Catlettsburg: Where the Rivers Made a Town

Catlettsburg stands where the Big Sandy River meets the Ohio, and that junction made it inevitable that a town would grow here. Virginia merchant Alexander Catlett arrived around seventeen ninety-eight, and by eighteen ten his son Horatio had opened a post office under the name Catlettsburg, a place previously known only as Mouth of Sandy. The family ran a tavern, trading post, and inn from a log structure on the riverbank.

Catlettsburg became the county seat of Boyd County when that county was formed in eighteen sixty. Half a century later, in nineteen sixteen, the Great Eastern Refining Company built an oil refinery here, drawn by the same river access that had attracted Catlett. That facility was purchased by Ashland Refining in nineteen twenty-four and eventually passed to Marathon Petroleum.

Today it sprawls across more than six hundred fifty acres and processes nearly three hundred thousand barrels of crude oil per day.