USA Guide
The Capital Region
West Virginia
Generally poor and almost entirely rural, West Virginia is known for its timber and coal mining industries, which thrive thanks to the state's rich natural resources. Rightly called "the Mountain State," it boasts the longest whitewater rivers and most extensive wilderness in the eastern US; for these reasons, the state has become a popular destination for hikers and outdoors enthusiasts, as the moonshiners of old have been replaced by ski instructors and mountain-bike guides.
Freed from the British-imposed settlement boundary of the Appalachian Mountains, German and Scots-Irish pioneers started to cross into western Virginia in major numbers after the Revolution. They farmed small plots of land themselves, and thus had little in common with the slave-holding tidewater planters of eastern Virginia. When the Civil War broke out, the area voted to set up a rival Virginia government, loyal to the Union. Statehood was formalized by Congress in 1863, and then eight years later by the Supreme Court. Around 1900, when railroads first reached into the rugged interior, timber companies clear-cut great expanses of forests, setting up mill towns and dismantling them when they moved onto somewhere new. Later, coal-mining conglomerates perfected the "company town" approach, wherein workers were paid a little bit less each month than the amount they owed for their company-provided food and lodging, a policy which ultimately led to great resentment and the rise of one of America's most powerful unions, the United Mine Workers.
The state's most popular destination, the restored 1850s town of Harpers Ferry, is barely in West Virginia at all, standing just across the broad rivers that form its Maryland and Virginia borders. To the west, the Allegheny Mountains stretch for over 150 miles, their million-plus acres of hardwood forest rivaling New England's for brilliant autumnal colour. West Virginia's oldest town, Lewisburg, sits just off I-64 at the mountains' southern foot, while the capital, Charleston, lies in the comparatively flat Ohio River Valley of the west.
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