Sutton, West Virginia

Sutton sits at the confluence of Granny's Creek and the Elk River, where John D. Sutton settled in eighteen oh nine. When Braxton County was formed in eighteen thirty-six, carved from Kanawha, Lewis, and Nicholas counties, Sutton donated land for a public square and the new county made his town its seat. The county itself was named for Carter Braxton, a Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The Civil War arrived hard. In September of eighteen sixty-one, five thousand Union troops occupied the town. That December, retreating Confederates set fire to Sutton on their way out, burning most of the downtown. The town rebuilt slowly, and found its footing again when the timber industry reached the Elk River valley. Today Sutton is the county seat of one of the least-populated counties in West Virginia, a small river town that has outlasted war and fire.