Thornton, West Virginia.
Typical home $181,317 (+5.1% in a year). Morgantown, WV metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$539 (+131%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,875 +5%
- $172,441$181,317 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $44,077 +32%
- $137,240$181,317 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Thornton$952
- West Virginia$927
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Thornton, WV rose 5.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Thornton, Preston County, West Virginia
The Census does not count Thornton on its own, so the figures here are Preston County's. Half the county's households earn more than $61,880 a year and half less; 14% of the county's people live below the poverty line. 82% of the county's homes are lived in by their owners and 18% are rented. Unemployment in Preston County was 3.9% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Preston County work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Thornton is a small town in Preston County, in the north-central hills of West Virginia. Winters are colder and snowier than in most of the country, and summers are warm. Rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year. Most homes are lived in by their owners, which is common across the county.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals, and social care, or in shops, building trades, and manufacturing. Jobs in the county grew slightly last year, and unemployment is lower than it was a year earlier. Working from home is less common here than going to a job outside the house.
Things to do. Tygart Lake State Park is a protected area a short drive away, and Blackwater Falls, a well-known waterfall, is a longer drive. The Cheat River, also a longer drive, is a river that many people visit in the warmer months.
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- 12,809households
- 43.3median age
- 18%of adults have a degree
- 14%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What people in Preston County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Preston County had 7,365 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 39° and lows near 21°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 61°. About 26 inches of snow and 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Tygart Dam weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Preston County
- Preston County SchoolsSchool district590FTE
- Bureau of Prisons/federal Prison SystemFederal government · Department of Justice329
- Preston Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital297FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters231
- Preston ContractorsSite prep mines230
- BlueRidge Fiber SolutionsSheet metal work manufacturing121
- Wvnh EMPNursing care facilities106
- Mountaineer ContractorsExcavating100
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 13 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,583 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
FEMA rates every natural hazard here relatively low or very low.
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Preston County, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Preston County and the Morgantown, WV metro.
Thornton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Thornton$181,317
- West Virginia$176,576
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Thornton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Thornton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.