WEST VIRGINIA 



8258 



WEST VIRGINIA 



framed and the name of the new state was 

 changed to West Virginia. The constitution 

 was adopted by the people in 1862, and Vir- 

 ginia having given her consent, West Virginia 

 was admitted to the Union on June 19, 1863. 



Statehood. The new state furnished more 

 than its quota of troops to the Federal armies, 

 and while it was struggling toward independent 

 statehood war was raging within its borders. A 

 political revolution followed the period of re- 

 construction, and a new constitution was 

 adopted in 1872. Meanwhile, an economic 

 revolution was gradually changing the indus- 

 trial character of the state and was resulting in 

 a rapid growth of industry and population. 



At the time of separation from the mother 

 state, West Virginia loyally assumed its share 

 of the old state debt, and the question con- 

 tinued to be a prominent issue in state politics 

 until 1915, when an adjustment was made 

 which placed West Virginia's liability at $12,- 

 393,929, with interest reckoned at $8,178,000. 



Other Items of Interest. West Virginia's me- 

 tropolis and chief industrial center, Wheeling, 

 is frequently referred to as the "Nail City," 

 because of its extensive manufacture of nails 

 and allied steel and iron products. 



It was within the bounds of the territory 

 which later became West Virginia that John 

 Brown's famous raid at Harper's Ferry took 

 place in 1859. 



In Grant County there is a large cliff of 

 white sandstone which bears the name of 

 "Painted Rocks," for on its face appears a 

 group of roughly outlined animals deer, buf- 

 faloes, bears, snakes almost all the animals of 

 the region, in fact. These drawings were dis- 

 covered by the first white men who visited the 

 regions, but no clew has ever been found as to 

 the race or date of the artist. 



The longest journey which one could take in 

 a straight line within West Virginia is about 

 two hundred seventy miles, from Harper's 

 Ferry in the northeast to Kenova in the south- 

 west. 



West Virginia has more streams than most 

 other states of the Union, but much less water 

 surface, for there are no lakes. 



The region of Spruce Knob has many moun- 

 tain springs, some of them large enough and 

 possessed of force enough to supply power for 

 mills. 



Since the coal measures are for the most part 

 horizontal and crop out on the sides of the 

 river valleys, most of the mining is drift mining 

 and not shaft mining. That is, lateral openings 



are made in the mountain sides instead of the 

 vertical shafts necessary in regions where the 

 coal lies deep. Drift mining is considerably 

 cheaper than shaft mining. 



Clarksburg was the birthplace of '"Stonewall" 

 Jackson. 



It is impossible to estimate the value of the 

 logs which in the early days of settlement in 

 this region were chopped up and burned ; for as 

 in almost all pioneer districts, forests were 

 looked upon not as a source of wealth but as a 

 barrier to progress and development. E.B.P. 



Consult Lewis's History and Government of 

 West Virginia; Willey's An Insight into the 

 Formation of West Virginia. 



Related Subjects. In the following articles in 

 these volumes, detailed information as to the 

 geography and life of West Virginia may be 

 found : 



CITIES 



Bluefield Martinsburg 



Charleston Morgantown 



Clarksburg Moundsville 



Fairmont Parkersburg 



Huntington Wheeling 



Coal 



Alleghany 

 Blue Ridge 



Great Kanawha 

 Monongahela 



Brown, John 



LEADING PRODUCTS 



Petroleum 



MOUNTAINS 



Cumberland 



RIVERS 



Ohio 

 Potomac 



UNCLASSIFIED 



Harper's Ferry 



WEST VIRGINIA, UNIVERSITY OF, at Mor- 

 gantown, a state university occupying a pic- 

 turesque campus of fifty acres along the Mo- 

 nongahela river. It was founded in 1868 by a 

 union of Woodburn Seminary, Monongahela 

 Academy and West Virginia Agricultural Col- 

 lege. The institution is organized into colleges 

 of arts and sciences, law, medicine, engineering 

 and mechanic arts, agriculture and veterinary 

 science, schools of fine arts, music and military 

 science and tactics, the commercial school and 

 the summer school. The medical department 

 is affiliated with the College of Physicians and 

 Surgeons of Baltimore and with the Women's 

 Medical College at Baltimore. The military 

 course is based on that given at West Point. 

 From the students of this . department are 

 chosen 225 state cadets who receive tuition and 

 equipment free. Tuition in all departments 

 except law and medicine is free to residents of 

 the state, and expenses are unusually low. The 

 library has about 58,000 volumes. There are 

 over 110 instructors and about 1,185 students. 



