Why The United States Has Two Virginias: Virginia and West Virginia

Get 10% off 6” and 8.5” MOVA Globes with code GEOFF at movaglobes.com/: bit.ly/movageoff

9:09 "Virginia has far larger and more metropolitan cities than Virginia"

One thing i’ve always thought was weird about the Virginias is that theres a big part of Virginia that is completely west of the entire state of West Virginia

When I moved from West Virginia to Los Angeles I was SHOCKED by how few people knew West Virginia was it's own state. Most people would respond to where I was from with, " Ive got a friend that lives in Richmond."

What's really impressive is how creative they were in naming the new state.

There have been multiple Supreme Court cases afterwards on various topics on VA/WV such as whether WV is a legal state (to which the SC said to VA you rebelled you don't get a say) to WV repaying debt owed to VA. Another interesting fact is that even though the border between the states was largely settled upon after the conclusion of the Civil War, there was still a dispute on where the border lay between Jefferson County, WV and Loudoun County, VA which wasn't resolved until I think the 1990's.

I used to go to the post office a lot to mail packages. One day I was in line and a woman was mailing a package to West Virginia. The clerk told her she shouldn't put what part of Virginia it was going to. She didn't understand and he said she have just put "Virginia". She replied that West Virginia was a separate state. The clerk looked at another clerk who confirmed this, but for some reason he looked at me questioningly and when I nodded, he apologized to her. I don't know why he trusted me more than the other people.

A video on WV’s state lines would be very interesting or a state line video series for each state.

Geoff, this particular part of American History has been fascinating to me for many years. I was already very much aware that The Civil War is what made the split possible. But I had never gotten much deeper into it than that. Thank You so much! You have taught me more about these two states in this episode than I have learned in the last several years!

Really appreciate your videos. I was a geography major in University and switched to Urban Planning. Now retired, I still love looking at the "landscape", both urban & rural, and wonder how "things’ developed.

One suggestion for the future topic, are Virginia political geographic oddities. The nubbin that is the Virginia Eastern Shore for one. And how Virginia's northern border extends to the low water line of the Potomac, effectively ceding control to Maryland. However Kentucky, once a part of Virginia, has control of the Ohio River up to the shores of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

We West Virginians have always been proud of how and why we split from Virginia. Yet we've always gotten a bad rap

Happy 160th birthday West Virginia! June 20th 1863 - June 20th 2023!

I live in MD but commute to Winchester, VA once a week. Which means I have to drive through WV's Eastern Panhandle to get to work. My opinion is that those Shenandoah Valley counties of VA are pretty much WV if not for a border. The people are the same. The culture is the same. The beliefs are the same.

You should get a sponsorship from the video game Cities: Skylines 2. It'd be cool to see you make a city with the knowledge that you have with history and urban development

As a proud Mountaineer, I am very glad that the shape of West Virginia gives Virginia "the bird".

Perfect timing with this video as today, June 20th is West Virginia's 160th birthday as a state.

In a similar (if not identical) vein, how ‘bout a piece on how the state of Washington got its name, even though the national capital already had that name. Believe me, it causes no end of annoyance to those of us in the state.

It should be noted that Lincoln was not in favor of WV becoming a state but decided to do so in order to control the entirety of the B & O Railroad. This was pivotal for the war effort. Furthermore, WV was more progressive the VA for most of it's existence. Look towards the history of workers rights and unionization efforts in WV to see this and look towards the fossil fuel companies propaganda like "Friends of Coal" to see how descendants of those who picked up arms against the coal companies now carry water for them, willingly.

...so we could have that John Denver song.