Leading industries and chief agricultural products in Boone County include coal, lumber, natural gas, tobacco, and strawberries.

[3] In 1863, West Virginia's counties were divided into civil townships, with the intention of encouraging local government.

This proved impractical in the heavily rural state, and in 1872 the townships were converted into magisterial districts.

[4] Boone County was divided into five districts: Crook, Peytona, Scott, Sherman, and Washington.

[5] On February 1, 2006, two fatal mining accidents occurred in the communities of Uneeda and Wharton in Boone County.

Boone County lies in the central southwestern part of West Virginia.

[6] The terrain slopes to the north and west, with its highest point at its south corner, at 3,212 ft (979 m) ASL.

With the exception of the 1972 Nixon landslide, Boone County voted Democratic in every presidential election from 1924 until 2012.

In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won over sixty percent of the vote in the process of becoming the first presidential candidate to sweep every county in the state.

Also in 2012, in the state's Democratic primaries, Boone County was one of the West Virginia counties that voted for eccentric perennial candidate Keith Russell Judd, who at the time was still in prison on felony charges, over incumbent president Barack Obama.