WV Fun Facts

There’s a lot more to West Virginia that rafting, zip-lines and coal mines. Here are some interesting facts about our state.

State Capitol: Charleston, WV

 

Population: 1,819,777

Percentage population change from April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2009: .06%

Governor: Earl Ray Tomblin (Democrat)

Entered the Union: June 20, 1863 at the 35th state

Motto: Montani Semper Liberi (Mountaineers are always free)

WV Nickname: Mountain State, Panhandle State, Little Switzerland of America

Tree: Sugar Maple

Fruit: Apple

Bird: Cardinal

Mammal: Black Bear

Fish: Brook Trout

Inset: Monarch Butterfly

Soil: Monongahela

Forests: cover 80 percent of state

Gem:West Virginia Coral Fossil

Song: “The West Virginia Hills”

WV Sports Teams: West Virginia Power, Charleston AAA baseball team

Origin of Name: Like Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth, Virgin Queen of England

Top WV Industries: Coal Mining, Tourism, Chemical Manufacturing

West Virginia Points of Interest: New River Gorge, Harpers Ferry, The Greenbrier Resort, Berkley Springs Resort, Cass Scenic Railway

WV Land Area: 24,078 sq. miles

Persons Per Square Mile: 75.1

Highest Point in WV: Spruce Knob; 4,861 ft., Pendleton County

Lowest Point: Harpers Ferry, Potomac River, 240 ft., Jefferson County

Geographic Center: Braxton County, 4 miles east of Sutton

Homeownership Rate: 75.2 percent (US rate 66.2 percent)

Median Household Income: $37,528 (50th in the nation)

Person Below Poverty Line: 17.4 percent (US 13.2 percent)

Some Famous West Virginians

Peral S. Buck, author; George Brett, major league baseball player; Jerry West, National Basketball Hall of Fame; Jason Williams and Bimbo Coles, National Basketball Association players; Chuck Yeager, test pilot and Air Force Genera and first pilot to break the sound barrier; Don Knotts, actor; Sam Hoff, National League Football player; Randy Moss, Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, Troy Brown, NFL players and former Marshall University Football team members; Marc Bulger, Amos Zereoue, Pat White, Steve Slaton, NFL players and former West Virginia University Football team members; Mary Lou Retton, Olympic gymnast; Jennifer Garner, actress; Brad Paisley, musician.

West Virginia Trivia

  • WV is the only state created by carving out territory from another state, without that state’s permission
  • On October 24, 1861, voters overwhelmingly supported the creation of the new state, to be called Kanawha. The following month, a convention at Wheeling changed the name to West Virginia. A hundred years later, a Beckley newspaper suggested the name of the state be changed to either Kanawha or Lincoln because so many people believed West Virginia was the western part of Virginia, and not a separate state.
  • WV’s capital was originally Wheeling. It was changed to Charleston in 1870, back to Wheeling in 1875, and back to Charleston in 1885.
  • WV has the highest average elevation of any state east of the Mississippi River, and the most irregular boundary of any state.
  • Weirton is the only city in the U.S. that extends from one state border to another.
  • Both candidates for governor in the 1888 election –Nathan Goff Jr. and Aretas Fleming—claimed to have won and both were sworn in as governor on March 4, 1889. Goff appeared to have won the election by 130 votes, but Fleming disputed the vote count and asked the Legislature to declare him the winner. The President of the Senate, Robert S. Carr, also claimed the governorship.
  • A 1896 hanging in Ripley turned into a spectacle that attracted nationwide attention. W New York Sun reporter likened the town’s atmosphere that day to a festival. The event is described in a son by Tom T. Hall, The Last Public Hanging in Ripley, WV.
  • West Virginia University played Pitt in the first football game ever broadcast on the radio, in 1921 on KDKA.
  • In 1928, Minnie Buckingham Harper of Welch became the first black woman legislator in the U.S. She was appointed by the Governor to the House Delegates to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband.
  • During World War II, 1700 foreigners, many of them diplomats, were imprisoned at the Greenbrier Resort.
  • On January 26, 1960, Danny Heater of Burnsville High School scored 135 points in a high school basketball game, earning him and entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.
  • From 1849 until 1851, the 1010 foot Wheeling Bridge was the longest bridge in the world. It was blown down by high winds in 1854. The New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville, completed in 1977, is today the longest steel-arch bridge in the western hemisphere and the second longest in the world.
  • Bluefield radio station WHIS claims its broadcast of a murder trial in 1931 was the first ever outside of Russia. The defendant, accused of murdering her three-year-old stepchild by scalding it to death in a wash tub of boiling water, appealed her conviction on the grounds that the broadcast had made a "circus" of her trial.
  • In 1838 excavations began at the Grave Creek Mound, one of the largest conical mounds in the U. S. Among the relics recovered from two burial chambers is the famous Grave Creek Stone, on which are markings that scientists and students of ancient languages have never been able to explain. No other writing like it has ever been found. It has been suggested the stone may be a hoax.
  • The first state sales tax in the United States went into effect in West Virginia on July 1, 1921. The tax was levied against the gross income of banks, street railroads, telephones, telegraph, express, electric light and power retailers, timber, oil, coal, natural gas, and other minerals. [Robert Murray Haig and Carl Shoup, The Sales Tax in the American States]
  • The first federal prison exclusively for women in the U. S. was the Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, which opened in 1926. Among its inmates have been: Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Lolita Lebron, who opened fire on the House of Representatives chamber in 1954, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Ford, and Billie Holiday and Irene Smith, the sister of country music legend Hank Williams Sr., both on drug convictions.
  • The first brick pavement in the U. S. was laid in Charleston in 1870 by a private citizen at his own expense.
  • The first barenuckle world heavyweight championship was held on June 1, 1880, near Colliers, about 300 yards from the Pennsylvania border. Paddy Ryan won an undisputed title by knocking out Joe Goss of England in the 85th round.
  • The first union soldier killed by enemy action in the Civil War was Bailey Thornberry Brown. On May 22, 1861, while engaged in obtaining recruits, he was fired upon by Confederate pickets at Fetterman, near Grafton. He was given a military funeral. The first significant land battle between Union and Confederate Armies was the Battle of Philippi, on June 3, 1861.
  • ESPN's Scholastic picked as the best sports team nickname in America the Dots of Poca High School in Poca. The team nickname was suggested by a sportswriter for the Charleston Gazette in 1928.
  • Each October several hundred parachutists jump 876 feet from the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville on Bridge Day, West Virginia's largest single-day event, which attracts about 100,000 spectators. Automobile traffic is rerouted for the event, which has been held since 1980. The bridge is the second highest in the United States, behind the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. Three people have died during Bridge Day jumps, the last in 1987. Bridge Day was canceled in 2001 because of fears of a terrorist attack.
  • Gov. Cecil Underwood was the state's youngest governor when he was first elected in 1956 at the age of 34. Elected again in 1996, Underwood became the nation's oldest governor. He turned 78 on Nov. 5, 2000.
  • On May 31, 1992, with the Cold War apparently over, the Washington Post revealed a fact that a small number of West Virginians had largely kept secret for thirty years: Underneath the Greenbrier resort at White Sulphur Springs existed a huge, two-story bunker designed to house the entire United States Congress and support staff for forty days in the event of a nuclear attack on this country.
  • Towns in West Virginia named after cities in other countries include Athens, Berlin, Cairo, Calcutta, Geneva, Ghent, Glasgow, Killarney, Lima, London, Moscow, Odessa, Ottawa, Palermo, Rangoon, Santiago, Shanghai, Vienna, and Wellington.
  • The world's largest sycamore tree is located on the Back Fork of the Elk River in Webster Springs.