The Mill Creek post office opened in 1899, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Crickard (1889), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 740 in 19102020 census: 560127 years
Founding year: the first Mill Creek post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
What stands out about Mill Creek’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Mill Creek. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1922Durbin sheet · 1:62,500
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Mill Creek.
The story so far
Mill Creek, in brief
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Mill Creek yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Mill Creek is a town in Randolph County, West Virginia, United States, along the Tygart Valley River. The population was 563 at the 2020 census. The town takes its name from nearby Mill Creek.
Its first post office opened in 1899. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 724 to 560 (-23%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Mill Creek in 1916
Passages that mention Mill Creek, cut from the printed page as they were published.
A history of Randolph County, West Virginia, from its earliest exploration and settlement to the present time1916 · page 334Read the page →
Read the text
settled in the Valley, occupying the land where the town of Beverly is now located. Believing that the county seat would be located farther up the Valley, he traded lands with the Westfalls, obtaining 600 acres where the town of Mill Creek is now located. He built a tub mill on the river, near the mouth of Mill Creek. This is supposed to have been the first water mill within the present limits of Randolph County.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
A history of Randolph County, West Virginia, from its earliest exploration and settlement to the present time1916 · page 254Read the page →
Read the text
Mill Creek has the distinction of being the second town in Randolph county. Tt has a population of 740 according to the census of 1910. The community had prosperous stores, churches, school house and a blacksmith shop at the junction of the Valley Pike and the Mountain road, many years before the extension of the railroad up the valley. However, the completion of the railroad gave the impetus to the growth of the present town of Mill Creek. For many years the com-
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
Mill Creek, 1889 to 1922
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 National Register of Historic Places (1), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), 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.
