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COMMUNITIES
Huntington fast facts
Huntington is a city in Cabell and Wayne counties in West Virginia, along the Ohio River.
Most of the city is in Cabell County, for which it is the county seat. A small portion of the city, mainly the neigh borhood of Westmoreland, is in Wayne County. Its population was estimated at 49,129 in 2009. Huntington is a part of the Huntington-Ashland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2009, the MSA’s population was 285,624. Huntington is the largest city within the MSA and the second largest city in West Virginia, behind Charleston. The city is also the home of Marshall University.
The city was named for Collis P. Huntington, who founded Huntington in 1870 as the western terminus for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) on the land west of the mouth of the Guyandotte River at the Ohio River. The city houses numerous railroad shops which expanded east to Newport News (and coal piers) and west to eventually reach Cincinnati and Chicago in the years after its founding.
