[5][6][7][8][9][10] With an area of fifty-three and a half square miles, Hannan is the fourth-largest of Mason County's ten magisterial districts, behind Clendenin, Arbuckle, and Union.

Hardesty's Biographical Atlas of Mason County describes a variety of timber, building sandstone, and a vein of anthracite coal running through the district.

[12] The village is home to a chemical plant, originally built by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1959, and since 2018 known as APG Polytech, a subsidiary of Taiwanese textile manufacturer Far Eastern New Century.

[12][5][9] The only highway in Hannan District is West Virginia Route 2, which runs along the Ohio River between Huntington and Point Pleasant.

There are no river crossings in Hannan District, but until the twentieth century, there were ferries over the Ohio at Mercers Bottom and Glenwood.

[11] The area had once been home to various groups of Native Americans, including those now known as the Mound Builders from the remains of their earthen structures, but by the mid-eighteenth century it was largely uninhabited.

The village found at the western end of Hannan District, together with a Shawnee town near the mouth of the Great Kanawha, which still existed in colonial times, and was known to the colonists as "Oldtown", were two of the last Indian habitations on the eastern side of the Ohio.

[15] The first step in the colonization of Hannan District was a grant made to the heirs of Hugh Mercer, a Revolutionary General, who had been a friend and ally of George Washington.

Mercer fell at the Battle of Princeton in 1777, and in recognition of his service, Congress issued a grant of sixteen thousand acres along the fertile river bottom above the mouth of Eighteenmile Creek.

That year, Thomas Hannan purchased the land on which the cabin stood, and became the first European to settle permanently in the district.

Hannan himself did much to develop the area, operating a ferry across the Ohio River at the mouth of Guyan Creek, and supervising the construction of the first road connecting the Teays Valley in central West Virginia with the inland town of Chillicothe, in Ohio, a span of over one hundred miles, now traversed by U.S. Route 35.

Hannan's son, Jesse, is said to have been the first European child born in the district, while his daughter, Elizabeth, was the first bride married there.

[11] Among the early pioneers of Hannan District were brothers Robert and John Hereford, who settled on either side of the mouth of Sixteenmile Creek in 1807 and 1808.