Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Sign?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Don’t Know
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | 1481 | 0 | ||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | 1517 | 0 | ||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 788 | 6 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
A longtime resident said, through email, “My mother’s family is from Belington, WV and I always heard they had the sign there. My Grandfather moved there in 1913 and from stories he told, the sign was up then. I was born in 1961 and all I know is it was gone by my time but I have heard many stories. I have asked around and one person stated they saw the sign as late as 1954, pulled up but leaning against the side of a building. My Grandfather also said that when he first came to Belington as a mines agent in 1913, a wealthy man on the train had brought a black porter with him to carry his luggage, but the porter was not allowed entry into the Lucerne hotel in Belington, and had to move on down the line. Today, I don’t believe there are any blacks in the town, though there are in nearby Philippi. I don’t think this is due to racism anymore but because there just never were any black people out there, never had slavery out there, and the job market has been very bad for so many decades it doesn’t draw new residents, so there was nothing to draw anyone new.”