Belmont

• Piedmont LakeBuilt 1937 · 2,310 acres

How Belmont began

Belmont village was laid out in 1808 by Joseph Wright as Wrightstown, then renamed Belmont in hopes of becoming the new county's seat, an honor that went to St. Clairsville instead. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad served the village until its tracks were dismantled in the 1980s. Dr. Lindley Schooley, born in Belmont in 1824, practiced medicine there from 1851 and later served as president of the First National Bank of Belmont into his eighties; his 1895 Queen Anne house and office on Main Street is the village's National Register landmark. Belmont was also the retirement home of Harley Warrick, the most prolific painter of Mail Pouch Tobacco barn advertisements in American history, who settled there in 1991 and kept painting smaller versions on birdhouses and mailboxes until his death in 2000.

Platted 1808, as Wrightstown, by Joseph Wright.

Where the name comes from

Originally platted as Wrightstown by founder Joseph Wright, the village was renamed Belmont in hopes of becoming the seat of the new Belmont County; St. Clairsville was chosen instead.

Before the town

No Native village, camp, or trail specific to Belmont village was found in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1808 — Joseph Wright lays out the village as Wrightstown.
2. 1824 — Lindley Schooley is born in Belmont.
3. 1851 — Schooley, having graduated from Starling Medical College in Columbus in the 1840s, returns to Belmont to establish his medical practice.
4. 1895 — Schooley's Queen Anne-style house and office is built on Main Street.
5. 1902 — Schooley, at age 78, becomes president of the First National Bank of Belmont, a position he holds until his 1908 death.
6. 1920 — The village's population peaks at 680.
7. 1980s — The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line through the village is dismantled.
8. 1982 — The Dr. Lindley Schooley House and Office is added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 1.
9. 1991 — Harley Warrick, having spent 55 years painting Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisements on barns across 13 states, retires and settles in Belmont.
10. 2000 — Warrick dies in November in Wheeling, West Virginia, of an aneurysm, having continued painting Mail Pouch designs on handmade birdhouses and mailboxes at his Belmont workshop until his death.

Stories

The man who painted 20,000 barns

Harley Warrick grew up on a dairy farm in Londonderry, Ohio, and trained under sign painter Maurice Zimmerman before spending 55 years traveling 13 Midwestern and Appalachian states, painting the black-and-yellow Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisement on barn after barn, working entirely by eye with no template, at a pace of roughly two barns a day. By the time he retired in 1991 and settled in Belmont, he had painted or retouched more than 20,000 signs, becoming the most prolific practitioner of a folk-art tradition that had once covered thousands of barns across rural America; his work appeared on Good Morning America and in Charles Kuralt's television travels, and pieces of it were exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution. Retirement did not stop him: in his Belmont workshop he kept painting the same familiar Mail Pouch design, scaled down onto birdhouses and mailboxes he built and sold locally, until his death in 2000. What had started as commercial advertising on the side of a barn had, by the end of his life, become recognized as a genuine piece of American folk art, and Warrick its best-known hand.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Belmont County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Belmont Public Water System79% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Morristown Public Water System21% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-06-03

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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