Where to Stay in Huntington, West Virginia

What is Huntington known for?

Marshall University sets the rhythm of the place, and the Huntington Museum of Art holds the largest art collection in West Virginia, which is more museum than a city this size normally carries. Two local claims get repeated: the West Virginia-style hot dog began here, and the world's largest rotating root beer mug turns in Huntington. Restaurants and music carry the evenings.

What are the main landmarks in Huntington?

The Huntington Museum of Art is the largest of its kind in the state, and it is the single strongest reason to give Huntington a full day rather than an hour between other things. Camden Park pulls a different crowd. Older houses carry much of the rest, among them the Campbell-Hicks House, the Cammack House and the Memphis Tennessee Garrison House, along with Trinity Episcopal Church and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church.

The Touma Museum of Medicine is the outlier on that list.

What is the history of Huntington?

Huntington dates from 1871. That is a young founding for a city on the Ohio River, which had carried traffic past this bank for as long as anyone had been moving goods through the valley, and the settlement that took the name arrived late to a well-used river. The Guyandotte River joins it here, and that confluence is the geography the city was laid out to use.

Cabell County made it the seat. Wayne County took the rest of the ground, which is why the city answers to two county lines rather than one. Huntington ended up the second-largest city in West Virginia, which for a place founded in 1871 is a fast result by the standards of the state.

What survives from the early decades is mostly domestic. The Campbell House, the Cammack House and the Campbell-Hicks House are on the record, as is the Memphis Tennessee Garrison House, and the congregations kept their own buildings standing alongside them. Trinity Episcopal Church, the First Presbyterian Church, the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church and the First United Methodist Church all hold ground in the same city, which says something about how quickly it filled out after 1871.

The President's House rounds out the list. None of it is grand, and that is the point.

Where is Huntington?

The Guyandotte River ends its run here. The Ohio River runs along one edge and the Guyandotte River comes in behind it, and the ground between them, in the southwestern part of West Virginia, is what the city was laid across. Cabell County holds most of it, Wayne County the remainder, and the whole city covers about 48 square kilometres.

Ashland shares the same river valley.

What is the climate of Huntington?

The Ohio River valley does the work here. Air settles in a river valley the way it does not on open ground, so Huntington holds humidity through the summer months and traps cold air along the water when the wind drops in winter. Fog is a river thing.

Spring and autumn are the useful windows for anything that involves walking between the Huntington Museum of Art and the campus.

How do you get to Huntington?

Three states meet around this city. The Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area reaches over seven counties in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, so the state line is close on more than one side and a drive in can start in any of the three. Marshall University draws its own traffic.

Once here, the core is compact and walkable, which is the practical argument for a stay in Huntington over a base anywhere else in Cabell County.