Martinsburg, city, seat of Berkeley County, northeastern West Virginia, in the Eastern Panhandle; incorporated as a city 1859. Situated in a region of dairy farms and fruit orchards, it is a commercial, manufacturing, and transportation center. Manufactures include glass and wood products, construction materials, clothing, processed food, and explosives. The city is also the location of several regional governmental facilities, such as the Internal Revenue Service Computing Center. Nearby is the Morgan Cabin of Torytown (built 1731-34, restored 1977), the home of West Virginia's first permanent non-Native American settler. Martinsburg, settled by the 1750s, was laid out in 1778 by Adam Stephen, an American Revolution military leader whose home here is now a museum. It is named for Thomas Bryan Martin, a nephew of Thomas Lord Fairfax, a proprietor of Virginia. Martinsburg enjoyed a boom during the construction (1837-43) of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and changed hands several times during the American Civil War. A violent strike by railroad employees took place here in 1877. Population 13,063 (1980); 14,073 (1990); 14,972 (2000).
