"West Jefferson rose out of the dust of a failed town and once was the most important business in Madison County, Ohio. Samuel Jones and Samuel Sexton moved to the area from New Jersey and platted New Hampton on July 5, 1822, along Little Darby Creek and Ludlow Road, the first state road in Ohio. The town was laid out with ninety-three lots on eight streets on the south side of Hampton Cemetery on Frey Avenue in West Jefferson. It had two general stores, a post office, three taverns, a hotel, and a brick Baptist church in the cemetery. West Jefferson was flourishing with a grist mill and the pork packing industry. It had five hotels at its peak, with passenger and goods stagecoaches lining the streets. In this book, author Ashley Murray guides readers through the history of this unique Ohio community"--Back cover.

West Jefferson is located in the northwest corner of North Carolina, a land once known for its cherry orchards. In 1779, Col. Benjamin Cleveland, a hero of the Battle of Kings Mountain, received a grant for 320 acres in a mountain valley in return for his service during the Revolutionary War. In 1912, the Virginia-Carolina Railroad became interested in the areas timber, farming, and mining resources and began building a railroad into Ashe County, ending at Todd. When the railroad came, the area was already populated by farms and businesses, as it was only two miles from the county seat of Jefferson. The North Carolina General Assembly chartered the town of West Jefferson in 1915, with boundaries extending one mile in each direction from the Virginia-Carolina Railroad depot. The railroad brought commercial growth, and the First National Bank of West Jefferson was opened in 1915 as well. West Jefferson showcases the expansion of this small town with a popular rail line to a tourist destination and retail center in the North Carolina mountains.