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WEST VIRGINIA
The people of WEST VIRGINIA are only half
joking when they call their state the Ireland
of the US. Generally poor and almost entirely
rural, it shares a similar history of exploitation
by outside powers, with timber and coalmining
companies taking advantage of the rich natural
resources while giving little in return.
But, quite apart from the almost Third World deprivation
which endures in some areas, West Virginia is
also, in places at least, incredibly beautiful,
and can boast the longest white-water rivers and
most extensive wilderness areas in the eastern
US. The extreme topography, which has historically
isolated its inhabitants, now makes the state
a popular destination for hikers and outdoors
enthusiasts, and the moonshiners of old have been
replaced by ski instructors and mountain-bike
guides. Pioneer settlers started to cross the
mountains of western Virginia in significant numbers
during the middle of the seventeenth century.
Farming small plots of land with their own labor,
they came to have ever less in common with the
slave-holding plantation owners of old Virginia,
and when the Civil War broke out, the area declined
to secede from the Union. The Supreme Court never
ruled whether West Virginia was legally entitled
to declare itself a state, and Virginia itself
has still not officially recognized the split.
West Virginia has, however, developed a political
and economic identity of its own. Around 1900,
when railroads from the east coast first reached
into the mountainous interior, timber companies
clear-cut stand after stand of forest, setting
up a succession of mill towns, each dismantled
in its turn when they moved on somewhere new.
Cass, now preserved within the Allegheny National
Forest, is one of the few that was left intact.
Later on, coal-mining conglomerates, especially
in the south, perfected the "company town" approach,
wherein workers were paid a little bit less each
month than the amount they owed for their company-provided
food and lodging.
Coal companies still exert immense power in West
Virginia, but the real key to the state's future
prosperity is tourism, which in places now accounts
for over half its income. The state's most popular
destination, the restored 1850s town of Harpers
Ferry, is barely in West Virginia at all, standing
just across the broad rivers which form its Maryland
and Virginia borders. To the west, the Allegheny
Mountains stretch for over 150 miles; more than
a million acres of hardwood forest rival New England
for brilliant autumnal color. West Virginia's
oldest and most attractive town, Lewisburg, sits
just off I-64 at the mountains' southern foot,
while the capital, Charleston, lies in the comparatively
flat Ohio River valley of the west.
To
view Vacation Rental Homes in WEST VIRGINIA click
here.
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