The previous county seat was in Perryville (now English) on present day West Virginia Route 83 along the Dry Fork.

Results of the election were contested, so to avoid violence county records were secretly moved from Perryville to Welch at night in two wagons by James F. Strother and Trigg Tabor.

[citation needed] On March 2, 1921, the Welch City Council met to discuss impeachment of then Mayor J. H. Whitt.

Later that same day, Mayor Whitt shot and killed McDowell County Deputy Sheriff William Johnson Tabor who was investigating the matter.

Mayor Whitt was arrested and charged with murder but won acquittal at his trial (allegedly based on perjured testimony).

[8] In the first half of the 20th century during the opening of railroads and coal mines throughout the region, Welch became a prosperous city: the hub of retail business for a county approaching 100,000 in population, and the location for three hospitals.

After the production boom of World War II, oil began to supplant coal in many areas of domestic fuel supply.

In 1960, however, McDowell County still ranked number one in the United States in total coal production.

When presidential candidate John F. Kennedy visited Welch by automobile caravan in 1960, he saw a city whose businesses were struggling due to a growing poverty rate throughout the county.

"[9] The first recipients of modern era food stamps were the Chloe and Alderson Muncy family of Paynesville, McDowell County.

On May 29, 1961, in the City of Welch, as a crowd of reporters witnessed the proceedings, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman delivered $95 of federal food stamps to Mr. and Mrs. Muncy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, McDowell County coal continued to be a major source of fuel for the steel and electric power generation industries.

In 2006, the city received national attention when it, along with Police Chief Robert K. Bowman were the defendants in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU[10] after Bowman allegedly prevented rescuers from providing CPR to a gay man suffering cardiac arrest.

Welch has been the celebrated location of an annual Veterans Day Parade that, over the decades, has attracted a distinguished list of speakers, including Presidents Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson.

It was constructed using private donations and after 1918 was maintained by the Young Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church.

The playground sat across the street from the McDowell County Courthouse until 1930 when it became the site for the United States Post Office.

[13] Welch also built the first municipally owned parking building in the United States, which was opened September 1, 1941.

[15] Periodic flooding of the Elkhorn and Tug Fork rivers has plagued the future prosperity of the city.