page_title: Huntington, West Virginia
section_title: Location and nomenclature
hierarchical_section_title: Huntington, West Virginia / Location and nomenclature
caption_attribution_description: English: Counties in the Huntington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
context_page_description: Huntington is a city in Cabell and Wayne Counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is the county seat of Cabell County, and largest city in the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH Metropolitan Statistical Area, sometimes referred to as the Tri-State Area. A historic and bustling city of commerce and heavy industry, Huntington has benefited from its location on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Guyandotte River. It is home to the Port of Huntington Tri-State, the second-busiest inland port in the United States.
  Surrounded by extensive natural resources, the industrial sector is based in coal, oil, chemicals and steel, all of which support Huntington's diversified economy. The city is a vital rail-to-river transfer point for the marine transportation industry. Also, it is considered a scenic locale in the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. This location was selected by Collis Potter Huntington as ideal for the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, the predecessor of what would become CSX Transportation which still operates CSX Transportation-Huntington Division in the city to date.
context_section_description: Huntington was founded on lightly populated lands near Guyandotte as a C&O Railroad hub, on the southern bank of the Ohio River, at the confluence with the Guyandotte River. The site is at the southwestern corner of West Virginia on the border with the state of Ohio and near the border of both states with Kentucky. Discounting the period of French ownership, the land that was part of Guyandotte and later Huntington was originally part of the 28,628-acre (115.85 km2) French and Indian War veteran's Savage Grant.
  The area of greater Huntington, although situated in a Southern state, was long considered a western city in what was then the Colony of Virginia since the first permanent settlements were founded in 1775 in defiance of British injunctions against settlements west of the Alleghenies in the vicinity of Holderby's Landing.
  Historically, the old Federal Era town of Guyandotte (now a neighborhood absorbed into Huntington proper) was first built upon in 1799 by French settlers of the Ohio Valley and has homes dating back to 1820 and a graveyard containing 18th-century French and colonial-era settlers, including surnames such as LeTulle, Holderby, and Buffington. A farmer James Holderby (1782–1855) purchased the lands in 1821 upon which much of Huntington now stands which is why the area was known as Holderby's Landing prior to 1870-71 when it was incorporated and renamed; Holderby's estate included the lands gifted in 1837 to found what is now Marshall University. The C&O purchased the area in 1870, and by 1873 when the railroad connected Richmond to Ohio, it had undergone a transition from a sleepy agricultural region with the nearby subscription Academy into a growing rail center poised to act as a springboard for a railroad to penetrate and connect the midwest with the eastern seaboard. The town of Guyandotte was officially absorbed in 1891.
  Modern day Huntington is commonly divided into four main sections. The north/south divider is the CSX railroad tracks, while the east/west divider is First Street. A portion of the city, mainly the neighborhood of Westmoreland, is in Wayne County. Most of the city is in Cabell County, of which it is the county seat. Huntington is influenced by Appalachian Culture, Southern culture, Midwestern culture, and Mid-Atlantic culture. It is often referred to as one of the northernmost cities in the South or one of the southernmost cities in the North.
  The Huntington Metro Area is sometimes called KYOWVA, an acronym that refers to the three states that make up the region, (Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia). As of the 2010 census, the Huntington Metro Area is the largest in West Virginia with a population of 365,419. Huntington is combined with Charleston, the state capital, as the Huntington-Charleston TV market, the 64th-largest in the nation.
caption: Map of the 
  Greater Huntington Metro Area.
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