[3] The county and town of Bath are considered excellent jumping-off points for exploring the Potomac and Cacapon Rivers just to the north and west, respectively.

Also, the county is a tourist destination hosting numerous local artists, mineral water spas, and a large amount of outdoor recreation that includes fishing, boating, wildlife, hunting, and mountain scenery.

The region is known for the famed Apple Butter Festival held annually in October.

Morgan County is also the home of an important silica mine, part of U.S.

He was born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, and moved to Winchester, Virginia as a youth.

The springs, and their rumored medicinal benefits, attracted numerous Native Americans as well as Europeans to the area.

As mentioned previously, George Washington visited present-day Berkeley Springs several times with his half-brother, Lawrence.

Lord Fairfax had built a summer home there and a "private bath" making the area a popular destination for Virginia's social elite.

As the town continued to grow, the Virginia General Assembly decided to formally recognize it.

Bath's population increased during and immediately after the American Revolutionary War as wounded soldiers and others came to the area believing that the warm springs had medicinal qualities.

Bath gained a reputation as a somewhat wild town where eating, drinking, dancing, and gambling on the daily horse races were the order of the day.

Bath later became known as Berkeley Springs, primarily because the town's post office took that name (combining Governor Norborne Berkeley's last name with the warm springs found there) to avoid confusion with another post office, located in southeastern Virginia, which was already called Bath.

Later that year, the counties were divided into civil townships, with the intention of encouraging local government.

This proved impractical in the heavily rural state, and in 1872 the townships were converted into magisterial districts.

[5] Morgan County was divided into six districts: Allen, Bath, Cacapon,[i] Rock Gap, Sleepy Creek, and Timber Ridge.

[7] On the same day of the riots one Hugh Ferguson, a Martinsburg African-American, was accused of criminally assaulting Mrs. Ernest Zimmerman at her home near Brosius, Morgan County (now known as Hancock, West Virginia).

An angry mob of several hundred men formed around the jail hoping to lynch Ferguson.

[15] As of the 2010 United States census, there were 17,541 people, 7,303 households, and 5,015 families living in the county.

The county is a massive outlier in West Virginia, a state that tilted Democratic for much of the 20th century before swinging hard to the GOP.