Lincoln County is one of the five counties created after West Virginia became a state. It is a southwestern county, bounded by Cabell, Putnam, Wayne, Logan, Boone, and Kanawha counties.
Hamlin is the county seat of Lincoln County. The town was first settled by David Stephenson, who erected a cabin around 1802. The town was chartered by the Virginia General Assembly in 1853. Chuck Yeager, the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, was born in Myra, near Hamlin.
The Guyandotte River is formed by the junction of Winding Gulf and Stonecoal creeks in Raleigh County and flows in a northwesterly direction to its confluence with the Ohio River at Huntington.
The 72-mile-long Mud River empties into the Guyandotte River at Barboursville in Cabell County.
The first white settlers in Lincoln County were members of the McComas family. They settled on the Guyandotte near present West Hamlin in 1799.
Big Ugly Creek is a tributary of the Guyandotte River, running from its Boone County headwaters to its mouth near Harts. Apart from its uppermost reaches, Big Ugly Creek is located entirely within Lincoln County.