Romney: The Town That Changed Hands Fifty-Six Times

Romney, West Virginia holds two distinctions that are hard to top. Chartered in seventeen sixty-two, it is one of the oldest towns in the state, named by the Virginia landowner Lord Fairfax after a port town in southern England. And during the Civil War, its location on the Northwestern Turnpike, the main road westward across the Alleghenies, made it one of the most contested towns on the continent.

By oral tradition and an old state marker, Romney changed hands between Union and Confederate forces fifty-six times, though historians can document closer to ten. Whether the precise count is ten or fifty-six, soldiers on both sides knew this valley by heart. Today it sits quietly along the South Branch of the Potomac, the turbulence of those years visible only in its cemeteries and courthouse walls.