West Virginia - Appalachia, Coal, and a Shrinking Population
West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1863 during the Civil War, when the mountain counties refused to follow the rest of the Commonwealth out of the Union. The state covers 24,230 square miles of Appalachian terrain and holds about 1.76 million residents, making it one of the few states currently losing population. Charleston is both the capital and the largest city with only about 46,000 people inside the city limits. Huntington, home to Marshall University, and Morgantown, home to West Virginia University, round out the three largest urban centers, with Parkersburg and Wheeling following behind.
Coal mining shaped the state's economy and politics for more than a century. The southern coalfields, centered in counties like McDowell, Logan, and Mingo, were once the most productive underground coal region in the country. Production has fallen sharply since the 1980s as utilities shifted to natural gas and as easier coal has been mined out, and employment in the mines has dropped from hundreds of thousands at peak to well under 20,000 today. Natural gas has picked up some of the slack, with horizontal drilling into the Marcellus and Utica shales across the northern and western counties.
The terrain is genuinely mountainous. The Appalachian chain runs the length of the state, and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, established in 2020 as the country's newest national park, protects a deep river canyon in the south. John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" still functions as an unofficial anthem, and the Hatfield-McCoy feud along the Tug Fork in the 1880s remains one of the most cited pieces of regional folklore. The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs hosted a secret Cold War-era congressional bunker that was declassified in 1992.
The opioid crisis has hit West Virginia harder than any other state on a per capita basis, and drug overdose deaths have driven much of the recent population decline. Health care, higher education, and state government are now among the larger employers, along with chemical manufacturing along the Kanawha Valley.
Show more
West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1863 during the Civil War, when the mountain counties refused to follow the rest of the Commonwealth out of the Union. The state covers 24,230 square miles of Appalachian terrain and holds about 1.76 million residents, making it one of the few states currently losing population. Charleston is both the capital and the largest city with only about 46,000 people inside the city limits. Huntington, home to Marshall University, and Morgantown, home to West Virginia University, round out the three largest urban centers, with Parkersburg and Wheeling following behind.
Coal mining shaped the state's economy and politics for more than a century. The southern coalfields, centered in counties like McDowell, Logan, and Mingo, were once the most productive underground coal region in the country. Production has fallen sharply since the 1980s as utilities shifted to natural gas and as easier coal has been mined out, and employment in the mines has dropped from hundreds of thousands at peak to well under 20,000 today. Natural gas has picked up some of the slack, with horizontal drilling into the Marcellus and Utica shales across the northern and western counties.
The terrain is genuinely mountainous. The Appalachian chain runs the length of the state, and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, established in 2020 as the country's newest national park, protects a deep river canyon in the south. John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" still functions as an unofficial anthem, and the Hatfield-McCoy feud along the Tug Fork in the 1880s remains one of the most cited pieces of regional folklore. The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs hosted a secret Cold War-era congressional bunker that was declassified in 1992.
The opioid crisis has hit West Virginia harder than any other state on a per capita basis, and drug overdose deaths have driven much of the recent population decline. Health care, higher education, and state government are now among the larger employers, along with chemical manufacturing along the Kanawha Valley.
Country selected
Region selected
Optional — select or proceed
