West Virginia, The Mountain State

The geology of the Mid-Atlantic states of the North American continent reflects ancient mountains, formed when the continent collided with Africa in times aeons past. The contemporary Ridge and Valley Appalachian Mountains are the evidence of this movement of the earth, with the hardest rocks forming mountains and the more erodible formations creating the valleys.

The Appalachians now top out at about 7,000 feet but they once towered higher than the Himalayas and the rock formations remaining show evidence of great geologic violence. The Cumberland Gap was the entry to the west and the Cumberland Plateau and the Allegheny Plateau comprise about seventy-five percent of the state of West Virginia. The state lies entirely within these mountain ranges and is the highest in elevation of any state east of the Mississippi River.

In the mid- seventeen fifties, at the conclusion of the French and Indian War, England and the American colonists began the dismantling of the French possessions in North America. In forming the United States, the original settlers inherited thirteen colonies from England following the Revolutionary War. Many of the states’ boundaries were once set by Britain and then by American custom and practise as the wealth of the land beyond the Eastern seaboard was recognized.

To establish a value of land numbers of values were required to be assigned, and the method of ownership and transfer set out. As Americans changed from subjects to citizens, determinations of shapes, sizes, and values as well as from whom land would be acquired and the nature of the vested interest as a matter of record became the subject of broad discussion and decision reaching.

In the Articles of Confederation, the Congress was a feeble instrument. The thirteen colonies acted like independent countries. The nation couldn’t tax, raise an army nor suppress internal insurrections.

With the fashioning of the Constitution and the concomitant Bill of Rights, Americans began slowly to establish order. Against all odds the new Americans went on to establish institutions and habits of self-government which still lie at the core of the American political system.

As Americans pushed westward, a dawning concept that land might be owned like a horse or a cottage, caused state borders to be established uniting people in the desire for laws and the government which would protect them and their land. The thirteen original states, with vast colonial boundaries, were urged to relinquish claims to their extended regions to the United States. Virginia released claim to the area which is now Kentucky in addition to all lands beyond the Ohio River.

The area now known as West Virginia was separated from Virginia as a result of the secession of residents of the mountainous part of the state which had not prospered as had the eastern Piedmont and Tidewater regions, when Virginia, a slave-holding state seceded from the Union during the Civil War. In October, 1861, the western Virginians voted to join the union as a separate state. The border between West Virginia and Virginia thus was established when federal troops were present in the counties of Virginia which were non-slave holding. The Shenandoah Valley, a significant region of today’s West Virginia, changed hands many times during the civil war, but was finally annexed to West Virginia in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The federal government had included those counties to provide West Virginia with the resources needed to sustain the state’s development.

The western border of West Virginia was established after the U.S. Congress following the Revolution, urged those states with vast colonial boundaries such as Virginia, to release their extended regions to the United States. Thus three rivers became the western boundary: The Tug, the Big Sandy and the Ohio, make up the state boundaries between West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

Virginia’s development investments along the Ohio River profoundly affected the line which would become the northern edge of the state of West Virginia. As in numerous boundary disputes, the French and Indian War cast a far reach into the settlement patterns and the political boundaries of the emerging United States beyond the eastern seacoast. Overlapping land claims between Pennsylvania and Virginia resulted in the boundary being located at the upper reaches of the Ohio River, allowing West Virginia today a long extension north on the Pennsylvania line between the river and the Pennsylvania boundary.

West Virginia became a state during the Civil War, breaking away from Virginia, and admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863. It was the only state which seceded from a Confederate state, and is still considered as a part of the south.

Virginia, The Old Dominion

The British colonization of North America was culminated with the arrival of three ships – The Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed and the Discovery, at Jamestown.

In 1607, the region of America not claimed by the Spanish or the French was then called Virginia to honor the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. The settlers ascended the river they named the James after their King, and set about creating a community to carry out the royal directive to find a passage to the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean), and to discover precious metals to enrich the crown. Chartered by the British crown in 1609 Virginia extended from the approximate latitude of today’s Columbia, South Carolina, to a parallel above the present day southern boundary of the State of Pennsylvania, across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

Inadequate stewardship of all needs and defenses by the original groups, made up mostly of investors in the London Company, was finally addressed by one John Smith, who wrote the Crown that the “gentlemen” making up more than half of the settlers were ill fit to survive in the wilderness much less be able to help defend the colony from the Indians they had displaced. As a result more hardy men were sent along with more adequate supplies, and the second winter of the colony found the Indians supplying some of the needs, and the settlers themselves learning to forage and grow crops.

The charters of the English required the establishment of definitions of land ownership and the definition of the colonies’ various boundaries became of such importance that centuries long lawsuits ensued to establish the line of a latitude or the exact position of a river. Finally a degree of stability was achieved in 1619, when plantations were established to the east and west along the James River. A few women had arrived and set about creating homes in the wilderness.

The first democratically elected body in the New World was convened, comprised of two members from each of the duly constituted plantations, creating a house of burgesses whose first deliberations centered on education. A university and preparatory school were devised, but ownership of the land to produce the funds necessary for operation was still vested in the founding London Company. Virginia became a royal colony with the privilege of governing themselves and taxing their own land to create the improvements a civilized community demanded. General assemblies, as they were created, achieved a degree of autonomy assuming control of their own destiny and set the pattern for all to follow with the formation of a new nation based on the principal of no taxation without representation.

As more colonists arrived to the new land, the boundaries of the Virginia Colony began to recede with the Crown issuing charters for other colonies. Virginia’s present day northern boundary was set with the creation by the Crown, of the Colony of Maryland. The determination of the eastern boundary remained under dispute for more than one hundred years as surveyors sought to define a line based on tradition and faulty descriptions of locations …by the settlers.

The southern border was created when the Carolina Colony was chartered but the exact line of demarcation was not set until a compromise over shipping on east coast was reached. Virginia’s western border first extended to the Ohio River. A compromise over river access resulted in Virginia releasing land claims which became the states of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and finally, West Virginia.

Three centuries of political change have reduced the vast extent of Virginia’s original domain. As chartered in 1609, The Old Dominion, named as the first of the crown colonies on this continent, is divided physiographically into five distinct provinces: the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge, the Valley and Ridge and The Appalachian Plateau. Tidewater is the name generally given to the eastern seaboard of the state, from the Potomac to the North Carolina border. The Atlantic Ocean, as the eastern boundary with many tidal channels, deep tidal rivers, bays and peninsulas, has had a profound influence on the social and commercial life of Tidewater Virginia.

The Piedmont Province rises abruptly from the western reaches of the coastal plain. The surface has been channeled deeply by drainage channels as the land rises to the foothills of the Blue Ridge, creating the long rises parallel to the southeast, called the piedmont formation. The Piedmont broadens southward rising toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge.

The Blue Ridge Province embraces some of the highest peaks in the state, but generally runs about 1500 feet above the Piedmont upland. Most of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge is named the Appalachian Valley, commonly called the Valley of Virginia. The Virginia Valley is a series of transverse ridges, plateaus and narrow gaps, and contains many of the higher mountains of the state, the Valley and Ridge Province.

The Appalachian Plateau is channeled by streams into a maze of deep narrow ravines and winding ridges, characterized by irregular hills and peaks. This southwestern plateau embraces parts of formations which extend a relatively short distance into Virginia from Kentucky.

Attaining statehood in1788, the State of Virginia by 1790 had ceded land along with Maryland, totaling one hundred square miles of territory on the Potomac River to the federal Congress as the new capital city of the nation.