[6] Prior to being incorporated as a town, Delbarton was a coal camp built and owned by the Thacker company.

Thacker needed such camps; soon after, in 1909, acting for the company, Luther Kountze arranged the purchase of thousands of acres in the area from Jane Hatfield, a woman widowed by the murder of her husband, Ellison Hatfield in the famed Hatfield-McCoy Feud.

Jane required money for herself and her children and sold cheaply, unaware of the fantastic mineral wealth she was losing out on.

After this acquisition of land Delbarton, was created for the needed miners who were recruited and brought in to work the soon to be opened coal mines.

US Census Bureau estimates as of 2018 put the residents living below the poverty line percentages at 36.5% for Delbarton and 28.7% for Mingo County.

[8] Economists attribute the most significant cause of this high level of poverty to be the drastic decline in the number of jobs in the local coal mining industry.

[9] Some commercial buildings in town, no longer needed for their original purposes of retail or mining administration, are now used to cater to the growing tourist industry.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.01 square miles (5.21 km2), all land.