[3][5] It is the principal city of the Fairmont micropolitan area, which includes all of Marion County in North Central West Virginia and had a population of 56,205 in 2020.

In the eighteenth century, the earliest development of Fairmont consisted of subsistence farming settlements.

[6] In 1789, Boaz Fleming, a Revolutionary War veteran, migrated to western Virginia and purchased a 254-acre farm from Jonathan Bozarth.

In 1808, Fleming made his annual trek to Clarksburg to pay his brother's Harrison County taxes.

Mrs. Madison supposedly suggested that he create his own county to save him all that travel.

As a result, Fleming's petition failed to gain sufficient support to be presented to the Virginia General Assembly.

Fleming then focused on creating a new town near his farm, which was located on the west side of the Monongahela River.

[11] In 1863, during the American Civil War, Confederate General William E. Jones and his men raided Fairmont and cut the Union's supply lines to take food and horses.

By 1852—little more than 30 years after the city's founding—a large portion of Fairmont was reported to be run-down and dilapidated.

On April 2, 1876, a fire destroyed a large portion of the city's business district, as well as many houses in the area.

The continuing dilapidation of the city's buildings may have contributed to the fire; the large number of coal mines under Fairmont may have also played a role.

As a result, over the following years, the federal government along with other institutions spent money to fix the subsidence issue to prevent damage to the town.

Buffalo Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela River, flows through the northern part of the city.

[14] Fairmont has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa) with very warm summers and freezing winters.

However, it is not uncommon during winter for warm air from the Gulf of Mexico to raise temperatures above 50 °F or 10 °C, which occurs on average six times each January and over eight in December and February.

In contrast, when very cold air from Canada moves into West Virginia temperatures can go below 0 °F or −17.8 °C, which can be expected during 3.2 mornings each winter, but which occurred on twelve mornings during the extremely cold January 1977, whose average temperature of 16.0 °F or −8.9 °C was the coldest month on record by 4.0 °F or 2.2 °C.

[citation needed] Fairmont is home to Country Club Bakery, which is where the pepperoni roll snack originates.

The NASA Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, governed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, houses more than 150 full-time employees and more than 20 in-house partners and contractors.

[25] The NOAA Robert H. Mollohan Research Facility, which receives weather data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, houses more than 100 full-time employees.

The current iteration of the school, which is located on Loop Park Dr, was designed by the architect William B. Ittner.

[30] Fairmont is located in the North-Central region of the state, along West Virginia's I-79 High Tech Corridor.