We also extend our thanks to Dr. Ken Hechler, West Virginia secretary of state; Dr. Gordon R. Short, vice-president for Academic Affairs, West Virginia Institute of Technology; Kenneth M. Ferguson, Planning and Research Division supervisor, West Virginia Department of Transportation; Sharon Lewis, West Virginia Department of Education; and Sharon Burgess Paxton, research analyst, West Virginia Development Office. Finally, we thank students and other readers for useful comments on the first edition of this work and for encouraging us to undertake a second edition.
1
Prehistorie Times
A Land of Grandeur. In 1784, nearly two hundred years before a popular song referred to West Virginia as “almost Heaven,” Thomas Jefferson wrote that the contrast between the “placid and delightful” Shenandoah Valley and the “wild and tremendous” mountains at Harpers Ferry, the Potomac gateway to the state, was worth a journey across the Atlantic Ocean.1 Jefferson might have found equally awesome beauty in Hawks Nest, a crag towering 585 feet above the turbulent New River, spectacular waterfalls in the Kanawha, Little Kanawha, and Blackwater rivers, the serenity of the Canaan Valley, and numerous other natural formations in West Virginia.
Geological Determinants. The striking physiography of West Virginia has sprung from geological activity. For some four hundred million years, the state lay in a long trough, or geosyncline, that extended from New Brunswick to Alabama, where the Appalachian Highlands are today. The trough was actually an arm of the ocean, which left vast deposits of salt, either as brine or rock salt, in the western parts of West Virginia and limestone, from fossils of marine animals, in the eastern sections.
To the east of the trough rose a continent known as Old Appalachia. From it and other highlands, material washed down into the geosyncline, pressing it downward and forcing the surrounding rock upward. This action weakened the geosyncline and gave rise to a disturbance known as the Appalachian Revolution, in which rock strata were repeatedly folded and uplifted. Prior to the final upheaval much of West Virginia was swampland with luscious vegetation, which decomposed and formed vast beds of coal. About seventy million years ago the state and surrounding areas were part of a peneplain, worn almost flat by erosion. Uplift, nevertheless, continued, and at the beginning of the Ice Age, about one million years ago, streams and erosion had sculptured the landscape of West Virginia essentially as it is today. Continued action, however, has since deepened the valleys and sharpened the contours of the land.
During the Ice Age, which ended only about ten thousand years ago, great polar ice sheets crept southward into the present Ohio Valley. The glaciers did not reach West Virginia, but they drastically changed its drainage system. Lake Erie did not exist before the Ice Age, and streams from the Allegheny Plateau flowed in a northwesterly direction into the Erie Basin and then into the ancient Saint Lawrence River. The ice blocked the Monongahela River, which followed roughly its present course toward Pittsburgh before turning into the Erie Basin at Beaver Falls, and impounded its waters in the Monongahela Valley to a depth of about eleven hundred feet. The lake thus formed extended southward to the Little Kanawha Valley and overflowed through a channel approximating modern Fishing Creek. Waters of the lake receded with the formation of the Ohio River, which carved its valley as a marginal glacial stream.
The Teays River, the principal prehistoric stream of southern West Virginia, followed the course of the Kanawha, its successor, westward to Scary, about fifteen miles below Charleston, and turned into the present Teays Valley toward Huntington. This ancient riverbed is only about one hundred feet above the level of the Kanawha. The New River, a tributary of the Kanawha, defied the forces of uplift in the Appalachians and continued its westward course from North Carolina and Virginia even after other streams of the Atlantic slope directed their flow toward the ocean.2
Extent and General Location. With an area of 24,282 square miles, West Virginia ranks forty-first among the states. Its greatest distance from east to west is 260 miles and that from north to south is 327 miles. West Virginia has a mean elevation of over 1,500 feet, the highest of any state east of the Mississippi River, but elevations vary from only 247 feet at Harpers Ferry to 4,860 feet at Spruce Knob in Pendleton County.
West Virginia lies within two major physiographic regions of the eastern United States. They are the Valley and Ridge Province and the Allegheny Plateau, both part of the Appalachian Highlands. The two most striking features of the Valley and Ridge section are the Blue Ridge, to the east of the state, and the Appalachian Valley, known locally as the Valley of Virginia, or the Shenandoah Valley. About two hundred miles long, the Valley of Virginia tapers in width from about sixty-five miles on the Maryland border to fifty miles on the North Carolina line. It includes all of Jefferson County and part of Berkeley County, West Virginia, but in some respects most of the upper Potomac River basin is a giant arm of the Valley. Noted for its rich limestone soils and gentle terrain, the Valley is a region of surpassing beauty.
The Allegheny Plateau, separated from the Valley and Ridge section by a bold escarpment known as the Allegheny Front, embraces about five-sixths of West Virginia. The plateau slopes toward the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. One lofty section of Randolph, Pendleton, and Pocahontas counties is the source of numerous streams, including the South Branch of the Potomac, Cheat, Tygart Valley, Elk, and Greenbrier rivers. The central portion is marked by extremely rugged terrain, where rivers have carved deep, canyonlike channels, and forest-clad hills tower above narrow valleys. Toward the Ohio River, the plateau has a mean elevation of about one thousand feet. There its hills seldom rise above a few hundred feet. Rich alluvial soils dominate lowlands along the Ohio and, through its tributaries, reach like long fingers deep into the heart of the plateau.
Rivers and Lakes. In many mountainous regions of the world, rivers have mitigated difficulites in communication and ameliorated tendencies toward particularism. West Virginia rivers form a large part of its boundaries and give it an irregular shape with two panhandles, but, since they and their tributaries flow in all directions, they have given the state very little unity. The Potomac and its tributaries flow into the Chesapeake Bay; the Monongahela, with its West Fork, Tygart Valley, and Cheat influents, northward to the Ohio at Pittsburgh; and the Little Kanawha, Kanawha, Guyandotte, and Big Sandy in more westerly courses to the Ohio. Each of the Ohio tributaries has its own hinterland. The turbulent New prevents close river ties between the Greenbrier and Bluestone with the Kanawha. Since the Ice Age, West Virginia has had no natural lakes, but in recent decades flood control projects on state streams have created several large artificial reservoirs.
The Fist Inhabitants. The historic record forms but a small fragment of the story of human occupation of West Virginia. Archaeological findings show that aboriginal man lived or hunted in the state for at least ten thousand years before the arrival of the first Europeans.
Archaeologists long ago discarded theories that the Indians were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel or relicts from the submerged continent of Atlantis. They now generally agree that the first Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Asiatic Russia to Alaska and gradually fanned out over the American continents. They theorize that the Indians may have crossed the sea in kayaks, walked over an ice cap during the glacial period, or used a land bridge formed by the receding glacier. Those supporting the idea of a land bridge hold that the Pacific Ocean may have been as much as 250 feet lower than it is now. The Indians