[5] The Adena and Hopewell peoples dwelt in what is now northern West Virginia 1,500–2,000+ years ago.

By the time of the early European traders and settlers, the native population is thought to have been nil, decimated by the Beaver Wars.

[citation needed] Monongah was known as Briar Town and was part of the Grant Magisterial District in 1886.

[6][7] It was later known as Camdensburg, named after Johnson N. Camden, United States Senator from West Virginia (1881–1887).

[9][10] Monongah suffered the loss of all 358 miners underground and an engineer on the surface when Fairmont Coal Company Mines No 6 and No 8 exploded at 10:30 am on December 6, 1907.

Morris, William Gaskins, and John Boydoh served on the Monongah Relief Committee, formed soon after to help manage the aid effort.

[11] Memorials were erected in the center of town to recognize the centennial of the mining disaster on December 7, 2007.

One memorial, titled Monongah Heroine, consists of a statue of a mother holding a baby with a young child beside her.

[citation needed] Feeling betrayed by the coal company for lack of compensation after her husband's death she vowed to make the 1.3 mile trek from her home to the mine to steal a satchel of coal every day until she died.

A second memorial, consisting of an engraved metal bell and plaque, was placed by the Italians to recognize the many victims from Molise in southern Italy.

[citation needed] Father Everett Francis Briggs, a Roman Catholic missionary of the Maryknoll order, oversaw the memorial project and died just a few days after its completion.

40) resolved "to name the bridge which traverses the West Fork River in Marion County, located .12 miles west of county route 27/2, the Father Everett Francis Briggs Bridge", in honor of Briggs' dedication to the forgotten victims of the 1907 tragedy and the mine widows.

Not only does the West Fork (of the Monongahela River) run through the middle of Monongah but Booths Creek (named for Continental Army James Booth, who was killed by Native Americans in 1778) joins the West Fork in Monongah.

The Saints Peter and Paul School was a K-8 parochial school operated in Monongah by the Sisters Auxiliaries of the Apostolate Society, a Roman Catholic society of apostolic life founded in Wheeling, West Virginia on December 15, 1937, and terminated August 26, 2013.