On September 14, 2024 a group of local citizens organized by Maria Gloyd hosted the inaugural Pawpaw Festival in the Town Park.

Hundreds of people attended the festival to hear lectures on how to grow and cultivate Pawpaw fruit, and listen to Appalachian music performed by the Paw Paw Community Choir, Ben Townsend, the Critton Hollow String Band, and Mary Hott with the Carpenter Ants.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.53 square miles (1.37 km2), all of it land.

As European settlements gradually spread across western Virginia, the tribes were pushed from their villages and fields, which were then claimed and cultivated by the new settlers.

[10] In 1681, England’s King Charles II made the first land grants in what is now the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

In 1746, Thomas Jefferson’s father Peter was part of the survey party that reached the source of the Potomac River and set down the landmark known as the Fairfax Stone, now part of the Fairfax Stone Historical Monument State Park.

Washington described the land as being “In the shape of a horseshoe, the river running almost around it—two hundred acres of rich low grounds with a great abundance of walnut trees.”[12] By 1749, the Potomac River near present-day Paw Paw was being navigated by fur traders of the Ohio Company, while settlers were establishing farms on the surrounding land.

[15] In 1893, two years after incorporation, the town constructed its Mayor's Office and Jail.

The building was used as mayor's office, town council chambers and for civil and social functions until 1977.

[19] In addition to these four buildings the WV State Historic Preservation Office has determined three additional buildings are also currently eligible based on their historic significance these are: the circa 1882 B&O Train Depot; the 1940 Consolidated Orchard Apple Packing Plant; and the 1942 Consolidated Distributors Headquarters - currently the Paw Paw Town Hall.

[20] The C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad both played important roles in the town's growth and prosperity.

[8] The Potomac River was dangerous and difficult to navigate, and the charter to build a canal to create a trade route with western settlements in Ohio and beyond was granted on May 17, 1785, to the Potowmack Company whose investors included George Washington.

[21] Three decades later, more than $729,000 had been spent on the project, but navigation on the river was still limited to only 45 days a year.

[8] Plagued by accidents, disease, worker riots, and financial woes, the tunnel finally opened in 1850.

Six million bricks were used in its construction which required cutting through 3,118 feet through stratified shale with hand tools and black powder charges.

[23] A strike in 1922, a flood in 1924, and the decline in demand for coal, which was a major source of freight revenue for the canal, after World War I led to its closure in 1925.

WV 9 heads eastward to Berkeley Springs, the county seat, where it connects with U.S. Route 522.