Demographics

TRANSPORTATION

Wetzel County is an excellent location to transport goods and services across the country and the world. The area’s transportation needs are serviced with well-developed rail, barge and highway infrastructure.

Highways

Located 32 miles north of Wetzel County is Interstate 70, a major east-west route for the shipment of goods and services. Currently, over 50,000 vehicles travel daily through the interchange at Wheeling, WV. Interstate 70 connects with Interstate 79 which is 25 miles east of Wheeling. I-79 is a major north-south interstate.

Located 35 miles south of Wetzel County is Interstate 77, a major north-south shipping route. Interstates 70, 79 and 77 link the area to the entire interstate system and provide excellent access in all directions.

Locally, the area is serviced north and south by West Virginia State Route 2 in West Virginia and Ohio Route 7 in Ohio. These two routes offer excellent access to the Wheeling-Steubenville and Parkersburg-Marietta markets. To service the Morgantown-Clarksburg market, West Virginia State Routes 7 & 20 travel east from New Martinsville with Route 7 passing through Morgantown and Route 20 through Clarksburg.

Distance To Local Markets

Trucking

Wetzel County makes an excellent shipping point from which to serve a majority of the industrial, commercial, and consumer markets in the United States. This is a highly competitive trucking market with over 20 motor freight companies maintaining offices in the metropolitan area.

Rail

CSX Transportation provides rail service to Wetzel County. CSX Transportation also owns barge and truck transportation divisions whose services are available in the area. CSX serves local industry by shipping products and materials for all the major corporations through Wetzel County to their final destinations. Although facilities are available for barge transfer, there is no local container or piggyback services offered.

The Greater New Martinsville area is a very cost effective rail shipping point. CSX operates a rail yard in the Brooklyn section of New Martinsville and also owns a number of rail-served industrial sites in the region.

Barge

By virtue of its location on the Ohio River, the area has excellent water transportation north beyond Pittsburgh and downriver to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and all the other navigable tributaries which serve most of the central United States. The Ohio River accounts for over one-third of the maritime cargo moving inland in the United States each year, (approximately 275 million tons) and by comparison handles more cargo per year than the Panama Canal.

The Ohio River is open for navigation year round except in the rare occasion when the river has a major flood or freeze. In 1975, two new locks and dams were built in the area as part of a general comprehensive upgrading of the Ohio navigation system by the Army Corps of Engineers. The new dams provide deeper pools and longer uninterrupted stretches of water which reduce the number of locks to negotiate.

Fact Book (372 KB)