West Virginia

Paleo-Indian hunters were in what is now West Virginia by 10,500 BC, pursuing large game such as mastodon and mammoth; 81 fluted points have been recorded in the state. They were followed by the Archaic (c. 8000–1000 BC) and Woodland cultures, the latter bringing pottery and burial mounds, with the state’s earliest pottery dating to about 500–400 BC. Adena people built hundreds of mounds along the OhioOhioOhio is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital is Columbus. It joined the Union in 1803 as the 17th state, the first carved from the Northwest Territory, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 11,799,448.Open the full entry and Kanawha rivers, most between 400 and 200 BC, the largest being the Grave Creek Mound at Moundsville. From about AD 1200 to 1550, Fort Ancient villages stood along river valleys in the southern half of the state.⁠[1][2]

The historic tribes most associated with western Virginia were the Shawnee, DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and Cherokee, along with Iroquoian-speaking groups such as the Seneca and Mingo; at various times the region lay within the spheres of the Iroquois Confederation to the north, the Shawnee to the west and the Cherokee to the south. Native villages along the Ohio, Kanawha and Monongahela rivers had been abandoned before European settlement, probably because of tribal conflict and European diseases that spread ahead of settlers. The state has no federally recognized tribes or tribal lands; in the 2020 census 3,706 people identified as American Indian or Alaska Native (0.2%).⁠[2]

In 1606 James I granted the Virginia Company of London a vast territory that included present-day West Virginia. Between 1669 and 1673 explorers including John Lederer, Batte and Hallom (on the New River) and Needham and Arthur pushed into the region. In 1719 Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, acquired one of the largest land grants in American history, and a 1730 Virginia land law offering 1,000 acres for each family recruited drew German and Scotch-Irish settlers. Morgan Morgan is commonly credited with the first settlement, about 1731, near Bunker Hill in present Berkeley County.⁠[3]

In 1749 Celoron de Blainville buried lead plates claiming the Ohio Valley for France. In 1753 a 21-year-old George Washington carried Governor Dinwiddie’s message to the French; in 1755 General Edward Braddock’s forces were defeated at the Battle of the Monongahela; and in 1758 General John Forbes captured the Forks of the Ohio and built Fort Pitt. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War and France lost the Ohio Valley, while the Proclamation of 1763 forbade settlement west of the Allegheny crests.⁠[3]

Pioneers arrived from 1769 onward. In Dunmore’s War, Andrew Lewis defeated Shawnee forces under Cornstalk at Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774, after which the Treaty of Camp Charlotte was concluded.⁠[3]

Native warriors attacked Fort Henry at Wheeling in 1777, and raids continued after the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781; in 1782 about 200 Native warriors besieged Fort Henry in the last major Revolutionary-era engagement in the region. Proposals for a Vandalia colony and a Westsylvania state were both rejected, and the region remained part of Virginia.⁠[3]

In 1742 Thomas Mayberry built the region’s first iron furnace at Bloomery near Harpers Ferry. By 1815, 52 salt furnaces operated along the Kanawha River; the Kanawha Salt Company was formed in 1817, and salt production peaked in 1846 at 3,224,786 bushels. The federal National Road was completed from Cumberland, MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, to Wheeling in 1818, and in 1853 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached Wheeling from Harpers Ferry.⁠[3]

Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, became the site of a U.S. Armory and Arsenal in 1799. The abolitionist John Brown attacked the armory on October 16, 1859; he was tried at Charles Town and hanged on December 2, 1859.⁠[4]

In April 1861 Virginia’s convention voted 88 to 55 to secede; of the 47 delegates from present-day West Virginia, 32 opposed secession, 11 supported it and four did not vote. In May 1861 the First Wheeling Convention met with delegates from 37 counties.⁠[3]

The Second Wheeling Convention opened on June 11, 1861, in the third-floor federal courtroom of the Wheeling Custom House. It declared the Confederate government in Richmond illegal, created the Unionist Reorganized Government of Virginia and on June 20 elected Francis H. Pierpont governor; the Reorganized Government took effect on July 1, 1861, with its headquarters in Wheeling. The Custom House, opened in April 1859, is now West Virginia Independence Hall and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988.⁠[5][6]

Estimates of the number of West Virginians who fought range from 25,000 to 45,000, with later estimates placing about 60 percent on the Union side and 40 percent on the Confederate side; Boyd B. Stutler counted 632 military actions in the state. The Battle of Philippi on June 3, 1861, is sometimes called the first land battle of the war, and the Battle of Droop Mountain on November 6, 1863, gave Union forces control of most of the state. Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times, and in September 1862 Stonewall Jackson accepted the surrender of more than 12,500 Union troops there.⁠[3][4]

On October 24, 1861, voters in 41 counties approved the creation of a new state, with turnout under 37 percent. A constitutional convention met in Wheeling from November 26, 1861, to February 18, 1862, and voters ratified the constitution in April 1862.⁠[3][7]

The U.S. Senate and House passed the statehood bill on July 14 and December 10, 1862, and President Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry signed it on December 31, 1862. In February 1863 the convention accepted the Willey Amendment providing for gradual emancipation, as Congress required; the amended constitution was approved 28,321 to 572 in a referendum on March 26, 1863, and Lincoln issued his statehood proclamation on April 20, 1863.⁠[8][3][7][9]

Arthur I. Boreman, elected without opposition on May 28, 1863, as the first governor, delivered his inaugural address in Wheeling on June 20. The Linsly Institute building in Wheeling served as the first state capitol from June 20, 1863, to April 1, 1870. In 1927 the legislature made June 20, West Virginia Day, a legal holiday.⁠[10][11][12]

Boreman’s government secured the Voters’ Test Oaths in February 1865 and a voters’ registration law in 1866, disfranchising an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people; in 1871 voters approved the Flick Amendment by more than three to one, ending restrictions on former Confederates.⁠[3][10]

On February 7, 1867, the legislature established the Agricultural College of West Virginia in Morgantown as a land-grant institution under the Morrill Act of 1862; it was renamed West Virginia University in 1868. In 1867 Marshall College was designated the state normal school, and on October 2 of that year Freewill Baptist missionaries opened Storer College at Harpers Ferry, intended chiefly to educate former slaves and open to all races and both sexes.⁠[13][3][4]

Charleston became the state capital on March 28, 1870. The capital returned to Wheeling in 1875, and the city presented the state with a new capitol building on December 4, 1876. In 1877 the legislature put the location of the capital to a popular vote, which Charleston won over Clarksburg and Martinsburg; Charleston became the permanent capital in 1885.⁠[14][11][3]

A constitutional convention met in Charleston in January 1872 and drafted a new constitution to replace that of 1863. It abolished townships, extended the governor’s term to four years and set two-year terms for members of the House of Delegates; amendments require a two-thirds vote of the legislature and approval by voters.⁠[7][3][15]

The great railroad strike of 1877 began at Martinsburg. In the late nineteenth century railroads such as the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Norfolk & Western were built, capital investment in manufacturing quadrupled between 1870 and 1900, and Wheeling was the state’s leading industrial city throughout the nineteenth century. West Virginia ranked first in oil production in 1898 and first in natural gas in 1906, and by the 1913 semicentennial of statehood annual coal output exceeded 28 million tons. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and African Americans from the South diversified the population.⁠[3]

The United Mine Workers of America was formed in Columbus in 1890, and in 1902 the UMWA, with Mother Jones, organized about 7,000 miners in the Kanawha Valley. Violence on Paint and Cabin creeks in 1912–1913 led Governor Glasscock to impose martial law. The UMWA’s organizing drive in Logan and Mingo counties in 1919–1921 saw the Matewan Massacre, the Sharples Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain; by 1924 the union had lost half its members.⁠[3]

After the earlier capitol burned, the legislature adopted a resolution on January 21, 1921, creating a commission for a new building, and architect Cass Gilbert was selected in July 1921. The west wing was begun on January 7, 1924, and completed in March 1925; the east wing was built from July 1926 to December 1927; and the main building and connecting wings were begun in March 1930 and completed in February 1932. The Italian Renaissance-style capitol, whose dome is 292 feet high and 75 feet in diameter, cost $9,491,180.03 and was dedicated on West Virginia Day, June 20, 1932.⁠[16][14]

In 1944 the lower town of Harpers Ferry became a unit of the National Park Service, and by the 1960s Harpers Ferry National Historical Park had begun restoring its historic buildings.⁠[4]

The state’s population was 2,005,552 in 1950 and fell to 1,860,421 in 1960, with further losses in the 1960s and 1980s. After 1950 mechanization sharply reduced mining employment and union influence. About four-fifths of the budget of the Appalachian Regional Commission, created in 1965, went to highways; the Modern Budget Amendment of 1968 made the governor responsible for the state budget, and the Governor’s Succession Amendment of 1970 allowed two consecutive terms.⁠[3]

Major mine disasters in the state include Monongah (1907), Eccles (1914), Benwood (1924), Farmington (1968) and Buffalo Creek (1972); the Buffalo Creek disaster killed 125 people and destroyed 17 communities. Black lung was recognized as an occupational disease in 1969, and the state established a Black Lung Fund in 1970.⁠[3]

Justices of the Supreme Court of Appeals are now elected on a nonpartisan basis, with the first nonpartisan election held in May 2016. In 2022 the state added an Intermediate Court of Appeals; before then West Virginia was one of only nine states with a single appellate court. One hundred single-member House of Delegates districts created by a 2018 law were first used in the November 2022 election.⁠[17][15]

West Virginia’s population fell by 3.2 percent between 2010 and 2020. In the apportionment based on the 2020 census the state lost one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, leaving it with two seats averaging 897,523 people each, and it has four electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[3][18][19][20]

Census Bureau estimates released in January 2026 showed West Virginia as one of five states whose population declined between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025.⁠[21]

The Census Bureau estimated West Virginia’s population at 1,766,147 on July 1, 2025, 1.5% below the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 1,793,759.⁠[22]

As of November 2026 the governor is Patrick Morrisey, who took office on January 13, 2025, as West Virginia’s 37th governor; he previously served as the state’s 34th attorney general from 2013 to 2025. The governor is elected by the people to a four-year term.⁠[23][7]

The legislature consists of the Senate and the House of Delegates and holds a 60-day regular session near the beginning of each year. The Senate has 34 members from 17 districts serving staggered four-year terms, so that one member from each district is elected every two years; the House of Delegates has 100 members.⁠[7][24][15]

The state’s highest court and court of last resort is the Supreme Court of Appeals, made up of five justices serving 12-year terms; the governor fills vacancies until the next election. The court sits in the east wing of the State Capitol in Charleston, having rotated its sessions among Charleston, Wheeling and Charles Town from 1873 until 1912.⁠[17]

Census Bureau measurements based on state boundaries as of January 1, 2010, give West Virginia a total area of 24,230 square miles (62,756 km²), including 24,038 square miles (62,259 km²) of land and 192 square miles (497 km²) of water, all of it inland water.⁠[25]

The state’s mountains and valleys derive from the Appalachian Orogeny of roughly 245 million years ago and subsequent erosion; Ice Age glaciers never reached West Virginia but shaped its drainage, including the New, Ohio and Teays rivers. The lowest point in the state, at 247 feet, is Harpers Ferry.⁠[3][4]

Charleston lies on the Kanawha River at the mouth of the Elk River and had 48,864 residents in 2020, down from a peak of 85,796 in 1960. Wheeling, the first capital of both the Reorganized Government and the new state, had 27,062 residents in 2020, making it the state’s fifth-largest city; its population peaked at 61,659 in 1930.⁠[14][26]

Preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on March 28, 2025, put West Virginia’s 2024 nominal GDP at $107,660 million (about $107.7 billion), with real growth of 3.5% over 2023, ranking 11th among the states.⁠[27]

The 1863 constitution required a “thorough and efficient” system of free schools; in 1870 the state had 2,270 schools, most of them one-room, and a compulsory attendance law was enacted in 1903. West Virginia University is based in Morgantown, where its campus enrolled 23,643 students in fall 2025.⁠[3][13]

The state motto is the Latin “Montani Semper Liberi,” meaning “Mountaineers are Always Free.” The state seal was designed by Joseph H. Diss Debar, an artist from Doddridge County chosen by a legislative committee, and was adopted by the Legislature; it has remained unchanged since.⁠[28]

The Legislature first authorized a state flag on January 28, 1864, and adopted a design on February 24, 1905; the current flag was adopted by the Legislature on March 7, 1929, through Senate Joint Resolution No. 18. It has a white field bordered on all four sides by a strip of blue, with the obverse of the state seal in color at the center, a red ribbon above reading “State of West Virginia” and a wreath of rhododendron below, in the same proportions as the U.S. flag.⁠[29][28]

The state flower is the rhododendron, adopted on January 29, 1903, by House Joint Resolution 19; the state bird is the cardinal, named on March 7, 1949, by House Resolution 12; the state tree is the sugar maple, chosen by a vote of students and civic groups authorized by House Concurrent Resolution 12, adopted on March 7, 1949; and the state animal is the black bear, adopted by House Concurrent Resolution 6 in the 1973 Regular Session.⁠[28]

There are three state songs: “West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home,” designated on March 3, 1947, by Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 11; “The West Virginia Hills,” adopted on February 3, 1961, by Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 5; and “This is My West Virginia,” added by House Concurrent Resolution No. 19 on February 28, 1963, which designated all three as official state songs.⁠[28]

State of West Virginia: Official website: https://www.wv.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[30]

Office of the Governor: Official website: https://governor.wv.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[31]

West Virginia Legislature: Official website: https://www.wvlegislature.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]