Martinsburg was established by an act[7] of the Virginia General Assembly that was adopted in December 1778[8] during the American Revolutionary War.

Founder Major General Adam Stephen named the gateway town to the Shenandoah Valley along Tuscarora Creek in honor of Colonel Thomas Bryan Martin, a nephew of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.

[citation needed] Part was built in 1745 by Edward Beeson, Sr. Aspen Hall, and its wealthy residents had key roles in the agricultural, religious, transportation, and political history of the region.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops were constructed in 1849 and rebuilt after the American Civil War.

[citation needed] According to William Still, "The Father of the Underground Railroad" and its historian: Mr Robert Brown, alias Thomas Jones, escaped from slavery in Martinsburg on Christmas night in 1856.

After riding forty miles, he walked in cold wet clothes for two days, to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He received assistance there from the Underground Railroad and traveled by train to Philadelphia, and the office of William Still with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

[citation needed] In 1854, ten-year-old Isabelle Boyd, known as "Belle" and later a noted spy for the Confederacy, moved to Martinsburg with her family, where her father Benjamin operated a general merchandise store.

After the Civil War began, Benjamin joined the Second Virginia Infantry, which was part of the Stonewall Brigade.

His wife Mary was thus in charge of the Boyd home when Union forces under General Robert Patterson took Martinsburg.

When a group of Patterson's men tried to raise a Union flag over the Boyd home, Mary refused.

Often she was helped by Eliza Corsey, a Boyd family slave whom Belle had taught to read and write.

Residents of West Virginia were split in their allegiance during the war, with half of its soldiers serving in the Confederate army.

[12] After several unsuccessful attempts to quell the protests, Governor Henry M. Mathews called for federal troops.

In 1889, electricity began to be furnished to Martinsburg as part of a franchise granted to the United Edison Manufacturing Company of New York.

Due to restructuring beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1970s, many of the mills and factories operating in Martinsburg shut down and went out of business, dealing a major blow to the local economy.

[24] The city also has numerous federal government employers, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), U.S. Coast Guard C5ISC-Kearneysville, U.S. Coast Guard National Maritime Center, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the Martinsburg VA Medical Center.

The Martinsburg IRS Facility, one of the two Enterprise Computing Centers of the Internal Revenue Service (the other is in Memphis, Tennessee), processes most of the country's electronically filed tax documents from businesses, and about one-third of electronically filed tax returns.

The area is also home to the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard, based in Eastern WV Regional Airport.

Martinsburg had its own automobile company from 1912 to 1922, called Norwalk, which assembled the longest-made known cars to be built in the state of West Virginia.

Wilson would go on to set the yet-to-be-broken major league record for RBI in a season (191) with the Chicago Cubs[27] in 1930.

Martinsburg is home to W08EE-D Channel 8 (West Virginia Public Broadcasting) and WWPX 60 (ION), all part of the Hagerstown sub-market that is further grouped under the Nielsen-designated Washington, D.C.-Hagerstown, Md.

U.S. Route 11, the former primary regional north–south highway, now serves as a local service road to I-81, and travels through downtown Martinsburg.

WV 45 extends westward into rural areas of western Berkeley County, and continues eastward to Shepherdstown.

MARC, Maryland's commuter rail system, operates trains on weekdays on its Brunswick Line which terminates in Martinsburg.

Service is provided to Washington Union Station in Washington, D.C. Eastern Panhandle Transit Authority (EPTA) operates public bus transit routes in Martinsburg, surrounding Berkeley County, and neighboring Jefferson County, West Virginia.