108 Fun Facts About West Virginia

West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20 of which year?

West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, carved from Confederate Virginia; the Willey Amendment made gradual emancipation a condition of admission.

Along with West Virginia, which other state was admitted to the Union during the Civil War?

Nevada was admitted on October 31, 1864, hurried in before Lincoln's re-election; Kansas had joined in January 1861, months before the war began.

What is West Virginia's state motto in English?

'Mountaineers are always free' renders the Latin Montani Semper Liberi, adopted with the state seal in September 1863 to mark the mountain counties' break from Confederate Virginia.

What is West Virginia's capital and most populous city?

Charleston, at the meeting of the Elk and Kanawha rivers, counted about 48,900 residents in the 2020 census, narrowly ahead of Huntington.

West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within the area served by which body?

The Appalachian Regional Commission's statutory region covers every West Virginia county, the only state wholly inside it; the state's mean elevation of about 1,500 feet is the highest east of the Mississippi.

How many panhandles does West Virginia have?

The northern one reaches up between Ohio and Pennsylvania toward Pittsburgh; the eastern one includes Harpers Ferry near Washington.

What is the highest point in West Virginia, at 4,863 feet?

Spruce Knob, at 4,863 feet, crowns Spruce Mountain and is the highest peak in the Allegheny Mountains, inside the Monongahela National Forest.

Which town is West Virginia's easternmost and its lowest point above sea level?

Harpers Ferry sits at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac where West Virginia meets Maryland and Virginia; the Potomac there, about 240 feet, is the state's low point.

Which abolitionist raided the federal armory in the state's eastern panhandle in October 1859?

John Brown seized the Harpers Ferry armory on October 16, 1859, hoping to arm a slave revolt; Marines led by Robert E. Lee retook it two days later, and Brown was hanged that December.

How high above the New River is the roadway of the New River Gorge Bridge?

The deck is 876 feet above the New River; when it opened in October 1977 it was the world's highest bridge carrying ordinary road traffic, and it appears on the 2005 West Virginia state quarter.

For how many years was the New River Gorge Bridge the world's longest single-span arch bridge?

26 years: from its opening in 1977 until Shanghai's Lupu Bridge surpassed it in 2003, its 1,700-foot steel arch was the longest single span of its kind in the world.

In what year was New River Gorge redesignated a national park and preserve?

The redesignation came on December 27, 2020, in the year-end spending bill; Jimmy Carter had created New River Gorge National River in 1978, protecting 53 miles of gorge.

The New River, despite its name, actually rises in which state before flowing into West Virginia?

The New rises in the Blue Ridge near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, flows north through Virginia and enters West Virginia near Glen Lyn before carving the New River Gorge.

Which two rivers meet in Fayette County to form the Kanawha, West Virginia's largest inland waterway?

The New and the Gauley join at Gauley Bridge in Fayette County; from there the Kanawha runs 97 miles past Charleston to the Ohio at Point Pleasant.

Which state borders West Virginia to the northwest, across a major river?

The Ohio River marks that border; it runs 981 miles from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois.

What is West Virginia's official state rock?

Bituminous coal was named the official state rock in 2009; the state gem is the Mississippian-age fossil coral Lithostrotionella, found in the state's limestone.

The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest US armed uprising since the Civil War, pitted coal miners against whom?

Lawmen and strikebreakers backed by mine owners, Sheriff Don Chafin's roughly 3,000 'Logan Defenders', held the ridge against some 10,000 miners until federal troops arrived in early September 1921.

Which Cork-born labour organiser was called 'the most dangerous woman in America' for rallying West Virginia's miners?

Mother Jones, born Mary Harris in Cork around 1837, got the label in 1902 when West Virginia prosecutor Reese Blizzard used it at her trial for defying a strike injunction.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud played out along which river on the West Virginia-Kentucky line?

The Tug Fork of the Big Sandy divides southern West Virginia from Pike County, Kentucky; 'Devil Anse' Hatfield's clan lived on the West Virginia bank and Randolph McCoy's on the Kentucky side.

Which winged, red-eyed creature was reportedly seen around Point Pleasant in 1966–67?

Mothman sightings began on November 15, 1966; John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies tied them to the Silver Bridge collapse of December 1967, and Point Pleasant started a Mothman Festival in 2002.

Where did the first witnesses of the Point Pleasant creature say they saw it, in November 1966?

Two young couples told police about a large black figure with glowing red eyes on November 15, 1966.

Which two songwriters wrote 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' with John Denver?

Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, later of Starland Vocal Band, began the song while driving Clopper Road in Maryland; recorded with Denver, it peaked at number two on the Hot 100 in 1971.

In what year did 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' become one of West Virginia's official state songs?

The Legislature adopted it on March 8, 2014, making it the fourth official state song beside 'The West Virginia Hills', 'This Is My West Virginia' and 'West Virginia, My Home Sweet Home'.

Green Bank, West Virginia hosts a 100-metre, fully steerable what?

Radio telescope: the Green Bank Telescope's 100-by-110-metre dish went into service in 2000 inside the National Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless signals are restricted to protect faint emissions from space.

The Greenbrier resort hid a Cold War bunker built for whom?

The US Congress: the bunker, code-named Project Greek Island, was built in 1958-61 beneath the resort's West Virginia Wing and decommissioned in 1995, three years after the Washington Post exposed it.

Before 1913, West Virginia's Greenbrier resort went by what name?

White Sulphur Springs: guests had 'taken the waters' there since 1778, and the resort carried the springs' name until the C&O Railway opened its new Greenbrier hotel in 1913.

The pepperoni roll, West Virginia's unofficial state food, was first sold in 1927 in which town?

Giuseppe Argiro, an Italian immigrant and former miner, sold the first pepperoni rolls at his Country Club Bakery in Fairmont in 1927 as a lunch coal miners could carry underground.

West Virginia's official state fruit is which apple variety, first found in Clay County?

Golden Delicious was found on Anderson Mullins's farm in Clay County; he sold the tree to Stark Brothers for $5,000 in 1914, and it became the state fruit in 1995.

West Virginia University's main campus is in which city?

Morgantown, on the Monongahela River in the state's north, has hosted WVU since it opened in 1867 as the Agricultural College of West Virginia under the Morrill land-grant act.

WVU's Mountaineer mascot carries what alongside a buckskin suit and coonskin cap?

The Mountaineer's kit is a period rifle and powder horn; the musket is fired after every score, and a new student Mountaineer is chosen each spring with a scholarship attached.

Which conference did the WVU Mountaineers join in 2012?

WVU joined the Big 12 on July 1, 2012, leaving the Big East after 21 years; its school colours, old gold and blue, were chosen from the state seal in 1890.

Marshall University is named after which number chief justice of the United States?

John Marshall was the fourth chief justice, after Jay, Rutledge and Ellsworth, serving from 1801 until his death in 1835; his friend John Laidley founded Marshall Academy in 1837.

How many people died in the 1970 crash of Southern Airways Flight 932, carrying Huntington's football team?

All 75 aboard died when the chartered DC-9 hit a hillside short of Tri-State Airport on November 14, 1970, returning from a 17-14 loss at East Carolina; the 2006 film We Are Marshall premiered in Huntington.

What is West Virginia's official state animal?

The black bear was named West Virginia's state animal in 1973; the species ranges across the Allegheny highlands and is hunted in a regulated autumn season.

Which architect designed the West Virginia State Capitol, dedicated in 1932?

Cass Gilbert, architect of the US Supreme Court building, designed the buff limestone capitol; its gilded dome rises 292 feet, about five feet higher than the US Capitol's, and the complex cost just under $10 million.

Blackwater Falls, one of the most photographed spots in the state, gets its dark colour from what?

Tannins from hemlock and red spruce needles stain the Blackwater River amber-brown; the roughly 60-foot falls drop where the river leaves Canaan Valley into Blackwater Canyon.

Cass Scenic Railroad State Park runs what kind of historic engines up Back Allegheny Mountain?

Geared Shay logging locomotives, built to haul timber up steep, twisting grades, have climbed from Cass since 1901, when the town was built for spruce and hemlock loggers; the state park opened in 1963.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, one of America's largest hand-cut stone buildings, is in which town?

Weston, in Lewis County, is home to the asylum, which admitted patients from 1864 to 1994 and was laid out on the Kirkbride Plan with long staggered wings.

The Gothic-style West Virginia Penitentiary, open from 1866 to 1995, stands in which town?

Moundsville, beside the Grave Creek Mound on the Ohio, got the prison in 1866; its Gothic turrets and battlements copy the Joliet, Illinois state prison at roughly half size.

The 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant pitted Virginia militia against which Shawnee chief?

Cornstalk led the Shawnee and Mingo against Andrew Lewis's Virginians on October 10, 1774, the decisive clash of Lord Dunmore's War; he was murdered by militiamen at Fort Randolph in 1777.

Which West Virginia town claims the first Mother's Day service, held by Anna Jarvis in 1908?

Grafton's Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church held the service on May 10, 1908, three years after Jarvis's mother died; the building was designated the International Mother's Day Shrine in 1962.

Which West Virginia native was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, in October 1947?

Chuck Yeager, raised in Hamlin, Lincoln County, flew the Bell X-1 'Glamorous Glennis' past Mach 1 on October 14, 1947 over California's Mojave Desert.

Which Chelyan-born Lakers star's silhouette became the NBA logo?

Jerry West, 'Zeke from Cabin Creek' after the creek near his birthplace, led WVU to the 1959 NCAA final; designer Alan Siegel traced the 1969 NBA logo from a photo of his dribble.

Which West Virginia-born actor won five Emmys playing Deputy Barney Fife?

Don Knotts, born in Morgantown in 1924, won five Emmys for supporting actor in a comedy as Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, which ran from 1960 to 1968.

Which West Virginia-born gymnast was the first American woman to win Olympic all-around gold, in 1984?

Mary Lou Retton, born in Fairmont, took the 1984 all-around in Los Angeles with a perfect 10 on vault, adding two silvers and two bronzes; Sports Illustrated named her Sportswoman of the Year.

Which West Virginia-born author was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro in 1892 and raised in China by missionary parents, won the 1932 Pulitzer for The Good Earth and the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which West Virginia mathematician calculated trajectories for Shepard's and Glenn's spaceflights?

Katherine Johnson, a Greenbrier County native, computed Alan Shepard's 1961 trajectory and verified the orbit for John Glenn's 1962 flight; her 33-year NASA career was dramatised in Hidden Figures.

Which country star, born in Glen Dale, West Virginia, is the son of a state DOT worker?

Brad Paisley grew up an only child in Glen Dale; his father Doug worked for the state Department of Transportation and his mother Sandy taught school.

Which West Virginia ski resort's Cupp Run and Shay's Revenge have the biggest vertical drop in the Southeast?

Snowshoe Mountain's Western Territory runs, Cupp Run and Shay's Revenge, drop 1,500 vertical feet; the resort sits on Cheat Mountain, whose summit Thorny Flat reaches 4,848 feet.

What did COG stand for in West Virginia's old nickname 'The Cog State'?

Coal, Oil, and Gas, the three fuels beneath the state's hills, gave the old 'Cog State' tag its letters; 'The Mountain State' has long since displaced it.

How many counties does West Virginia have?

West Virginia has 55 counties, from Kanawha, the most populous, to Wirt, the least; the sheriff of each county collects its property taxes.

West Virginia's center of population lies in which small Braxton County town?

Gassaway, on the Elk River in Braxton County, is the point where the state's 2020 population of 1,793,716 would balance; that count was 3.2% below 2010.

Which state led US coal production in 2023, with West Virginia in second place?

Wyoming's Powder River Basin surface mines produced about 40% of US coal in 2023, roughly three times West Virginia's output; coal generated about nine-tenths of West Virginia's electricity that year.

The Trans-Allegheny asylum claims its hand-cut stone building is second worldwide only to what?

The Kremlin: the asylum bills its sandstone main building, begun in 1858 with stone cut by hand, as the largest such structure in North America and second in the world only to Moscow's Kremlin.

What is West Virginia's official state tree?

The sugar maple became West Virginia's state tree by a 1949 legislative resolution; its autumn foliage colours the Allegheny highlands each October.

In 2010-2013, West Virginia was the only US state where what demographic pattern held?

Deaths exceed births: West Virginia logged about 21,000 births a year in 2010-2013 but roughly 3,000 more deaths than births across the three years, the first state to record sustained natural decrease.

After the 2020 census, how many seats did West Virginia hold in the US House of Representatives?

It lost one of its three seats, and its population is expected to decline by more than 19,000 residents by 2030.

Which state contest for 8th graders is named for Governor Spotswood's 1716 expedition?

The Golden Horseshoe, begun in 1931, tests eighth graders on state history and dubs winners 'knights'; it recalls Spotswood's 1716 Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, once said to have reached Pendleton County.

Which 2018 video game drops players into a post-nuclear West Virginia, 25 years after the bombs?

Fallout 76 copies real places such as the Greenbrier resort onto its map, and several of its monsters come straight from the state's folklore.

Which Family Feud host and comedian was born a coal miner's son in Welch, West Virginia?

Steve Harvey left the coalfields as a child for Cleveland, where the street his family lived on was renamed Steve Harvey Way in 2015.

Which soul singer drew on his Slab Fork, West Virginia, childhood to write the 1972 hit Lean on Me?

Bill Withers wrote the song after moving to Los Angeles, where he missed the way neighbours in his coal mining town looked out for one another.

What free drink does Bluefield, West Virginia, hand out whenever the temperature passes 90 degrees Fahrenheit?

Lemonade has been the chamber of commerce's hot-day giveaway since 1938, a boast about how rarely the town's cool mountain summers get that warm.

Which 1999 film follows Homer Hickam and fellow Coalwood, West Virginia, teenagers building rockets?

October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys, the title of the memoir the film adapts; seeing Sputnik cross the sky over his mining town set Hickam on his way.

Which brightly glazed dinnerware line has been made in Newell, West Virginia, since its 1936 launch?

Fiesta vanished from shops between 1973 and 1985, then came back so strongly that its maker, the old Homer Laughlin China Company, renamed itself after the line.

The battleship USS West Virginia, sunk in 1941 and rebuilt, saw Japan's formal surrender in which bay?

Tokyo Bay completed a long comeback: torpedoed at its moorings in December 1941, the ship was refloated and rebuilt, and it lent five bandsmen to play at the ceremony.

Which actress, raised in West Virginia's capital from age three, became a Save the Children ambassador in 2009?

Jennifer Garner was born in Houston, and years after leaving for Hollywood she had her own children baptised at a Methodist church back in her West Virginia hometown.

Which Nobel-winning mathematician from Bluefield, West Virginia, inspired the film A Beautiful Mind?

John Nash was taking advanced maths classes at a local college while still in high school, and his later work on game theory won the 1994 economics Nobel.

Which Catholic senator's 1960 primary win in heavily Protestant West Virginia opened his way to the presidency?

John F. Kennedy took more than 60% of the vote in a state with few Catholic voters, and his beaten rival withdrew from the race.

Which songbird, honoured by more states than any other species, is West Virginia's state bird?

Cardinal is the name seven states wrote into law for the northern cardinal, and the Amtrak train that crosses West Virginia on its way from Chicago carries it too.

Which shrub, shown wreathing the coat of arms on West Virginia's flag, is the state flower?

Rhododendron of the state's chosen kind is the most widespread in the eastern mountains, and Nepal claims the plant as its national flower too.

Which president approved West Virginia's statehood on condition that slavery there be gradually abolished?

Abraham Lincoln knew many thought the new state illegal, so he wrote out a formal opinion arguing that its admission was both constitutional and expedient.

Which Confederate general, born in Clarksburg in 1824, rose to fame at First Bull Run?

Stonewall Jackson won the name when another general likened his steady brigade to a stone wall; two years later he was accidentally shot by his own side's pickets.

Which future Tuskegee Institute founder worked salt furnaces as a boy in Malden, West Virginia?

Booker T. Washington lived in Malden from age nine to sixteen and returned to teach there before he was chosen, at 25, to lead the new school in Alabama.

Which 2017 heist comedy has West Virginia siblings robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway?

Logan Lucky is credited to a first-time screenwriter said to hail from Logan, West Virginia, a name widely suspected of being a pseudonym.

Marshall University's teams, known for years as the Big Green, now use which nickname?

Thundering Herd stuck partly because a Zane Grey novel of that name was popular at the time; the bison mascot Marco is named for Marshall College.

West Virginia University meets which school in the football rivalry known as the Backyard Brawl?

Pittsburgh's campus is only 75 miles away along Interstate 79, and the two schools, which first met in 1895, both hold the trademark on the rivalry's name.

Besides chili sauce, chopped onions and yellow mustard, which topping completes a West Virginia-style hot dog?

Coleslaw goes on over a chili sauce made with finely ground meat, a pairing so standard there that the style carries the state's name.

Which garlicky wild plant is celebrated at an April feast in Richwood, West Virginia?

Ramps smell so strong that a Richwood newspaper editor once laced his printer's ink with their juice as a joke, which drew the anger of the Postmaster General.

Which religious movement built the marble-and-gold Palace of Gold in northern West Virginia?

Hare Krishna devotees, many untrained and learning on the job, began it as a residence for their founder and finished it as his memorial shrine after he died.

Which federal agency runs its fingerprint and background-check division from Clarksburg, West Virginia?

FBI staff on the 986-acre site also run the instant background checks behind gun sales, and the Clarksburg division is the largest in the whole bureau.

Which First Lady championed Arthurdale, a 1930s homestead town built for jobless West Virginia coal miners?

Eleanor Roosevelt used her influence to win government approval for the scheme, then took such a close interest that she chose the refrigerators for the homes herself.

Which historian, once a West Virginia coal miner, launched the week that became Black History Month?

Carter G. Woodson could not enter high school full-time until he was twenty, because mine work left little time to study, yet he went on to earn a Harvard doctorate.

Which West Virginia Democrat overtook Strom Thurmond in 2006 as the longest-serving US senator?

Robert Byrd kept the seat until he died in 2010, and as his party's most senior senator he served four times as the chamber's president pro tempore.

Which Hall of Fame wide receiver starred at Marshall University before the Minnesota Vikings drafted him?

Randy Moss could transfer to Marshall without sitting out a season because it then played in Division I-AA, and the campus was about an hour's drive from his home.

Which coach, who won six national titles at Alabama, grew up in the West Virginia mining town of Monongah?

Nick Saban quarterbacked Monongah High School to a state championship in 1968, his senior year, decades before he began collecting titles as a coach.

Which golf great, known for his straw hat, served for decades as the Greenbrier resort's golf professional?

Sam Snead won his first tournament on the resort's courses in 1936, and at the age of 85 he could still shoot a round of 78 there.

What did James Rumsey demonstrate at Shepherdstown in 1787, twenty years before Fulton's Clermont?

A steamboat of Rumsey's design had no paddle wheel: a steam-driven pump shot a stream of water out of the stern to push the boat forward.

Immigrants from which Alpine country settled a remote West Virginia village in 1869 that still celebrates Fasnacht?

Switzerland still shapes the village calendar: Helvetia holds a public Fasnacht every year that blends the customs of two separate Swiss festivals.

Which West Virginia crag did the 10th Mountain Division use to train assault climbers for Italy?

Seneca Rocks kept an estimated 75,000 soft iron pitons the soldiers left behind, enough to give one face the name the Face of a Thousand Pitons.

Which West Virginia plateau, a wartime artillery range, has plant life typical of Canada?

Dolly Sods may still hide live mortar and artillery shells from that training, because searching the ground away from the trails proved impossible.

Which West Virginia spa town, a retreat for colonial Virginia's elite, is still formally named Bath?

Berkeley Springs was the name of the town's post office, adopted in 1802 because Virginia already had another Bath, and the postal name simply took over.

Which West Virginia valley, its floor about 3,200 feet up, is the highest sizable valley east of the Mississippi?

Canaan is said the local way, kuh-NANE, which legend blames on the German settler who named the place mispronouncing the biblical land.

Which future president described giant sloth claws from a West Virginia cave, now the state fossil?

Thomas Jefferson at first took the claws for those of a great cat three times the size of a lion, and named the animal Megalonyx, meaning great claw.

Which former vice president allegedly plotted treason at Harman Blennerhassett's island home near Parkersburg?

Aaron Burr's scheme made the island notorious, though little of the setting survived: the house where the pair supposedly plotted burned down in 1811.

The Cheat Mountain species of which amphibian lives only in the high Allegheny forests of eastern West Virginia?

Salamander numbers there probably crashed when loggers cut most of the old mountaintop forest by 1920, and the survivors now hang on in about 60 isolated pockets.

Which country singer raised in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, became host of public radio's Mountain Stage in 2021?

Kathy Mattea came to the microphone with two Grammys, after twice being voted the Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year.

Which Jeannette Walls memoir follows her family to her grandparents' home in Welch, West Virginia?

The Glass Castle is named for her father's grandest unkept promise: a dream house of glass he always said he would build for the family.

Kingwood, West Virginia, has held a harvest festival since 1938 serving pancakes made from which crop?

Buckwheat was planted across the county during the Great Depression to revive farm incomes, and the festival began as an end-of-harvest celebration.

Which Braxton County town gave its name to the spade-headed 'monster' that witnesses reported after a 1952 fireball?

Flatwoods witnesses probably saw a meteor that crossed three states that night, and a later investigator argued the creature itself was a startled barn owl.

Which ancient culture raised West Virginia's 62-foot Grave Creek Mound, one of America's largest burial mounds?

Adena builders moved more than 60,000 tons of earth to raise it over two thousand years ago, and it is the largest mound of theirs that survives.

Which West Virginia town has the only covered bridge on the US Numbered Highway System, built in 1852?

Philippi's bridge carried both Union and Confederate troops in June 1861, after a clash that some count as the first land battle of the Civil War.

Which family glassmaker in Milton, West Virginia, made Country Music Award trophies in the 1980s?

Blenko's best seller is humbler than a trophy: a roughly rectangular water bottle introduced in 1938 and still in production.

Which West Virginia state park is home to the much-photographed Glade Creek Grist Mill?

Babcock's mill is younger than it looks: it was completed in 1976 from the parts of three older grist mills elsewhere in the state.

Which Huntington-born actor first voiced the killer doll Chucky in the 1988 horror film Child's Play?

Brad Dourif began in community theatre while a student at Marshall University, and his role as Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest brought an Oscar nomination.

Which coach, born in Follansbee, West Virginia, led Notre Dame to the 1988 national championship?

Lou Holtz's Notre Dame team clinched that title by beating third-ranked West Virginia University, the team from his native state, in a bowl game.

Which two-time NBA Coach of the Year played high school ball in Mullens, West Virginia?

Mike D'Antoni won the award with Phoenix in 2005, after the Suns improved by 33 wins, and again with Houston in 2017; Marshall has retired his No. 10.

Which industrialist gave $20,000 toward the 1902 hall in Lewisburg, West Virginia, that still bears his name?

Andrew Carnegie's money replaced a girls' school that had burned down, and its auditorium is one of only eight Carnegie Halls still in continuous use as a venue.

Which Parkersburg-born director put himself on a 30-day McDonald's diet for Super Size Me?

Morgan Spurlock was raised in Beckley and studied film at New York University, and the documentary went on to earn an Academy Award nomination.