Its motto: Mountaineers Are Always Free.

Its nicknames: Mountain State, Panhandle State, Switzerland of America.

High in the Mountains, Deep Forests and a Love of Home

"Take me home, country roads" — so go the lyrics to a song about West Virginia. There is something about this state — the most mountainous east of the Mississippi River — that taps the American longing for home, summoning up the taste of hot buttered biscuits, the whine of a lonesome fiddle, and the creak of a rocking chair out on the front porch.

West Virginia is mountain country. The Blue Ridge cuts across the state's eastern neck, while the Allegheny Plateau dominates the interior.

The first settlers who trickled into the area in the early 1700's from Pennsylvania and the Atlantic coast put down roots in valleys carved out by rampaging rivers. After they broke away from Virginia in 1861 at the start of the Civil War, their state became the first and only one to be formed through secession.

Eastern West Virginia is a place so high and wild that some of its corners seem almost subarctic. The mountains are blanketed in forests of spruce, hemlock, oak, and hickory.

To the west, the state is speckled with small farms and quiet hamlets. The presence of pure silica sand made glassmaking a major industry throughout the northwestern part of the state, while hulking steel mills mushroomed around the northern panhandle city of Wheeling.

South of Charleston is coal country. Coal underlies nearly half of West Virginia, which boasts about 500 working mines. Here also is one of America's wildest waterways, the New River, a playground for white-water rafters.

Glassblowing and manufacturing are highly developed arts in West Virginia. In addition to fine glassware, nearly all the glass marbles manufactured in the U.S. are made in West Virginia.

In 1863 West Virginia joined the Union as the 35th state.

(”The USA Diversity of 50 States”)