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Historian John Alexander Williams, in his 2002 book Appalachia: A History, distinguished between a "core" Appalachian region consisting of 164 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and a greater region defined by the ARC.
The Region’s 26.4 million residents live in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, and all of West Virginia.
Most of West Virginia lies within the Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests ecoregion, while the higher elevations along the eastern border and in the panhandle lie within the Appalachian–Blue Ridge forests.
- Overview
- Relief
- Drainage and soils
West Virginia, constituent state of the United States of America. Admitted to the union as the 35th state in 1863, it is a relatively small state. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Maryland and Virginia to the east, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. The state capital is Charleston.
West Virginia justifies in every way its nickname, the Mountain State. With an average elevation of about 1,500 feet (460 metres) above sea level, it is the highest of any U.S. state east of the Mississippi River. It is a region tied economically and socially to the mountain spines that span its length and breadth and to the rivers that enclose it on many sides. Originally it constituted the northwestern portion of Virginia, but its inhabitants defied the state’s secession convention in 1861, choosing instead to remain within the union. Two years later the area formed a new state, its citizenry acting much in the tradition suggested by the motto of West Virginia, “Montani semper liberi” (“Mountaineers are always free”).
The maximum elevation in West Virginia is 4,863 feet (1,482 metres) at Spruce Knob, in the east. The lowest point is 247 feet (75 metres) at Harpers Ferry, located on a steep tongue of land rising above the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. The land is rugged, ranging from hilly to mountainous, and there are no extensive expanses of level land. The state has two panhandles, one knifing northward between Pennsylvania and Ohio, the other eastward between Maryland and Virginia.
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All of West Virginia is a part of the Appalachian Mountain system. It is commonly subdivided into two major physiographic regions: the Appalachian Plateau Province and the Ridge and Valley Province. In general, these are separated by the Allegheny Front, dividing the waters that flow to the Atlantic Ocean from those flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. The Appalachian Plateau Province covers the western two-thirds of the state and coincides with the Ohio River drainage basin. It is a region severely dissected by streams into a maze of hills and valleys, and, in places, the original plateau surface shows as the uniform top levels of the remaining ranges. The eastern portion of the plateau, with the highest mountains of the state, is referred to as the Allegheny Mountain section. The Allegheny Mountains include more than 40 peaks over 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) in elevation, inducing heavy precipitation in the area and making it the wettest in the state and the source of many of its rivers. The eastern edge of the state and the eastern panhandle comprise the Ridge and Valley Province. This geologic province takes in most of the Potomac River basin and is famous for its northeast-southwest folded mountain alignment, part of the chain reaching from Canada to north-central Alabama. The northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains forms a minor region in the easternmost end of the eastern panhandle.
The drainage east of the Allegheny Front features a trellised pattern flowing toward the northeast and ultimately draining into the Potomac. The western portions drain across an inclined plane by a longer, dendritic drainage pattern that flows generally northwest into the Ohio River. A very small area drains into the eastward-bound James River system of Virginia.
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Drainage over West Virginia’s rugged surface has created some of the state’s most productive and level alluvial soils on the larger river floodplains. The weathered limestone soils of the east are suited for pasture and orchards. Some of the clay soils along the Ohio River are bases for the ceramics industry. In general, however, the high relief and deciduous forest of the Appalachian Plateau Province produce a thin, rocky, acidic soil not conducive to large-scale commercial farming.
Jan 18, 2024 · West Virginia, from west to east, is divisible into three primary geographic regions: Appalachian Plateau Province: This region, lying within the southern Appalachian range , occupies the western part of West Virginia and is known for its rugged landscape, formed primarily of sedimentary rocks.
- Charleston
- State of West Virginia
- US-WV
Mar 28, 2022 · West Virginia’s mountain towns are more than just launchpads for Appalachian adventures. From the charming towns of Fayetteville and Lewisburg to historic… Tucked away among West Virginia's Appalachian Mountains are a bounty of towns, each with its own distinctive cultural heritage.
Cliffs overlooking the New River near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. The Appalachian Mountains contain major deposits of anthracite coal as well as bituminous coal. In the folded mountains the coal is in metamorphosed form as anthracite, represented by the Coal Region of northeastern Pennsylvania.
