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Jackson County

Jackson County is located in the Appalachian foothills on the Ohio River between Parkersburg and Point Pleasant. It has 472 square miles of rolling, hilly land, with large flat bottoms on the Ohio River, Big Mill Creek, and Big Sandy Creek. The county was named in honor of Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and seventh president of the United States.

Mapped Points

• Ripley

  Ripley, the county seat of Jackson County, may have been named for Harry Ripley, a popular, circuit-riding Methodist minister who drowned in Mill Creek in 1830.
  

  

• Ravenswood

  Ravenswood was incorporated as a town on March 10, 1852, by the Virginia legislature. Ravenswood is the largest community in Jackson County.

• Ohio River

  The Ohio River begins at Pittsburgh, with the union of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. From there the Ohio travels 981 miles to Cairo, Illinois, where it joins the Mississippi.

• Buffington Island

  During the Civil War, Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s daring 1863 raid across Indiana and Ohio came to an end at Buffington Island.

• Cedar Lakes Conference Center

  The Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Jackson County originated in a 1949 act of the state legislature authorizing the development of a leadership training facility for students. The Mountain State Art & Craft Fair, West Virginia’s largest outdoor craft event, is held at Cedar Lakes every summer.