In 1674, frontiersman Gabriel Arthur visited a large Native American village, probably the first white person to reach the area.

In 1749, Celeron De Blainville and his party traveling on the Ohio River left lead plates claiming the area for France.

[3] In 1770, when the area was still part of the Colony of Virginia, George Washington, his friend Dr. James Craik, and Col. William Crawford surveyed what eventually became Jackson County, staying on their return from Fort Pitt along Sand Creek at an Iroquois village led by Keoshuta and later at his hunting camp (which later became Ravenswood).

[5] Hunter and Indian fighter Jesse Hughes (1750-1829) settled in Jackson County, but he and his wife were evicted in their old age for failing to properly secure the title for the farm on which they had lived for decades.

[7][8] Ripley, on Big Mill Creek about 12 miles from its confluence with the Ohio River and the location of a bridge on the West Columbia Pike as well as both a sawmill and a flour and grist mill (which also had a carding machine to make wool yarn), was laid out in 1832 and became the county seat; the courthouse was completed by October 1833, although it was not incorporated until 1852 (and re-incorporated in 1867).

During the American Civil War, the county was divided, but tilted toward the Union, and suffered from raids and bushwackers.

At the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, its joint delegate with upstream Roane County, lawyer Franklin P. Turner, twice voted for secession after rival meetings held by pro- and anti-secession forces in Jackson County on April 8, 1861.

Fellow delegates also elected him the Speaker of the Restored Government's General Assembly held at Wheeling in 1861 and 1862 (which prepared for West Virginia statehood).

Crow of Angerona (a silver boom town) would enlist as a Confederate and also reach the rank of colonel, but he survived the war.

[14] In July 1863, the Battle of Buffington Island near Ravenswood became the only naval action in West Virginia.

The 9th West Virginia supported the tinclad and ironclad naval vessels, and they and Union forces across the Ohio River captured 1700 Confederates and set the stage for the capture of CSA Major General John Hunt Morgan and ended his raids.

[15] When West Virginia became a state in 1863, its counties were divided into civil townships, with the intention of encouraging local government.

[17] In 1871, Gilmore Township was renamed "Ravenswood", and Mill Creek became "Ripley", after the county's two chief towns.

[18] Many former Virginians from the Clinch River Valley in southwest Virginia settled in the area by 1877, so the Bruen Lands Feud (also known as the Roane County Land Wars, which began with the death of a War of 1812 veteran circa 1845, leaving heirs in New York State, and was the subject of the 1864 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Harvey v. Tyler)[19] reached Jackson county and led to several murders.

[21] Timbering and oil and gas operations caused Jackson County's population to rise to 19,000 in 1900; it had the 6th largest area of cultivatable land of all West Virginia counties (divided mainly into small farms, hence by 1997 it also had the second largest number of farms in West Virginia).

[3] Kaiser Aluminum built a smelting and manufacturing complex beginning in 1954 that became a major employer in Jackson county.

The only Democrats to win the county since the Civil War have been Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, Woodrow Wilson in 1912, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.