Ohio Valley Bus Company (1937-1971)

Beginning in the late 1800s, the town of Huntington and surrounding areas relied on streetcars. The Ohio Valley Railway Company was established in 1913 with ten all-steel streetcars produced by the St. Louis Car Company. By the 1920s, the company had a fleet of streetcars that operated on 34 miles of track throughout the city of Huntington and into the neighboring cities across the river in Kentucky. For fifteen cents a commuter could take a 16-mile ride, thereby making possible the sprawling growth of the Tri-State area in an era when automobile ownership was rare.  

Fred W. Samworth moved from Delaware to Huntington in the 1920s and believed that buses would the future of transportation for the city of Huntington. As president and general manager of the Ohio Valley Electric Railway Company in 1933, he began replacing the streetcars with buses which increased speed of transport. To this day, some of the former streetcar tracks are still visible on the roads of Huntington, especially under the viaducts. On November 7, 1937, Huntington became the first city in West Virginia that offered transportation solely by bus. 

In 1937 the Ohio Valley Electric Railway Company changed there name to the Ohio Valley Bus Company to reflect the change. The company's garage and headquarters was located at the corner of 18th Street West and Washington Avenue in Huntington, WV. Fred Samworth passed away in 1939, and his son, Leonard H. Samworth, became the treasurer for the company. Just five years later, he became the president and general manager of Ohio Valley Bus Company. Leonard Samworth would eventually be known as “Mr. Bus” in the city of Huntington for decades to come. By 1950, the company operated a fleet of 80 buses and over a dozen routes throughout the city of Huntington, parts of Kentucky, and Ohio. The company employed 145 drivers and ninety other workers from dispatchers to mechanics. By 1953, the company had served more than 13.8 million passengers and traveled more than three million miles. 

In the early 1950s, the company began to face financial problems that would eventually lead to the closing of the company. President Samworth stated in an interview with the newspaper in 1954 that the steady increase in automobile sales led to a decrease in the company’s customers. He also declared that the company had lost over 50% of its riders in just a five year span. By the late 1960s, the company was losing money and many of its employees were faced with wages that did not keep pace with other industries. On October 1, 1971, the union contract expired for drivers and mechanics and they went on strike, demanding better wages and benefits before they agreed to renew their contracts. The strike lasted for nine months and ended in 1972 when a new public agency replaced the privately-owned bus service. 

The new public agency is known today as the Tri-State Transit Authority or the TTA. The agency was created in April of 1972 and began offering service on July 17, 1972. The TTA began by using the Ohio Valley Bus Company fleet and hired Samworth as interim general manager to help the company get started until he later resigned in 1973. With federal support, TTA returned bus service to the city of Huntington and operates a new garage and headquarters building in West Huntington not far from the former Ohio Bus Company headquarters.

Casto, James E. “Marathon Bus Strike of '71, '72 Wrote an End to Private Service.” Herald Dispatch, November 27, 2011. https://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/marathon-bus-strike-of-wrote-an-end-to-private-service/article_d64b352d-7e28-5d22-a7e6-6c98326f3953.html.

Casto, James E. “Lost Huntington: Ohio Valley Bus Co.” Herald Dispatch, October 11, 2016. https://www.herald-dispatch.com/special/lost_huntington/lost-huntington-ohio-valley-bus-co/article_166c5977-5da1-5586-a08a-3b8cf08a0051.html.

Casto, James E. "TTA Celebrating 45 Years of Service." The Herald-Dispatch. Last modified August 17, 2017. https://www.herald-dispatch.com/tta-celebrating-45-years-of-service/article_12914b72-ccbf-5219-98c3-3e7a7f1d9e42.html.

Huntington. Huntington, WV: Huntington Chamber of Commerce, 1916.