[4] It originally developed as a junction point for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, serving numerous branches of a network that was vital to the regional coal industry.

[12] According to family tradition, Current traded a "gray horse" for 1,300 acres of land located where present-day Grafton developed.

[10] John Wolverton Blue (1803–1889) was in charge of the construction of Virginia's Northwestern Turnpike from Aurora to the Tygart Valley.

[14] According to a local historian, "Blue, upon awakening the next morning, heard the wife of Current sobbing bitterly" over the impending loss of her "cabin home...[and] vegetable and flower garden" because of the planned right-of-way for the road.

"Mr. Blue, a Virginian of the old school, was greatly moved...and...an offer of $300 for 900 acres...and their ruined home...was quickly accepted.

"[15] This neighborhood (now a suburb of Grafton) became known as Blueville and it — along with the nearby area called "Valley Bridge" (present day Fetterman, or Ward 1) — began to grow after the Turnpike was completed in 1834.

According to another local historian, "Haymond never mentioned his county as desiring the [rail]road; but being well acquainted with the geography of north-western Virginia, he quietly got the following clause attached to the bill: 'That the said railroad to be constructed through the territory of Virginia, shall reach or cross the Tygart's Valley River at or within three miles of the mouth of Three Fork Creek in the county of Taylor'".

Grafton, which is perched in unlikely fashion on a very steep hillside at the mentioned confluence, was the accidental beneficiary, also becoming the branch point for the side line north to Morgantown.

The population in 1853 was reported as comprising only eight families,[18] but within a year "Grafton Junction" had emerged as a booming railroad town with several more residences and stores.

As the railroad facilities were developed, local land was surveyed for the new town, which was chartered on March 15, 1856, in the Virginia General Assembly.

[20] Due to the importance of the B&O and Northwestern Virginia Railroads for the movement of troops and supplies, Grafton became an early strategic target during the Civil War (1861-1865) and both sides tried to control it.

[23] The previous evening (May 22, 1861), opposing factions skirmished in the Town of Fetterman (now a part of Grafton), resulting in the death of Thornsbury Bailey Brown, the first soldier killed in the Civil War.

With the Grafton Guards in Wheeling, Porterfield occupied Grafton on May 25, but left three days later for Philippi, when he realized his vastly outnumbered forces were facing a pincer movement from troops under the Wheeling militia's Col. Benjamin Franklin Kelley (soon to become a Brigadier General and who would station his Railroad Division at Grafton) as well as various Ohio and Indiana units sent by Union General George McClellan, a U.S. Army officer turned railroad man whom President Lincoln had placed in charge of the Department of the Ohio.

The Northwestern Virginia Railroad and its rail yard and machine shops at Grafton were also a probable objective of the Jones-Imboden Raid in April 1863.

Raiders did destroy the 3-span bridge across the Monongahela River at Fairmont due north of Grafton (the largest on the line) as well as several smaller bridges, but Grafton's rail yards, which were protected by Mulligan's Brigade, the First and Eighth Maryland, and Miner's Indiana battery, were not attacked.

[25] Following the Civil War, Grafton continued to grow and prosper, developing into a major retail and industrial center for North Central West Virginia.

A massive flood which swept through town in 1888 wrought many changes, including destruction of the historic (1834) covered bridge at Fetterman.

President Roosevelt visited the city on a stump tour, and remarked on such projects on October 1, 1936; he gained a landslide re-election the following month.

Grafton continued to prosper throughout much of the early 20th century, based on the railroad's importance in both the area and the national economy.

Restructuring of the railroads and heavy industry through the late 20th century resulted in the loss of more jobs and, ultimately, population.

[27] In the early 1980s, the railroad relocated hundreds of jobs to Jacksonville, Florida, as the Chessie System aimed to form CSX.

Also, at one newly established gauging station, Three Forks Creek near Grafton, the peak discharge, 12,000 cubic feet per second (340 m3/s), was estimated to exceed the 100-year recurrence interval.

This was opened in 1868 to provide a burial ground for Union soldiers who died in West Virginia's military hospitals and battlefields.

613 Civil War soldiers are buried as unknowns and their graves are identified with six-inch square marble markers.

Historically, each year a parade begins in downtown Grafton and winds to the cemetery, where town children place flowers at each grave marker.