Boomtown Historic District

About this property

The Martinsburg Mining, Manufacturing and Improvement Company was a company founded in 1890 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The company focused on development, settlement, and manufacturing. The subdivision developed by the Martinsburg Mining, Manufacturing & Improvement Company is divided between the Boomtown Historic District and the Martinsburg Mining, Manufacturing & Improvement Co. Historic District. In the early 1890's, the Martinsburg Mining, Manufacturing and Improvement Company bought hundreds of acres on the south side of Martinsburg for residential and industrial use. The area saw service from the Martinsburg Street Railway which started operations on October 30, 1891. The company's Park Elkins was also served by the street railway. The railway ran along the area's east border. The residential area opened up for sale to the general public in 1891 on October 30 and 31 as a subdivision with 3,000 lots and 42 new streets. Businessmen from Chicago, New York, and other areas bought lots. The sale was successful with good advertisement. The Abell-Kilbourn House was located in the residential area. The Martinsburg Mining, Manufacturing and Improvement Company recruited Textile mills. These mills were located in an industrial area at the intersection of King Street and the Winchester Turnpike. By 1873, the area was served by the Chesapeake and Ohio and Cumberland Valley Railroad. The area was established by the Crawford Woolen Company, Interwoven Mills, Shenandoah Pants Company, and Southern Merchant Tailoring Company in 1891. These mills made Martinsburg a leader in manufacturing. Inherited by Charles Kilbourn, the Interwoven Mills was the largest manufacturing factory in the eastern panhandle. The factory was a boom for Martinsburg, it increased the city's population. In the following fifteen years after 1891, the Heiston Construction Company, Purdy Picture Frame Company, H. P. Thorn Lumber Company, and other large stores and corporations came to the industrial area. The mills and textile industries were lost in the next forty years and were replaced with new businesses. In 2018, the Interwoven Mills was up for sale as adaptive reuse. The Interwoven Mills became the "Interwoven Lots", an approximately 400 unit residential apartment and 5,500 square foot commercial space. The project consisted of 3 phases and costed approximately $80 million dollars. The Boomtown Historic District is a streetcar suburb consisting of the western and southern portions of Martinsburg, West Virginia, generally along the alignments of West King Street and Winchester Avenue. It was developed by the Martinsburg, Mining Manufacturing and Improvement Company and it includes a former industrial section of the town, home to a number of textile mills, as well as the housing that was built for mill workers.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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