Best Hometowns 2025: Barnesville

Within one picture frame, smiling festival organizers in orange sport coats stand in a neat row as the 434-pound King Pumpkin peeks up from behind them. The buildings of Main Street hug the corners of the photograph, and the year, 1984, is scrawled in permanent marker at the top of a sky that has faded to white from whatever blue was once present in it.

The wood-paneled walls are lined with memories that march through the decades. Fashion and hairstyles evolve from one photograph to the next, but the long tradition each celebrates remains the same. If you know just one thing about Barnesville, it’s probably that the Belmont County village hosts a pumpkin festival each September that doubles as a homecoming for those who grew up here.  

The Barnesville Pumpkin Festival headquarters downtown stands as a humble tribute to the countless hours volunteers have spent over the decades keeping that tradition alive. Standing out among the framed photos, the front page of the Barnesville Enterprise from 1964 trumpets, “More Than 3,000 Persons Visit First Fall Fair.”

Barnesville’s notable architecture includes the First Presbyterian Church and the Bradfield Building (right), acknowledged as Ohio’s best example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. (photo by Rachael Jirousek

These days, although the village has around 3,900 residents, it’s not uncommon for 100,000 people to attend the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival during its four-day run. The annual pumpkin weigh-off held the Wednesday before the festival starts is even livestreamed for the benefit of those who can’t experience it in person. 

Covering just under 2 square miles, Barnesville may be small, but it holds a large role in Belmont County history. The village’s prominence can be seen in its Main Street architecture, most notably the Bradfield Building that sits at the corner of East Main and North Chestnut streets and is regarded as the best example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in Ohio. Local historian Bruce Yarnall likes to point out faces and other details carved into the building’s ornate stone exterior when he gives tours to school groups and other visitors. 

A former general manager for the now-defunct Barnesville Enterprise, Yarnall worked in historic preservation in Washington, D.C. for 25 years before returning home in 2024. (He also launched the online Barnesville Area News Co. nonprofit in 2024.)

Quakers built the Stillwater Meeting House in 1878 to house the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Conservative Friends. (photo by Rachael Jirousek

“I don’t come at it as an architect. I come at it from a sense of history,” says Yarnall, who grew up in nearby Somerton but began studying the village’s history at age 13. “It’s important to me to experience these buildings because these are the buildings my parents, my grandparents and my great grandparents and others walked through.
... There’s that connection — that timeline — back to previous generations.” 

Barnesville’s downtown was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, with architectural finds there including the Bradfield Building and the pagoda-like First Presbyterian Church. Cheffy Drugs on Main Street has served customers for a century, while other businesses like the Barnesville Antique Mall and Beeology Coffee & Bakery are frequented by residents and travelers alike. 

But over the past 40 years, Barnesville has also faced the realities that many small towns have, particularly in Appalachia. The village has vacancies downtown and even had to demolish a few of its buildings. (Replacements that fit the look and style of downtown are on the way.) Several years ago, Mayor Jake Hershberger, who owns the local Joe’s Tire, as well as other businesses in the region and beyond, began looking into what the long-term plan and vision was for Barnesville only to find there was not one on paper. Having lived in the community since 2003, he ran for mayor and was elected to office in November 2023. 

Dickinson Cattle Co. raises Texas longhorns in the Barnesville countryside, and visitors can take a tour of the operation. (photo by Rachael Jirousek)

“I want to see where I can have a positive impact on the community for a sustainable future,” Hershberger says. “Some may say its selfish, but it comes out of a heart of serving. I don’t deny the fact that I have businesses and property in town. If Barnesville does better, they do better.” 

Barnesville’s long history reaches back to the state of Ohio’s earliest days. In the early 1800s, James Barnes came to Ohio from Maryland and secured the wooded land where Barnesville is today. Like William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers during the colonial era, Barnes hoped to do the same in Barnesville, platting and dedicating the village’s first 128 lots on Nov. 9, 1808. That Quaker influence can still be seen in Barnesville in the form of the Stillwater Meeting House, which was built in 1878 to house the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Conservative Friends, as well as the adjacent Olney Friends School, an independent day and boarding school. 

The village’s history is kept at the Watt Center for History and the Arts, a museum in the former office of the company that patented the first self-oiling mine car wheel. Then there’s the Belmont County Victorian Mansion Museum, which was built for John and Sarah Bradfield in the late 19th century. Restoration work on the former B&O Depot, located near downtown, continues as well, with the goal of making the historic structure a community gathering spot. 

The Avenues of Barnesville (above) and the Barnesville Antique Mall are two popular downtown spots. (photo by Rachael Jirousek)

Much of what made Barnesville what it is today came from beneath the ground. Belmont County is the state’s all-time leader in coal production, with nearly 825 million tons produced between 1816 and 2022, according to Belmont County’s Ohio State University Extension. Today, natural gas production has replaced coal in Belmont County, and many areas that were stripped during the region’s coal-mining days have been returned to a natural state. The Dickinson Cattle Co. raises over 1,000 Texas longhorns in the Barnesville countryside. 

WVU Medicine’s Barnesville Hospital (190 employees) and the Barnesville Exempted School District (150 employees) are two of the village’s largest employers, and the school district serves 1,311students across its three buildings: an elementary school, middle school and high school. Riesbeck’s grocery store and Ohio Hill Health Center are other large employers in the region. 

Jill Hissom, director of the Barnesville Chamber of Commerce, grew up in town, moved away during adulthood and returned after starting a family. When she took over the chamber’s top job in 2017, it had just 100 members. That number is at 289 today. 

The Barnesville Historic District spans 40 acres in and around downtown was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Today local leaders are working to preserve that heritage. (photo by Rachael Jirousek)

“People see me, and they will say, ‘eat, shop, support local,’ because I brought that slogan, promoting it more and more and more,” Hissom says. “Even if you don’t go into the new nail place, like and share their [Facebook] page, help them get the word out to other people to come and support them.”  

Hershberger says one of Barnesville’s largest obstacles at present is a lack of destination businesses downtown to bring in new visitors and create the kind of foot traffic that makes quiet small towns vibrant ones. He sees the village and the people who call it home as ready to make that happen. 

“It’s the willingness to work together and have success and have those traditions live long,” Hershberger says when asked what he thinks sets the town apart, pointing to the longevity of the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival as one such example. “The goal is to get a group of community-oriented individuals to lead the charge.”