History of the town:

Cairo is a small historic Oil Boom town in the rolling hills of central West Virginia.  The town was first settled in 18- by English and Scottish settlers.  The settlement, called McKinney Settlement, became thriving community with the arrival of the railroad in 1856.  Lawyers, physicians, merchants, Inn keepers, newspaper men and even a silversmith were early settlers in the growing community before or around the time of the Civil War.  After the railroad came, investors acquired large tracts of land and timbered the area, shipping their products away by the train load.  The remaining land was sold in smaller plot to farmers and homesteaders, often with the oil, gas and minerals reserved by the out-of-state investor. 

The emerging but sleepy town was thrown into a hustle and boom period when the first oil well was drilled nearby in 189-.  The last decade of the 1890’s and the first of the 1900’s were exciting times in Cairo.  All available timber went to build wooden oil derricks, wooden tanks and barrels for oil!  Workers came to build oil rigs and drill wells, merchants to sell to them and a host of others followed.  Soon entire families were forced to live in canvas tents all year round due to shortage of lumber.  These were Boom times indeed!  By 1920’s Cairo settling down to a quiet village and the 1940’s saw significant population decline as farmers sons and daughters left for the rubber and airplane factories of Ohio, the ship yards of Virginia and active service in the World War around the globe.  Few returned to Cairo. 

Today Cairo is a town of slightly more than 300 people. Her turn of the century homes and buildings sit quietly.  Yet one can almost hear the horse teams straining to haul iron machinery from the now vanished railroad station toward a distant oil field.  Saloon sounds no longer fill the night, nor gas lights brighten the streets but history seems closer, almost standing beside you, on the street and along the paths in Cairo!