West Virginia is a mountainous, landlocked state in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania and Maryland to the northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with 1,778,373 residents. The capital and most populous city is Charleston, with 49,055 residents.
West Virginia is dominated by mountainous terrain, shaped by the Allegheny and Cumberland ranges and cut by the Ohio, Kanawha, and Potomac river valleys. This geography isolated the region from the rest of Virginia. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, some of its western counties refused to follow while others supported it; the resulting split led to West Virginia's admission into the Union on June 20, 1863, as a slave state and a key border state during the American Civil War. It was one of two states admitted during the war, along with Nevada, and the only state formed by separating from a Confederate state. Railroad expansion later opened the state's southern and northern coalfields to large-scale development, and by the early 20th century West Virginia had become one of the nation's leading coal producers.
West Virginia's northern panhandle sits between Pennsylvania and Ohio, forming a tri-state area; Wheeling, Weirton, and Morgantown lie just across the border from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Huntington, in the southwest, is close to Ohio and Kentucky, while Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, in the eastern panhandle between Maryland and Virginia, are considered part of the Washington metropolitan area. West Virginia is often included in several U.S. geographical regions, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Upland South, and the Southeastern United States. It is the only state entirely within the area served by the Appalachian Regional Commission, an area commonly defined as "Appalachia".
The state is noted for its mountains and rolling hills, its historically significant coal mining and logging industries, and its political and labor history. It is also known for its tourism and a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities, including skiing, whitewater rafting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, rock climbing, and hunting. From the Great Depression to the 1990s, the state voted heavily for the Democratic Party due to its tradition of union-based politics. Since then, the state has become heavily Republican, and is considered a "deep red" state at the federal level. West Virginia consistently ranks among the lowest U.S. states in terms of health outcomes, life expectancy, education, and certain other economic factors. West Virginia ranks first in the nation in home ownership, and is ranked third in both affordability and equality by U.S. News & World Report.
Many ancient manmade earthen mounds from various prehistoric mound builder cultures survive in West Virginia, especially in the areas of present-day Moundsville, South Charleston, and Romney. Artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of village societies with a tribal trade system culture that crafted cold-worked copper pieces.
In the 1670s, during the Beaver Wars, the powerful Haudenosaunee, five allied nations based in present-day New York and Pennsylvania, drove out other Native American tribes from the region to reserve the upper Ohio Valley as a hunting ground. Siouan language tribes like the Moneton had previously been among the earliest recorded in the area. Conflicts with European settlers resulted in various displaced Native tribes settling in West Virginia, where they were known as Mingo, meaning "remote affiliates of the Iroquois Confederacy".
The area now identified as West Virginia was contested territory among Anglo-Americans as well, with the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia claiming territorial rights under their colonial charters to this area before the American Revolutionary War. Some speculative land companies, such as the Vandalia Company, the Ohio Company and the Indiana Company, tried but failed to legitimize their claims to land in parts of West Virginia and present-day Kentucky. This rivalry resulted in some settlers petitioning the Continental Congress to create a new territory called Westsylvania. With the federal settlement of the Pennsylvania and Virginia border dispute, creating Kentucky County, Virginia, Kentuckians "were satisfied [...] and the inhabitants of a large part of West Virginia were grateful."
The British Crown considered the area of West Virginia part of its Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776. The United States considered this area the western part of the state of Virginia (commonly called Trans-Allegheny Virginia) from 1776 to 1863, before West Virginia's formation. Its residents were discontented for years with their position in Virginia, as the government was dominated by the planter elite of the Tidewater and Piedmont areas. The legislature had electoral malapportionment, based on the counting of slaves toward regional populations, and western white residents were underrepresented in the state legislature. More subsistence and established farmers lived in the west, and they were generally less supportive of slavery, although many counties were divided on their support. Residents of that area became more sharply divided after the planter elite of eastern Virginia voted to secede from the Union during the Civil War.
Residents of the western and northern counties set up a separate government under Francis Pierpont in 1861, which they called the Restored Government. The majority voted to separate from Virginia, and the new state was admitted to the Union in 1863. In 1864 a state constitutional convention drafted a constitution, which was ratified by the legislature without putting it to popular vote. West Virginia abolished slavery by a gradual process and temporarily disenfranchised those who had fought for the Confederacy or held Confederate office.
A 2010 analysis of a local stalagmite revealed that Native Americans were burning forests to clear land as early as 100 BCE. Some regional late-prehistoric Eastern Woodland tribes were more involved in hunting and fishing, practicing the Eastern Agricultural Complex gardening method which used fire to clear out underbrush from certain wooded areas. Another group progressed to the more time-consuming, advanced companion crop fields method of gardening. Also continuing from the ancient Indigenous people of the state, they cultivated tobacco through to early historic times. It was used in numerous social and religious rituals.
"Maize (corn) did not make a substantial contribution to the diet until after 1150 BP", to quote Mills (OSU 2003). Eventually, tribal villages began depending on corn to feed their turkey flocks, as Kanawha Fort Ancients practiced bird husbandry. The local Natives made cornbread and a flat rye bread called "bannock" as they emerged from the protohistoric era. A horizon extending from a little before the early 18th century is sometimes called the acculturating Fireside Cabin culture. Trading posts were established by European traders along the Potomac and James rivers.
Tribes that inhabited West Virginia as of 1600 were the Siouan Monongahela Culture to the north, the Fort Ancient culture along the Ohio River from the Monongahela to Kentucky and extending an unknown distance inland, and the Eastern Siouan Tutelo and Moneton tribes in the southeast. There was also the Iroquoian Susquehannock in the region approximately east of the Monongahela River and north of the Monongahela National Forest, a possible tribe called the Senandoa, or Shenandoah, in the Shenandoah Valley, and the easternmost tip of the state may have been home to the Manahoac people. The Monongahela may have been the same as a people known as the Calicua, or Cali. The following may have also all been the same tribe—Moneton, Moheton, Senandoa, Tomahitan.
During the Beaver Wars, other tribes moved into the region. The Iroquoian Tiontatecaga (also Little Mingo, Guyandotte) seem to have split off from the Petun after they were defeated by the Haudenosaunee. They eventually settled somewhere between the Kanawha and Little Kanawha Rivers. During the 1750s, when the Mingo Seneca separated from the Haudenosaunee and returned to the Ohio River Valley, they contend that this tribe merged with them. The Shawnee arrived as well; though primarily stationed within former Monongahela territory approximately until 1750, they extended their influence throughout the Ohio River region. They were West Virginia's last Native tribe and were driven out by the United States during the Shawnee Wars (1811–1813). The Erie, who were chased out of Ohio around 1655, are now believed to be the same as the Westo, who invaded as far as South Carolina before being destroyed in the 1680s. If so, their path would have brought them through West Virginia. The historical movement of the Tutelo and carbon dating of the Fort Ancients seem to correspond with the given period of 1655–1670 as the time of their removal. The Susquehannocks were original participants in the Beaver Wars but were cut off from the Ohio River by the Haudenosaunee around 1630 and found themselves in dire straits. Suffering from disease and constant warfare and unable to provide for themselves financially, they began to collapse and moved farther and farther east, to the Susquehanna River of Eastern Pennsylvania. The Manahoac were probably forced out in the 1680s when the Haudenosaunee began to invade Virginia. The Siouan tribes there moved into North Carolina and later returned as one tribe, known as the Eastern Blackfoot, or Christannas.