The Glen Jean post office opened in 1892, the earliest record of the town by name. Three smaller post offices, Leb Long (1880), Collinsville (1896) and Leblong (1917), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 90134 years
Founding year: the first Glen Jean post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Glen Jean’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The area had been known as White Oaks, but when the town was founded in the early 1870s the community was named for Jean McKell, the wife of landowner Thomas G. McKell. The town was a center for the coal mining industry and a railroad junction, formerly boasting an opera house, hotels and a company store. Glen Jean was incorporated in 1898. Much of the town has disappeared since the end of the coal boom. The chief remaining structure is the Bank of Glen Jean, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Glen Jean is the headquarters of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, located across the street from the bank building, which now functions as a visitor contact center. Glen Jean is also home to the Boy Scouts of America's national high adventure base, The Summit Bechtel Reserve. Glen Jean held the 24th World Scout Jamboree in 2019.
Passages that mention Glen Jean, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of fayette county west virginia1926 · page 362Read the page →
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Robert Essex has long been practicing his profession at Glen Jean where he maintains a successful office. It was at Glen Jean where Judge Eary, then a young barrister, first settled for practice, but he shortly afterward came to Fayetteville, leaving Mr. Essex the only attorney there.
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History of fayette county west virginia1926 · page 448Read the page →
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Until 1854 the nearest post offices were at Raleigh and Fayetteville. Shortly after 1854 a post office was established at Glen Jean site and was named White Oak. The name was afterwards changed to Leblong. The nearest physician lived at Lewisburg. If the younger folk wanted a little social all they had to do was to hike over to Pittsburgh.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Glen Jean, 1880 to 1913
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From the Library of Congress (4), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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