page_title: Grafton, West Virginia
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Grafton, West Virginia / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: "Bird's Eye View" (sketch) of Grafton, West Virginia; Copyrighted by T.M. Fowler, Morrisville Pa (1898).
context_page_description: Grafton is a city in – and the county seat of — Taylor County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 5,164 at the 2010 census. Both of West Virginia's national cemeteries are located in Grafton. In November 1895 at a meeting at the Taylor County Courthouse, the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association formed. Mother's Day was founded in Grafton on May 10, 1908, and the city is home to the International Mother's Day Shrine.
  Grafton was among the first cities in the United States to observe Memorial Day. It originally developed as a junction point for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It served numerous branches of a network that was vital to the regional coal industry.
context_section_description: Tygart Dam was constructed about 2 miles south of Grafton, between 1934 and 1938 by the Works Progress Administration of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. President Roosevelt visited the city and remarked on such projects on October 1, 1936, on a stump tour; he gained a landslide re-election the following month. Upstream of the dam, Tygart Lake State Park was designated to preserve recreation areas around the man-made lake. The Tygart Valley River flows through Grafton.
  Grafton continued to prosper throughout much of the early 20th century, based on the importance of the railroad in area and national economy. But in the early 1950s, the Carr China Plant closed and left hundreds of residents unemployed.  In the late 1950s, Hazel Atlas Glass Plant closed and also left hundreds of residents without jobs.  In 1958, the women of Grafton organized a parade on Main Street to attract jobs for residents of the community.  This parade received national attention. Grafton was the chosen site of a plastic baby toys manufacturer. Because of the residents' efforts, Grafton was given an All-America City Award by the National Civic League in 1962, the smallest city that year to receive the award.
  Although instrumental to the city's early growth and economy, the railroad inhibited its expansion. In the 1920s smoke abatement experts reported that the combination of high hills, low wind velocity, and frequent railroad traffic, created air quality problems for the city and its business district, which was adjacent to the area of intense railroad activity. The resulting smoke from the railroad industry was a chief factor in hindering the growth of the city. Restructuring of the railroads and heavy industry through the late 20th century resulted in the loss of more jobs and, ultimately, population. People moved elsewhere for work.
  In the early 1980s, the railroad relocated hundreds of jobs to Jacksonville, Florida. Grafton suffered a severe economic and emotional loss from these changes.
  The 1985 Election day floods were notable in Grafton.  Most of the 47 people killed in this incident were in Pendleton and Grant counties, according to the National Weather Service. Flooding in the Tygart Valley River basin (a tributary to the Monongahela River) set new records for peak discharge at all five of the long-term unregulated gauging stations in the basin. However, the peaks were not as extreme, relative to the previous peaks of record, as those in the Cheat River and South Branch Potomac River basins. Recurrence intervals for the peaks equaled or exceeded 50 years at all five of the aforementioned sites in the Tygart basin, and four were in excess of 100 years. Also, at one newly established gauging station, Three Forks Creek near Grafton, the peak discharge, 12,000 ft3/s, was estimated to exceed the 100-year recurrence interval.
caption: "Bird's Eye View" (sketch) of Grafton (1898).
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