Summers County Route 7. It is also served by several fractional county highways: Summers County Route 6/1, Summers County Route 7/11, Summers County Route 7/12, and Summers County Route 7/13. The nearest state highways to Clayton are West Virginia Route 3 and West Virginia Route 12 which run concurrent to the south and east of Clayton. The nearest interstate highway to Clayton is
Interstate 64 Interstate 64 (I-64) is an east–west Interstate Highway in the Eastern United States. Its western terminus is at Interstate 70, I-70, U.S. Route 40 (US 40), and U.S. Route 61, US 61 in Wentzville, Missouri. Its eastern ter ...
, which has exits in
Sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
and Green Sulphur Springs to the northwest of Clayton. The nearest rail line to Clayton is a
CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...
line which runs through Pence Springs. This line also carries
Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
's
Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to * Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae ***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...
service; its nearest stop to Clayton is in Alderson.


References

{{Authority control Unincorporated communities in Summers County, West Virginia Unincorporated communities in West Virginia