Falmouth at the Licking Forks

Virginians who settled there named it for Falmouth in Stafford County, Virginia. Pendleton County was formed in 1798 from parts of Bracken and Campbell (organized 1799) and named for Virginia statesman Edmund Pendleton; Falmouth has been the county seat ever since.

The forks made the spot a natural river landing—Capt. Henry Bird's 1780 British–Indian expedition passed this way toward Ruddell's and Martin's Stations—and the town still sits where those two Licking branches meet, about thirty-nine miles south of Cincinnati.