When Collis P. Huntington took control of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad it was but a few miles of track in Virginia. Intent on expanding its route, he traveled to the then-new state of West Virginia and picked a promising tract of land along the Ohio River to be the C&O’s western terminus. There he set about building a new town.
On February 27, 1871, the West Virginia Legislature officially chartered the City of Huntington and, on December 31 of that year, Peter Cline Buffington was elected as the first mayor of the rail tycoon’s new town. The mayor’s salary was fixed at $25 a year.
Buffington was a well-known and respected local name long before Collis P. Huntington arrived on the scene. The family was among the earliest settlers of what became the village of Guyandotte.
Born in 1814, Peter Cline Buffington was a surveyor, a member of a company that built a suspension bridge across the Guyandotte River, a quartermaster in the Cabell County unit of the Virginia Militia and a merchant. He represented Cabell County in the Virginia General Assembly, was one of the first trustees of Marshall College (now University) and the first president of the Bank of Huntington, organized with a capital of $25,000.
Buffington served as Huntington’s mayor for two years. He died the following year and was buried in Huntington’s Spring Hill Cemetery.
