West Virginia

West Virginia is the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian Mountains, and it shows in every direction — there is scarcely a flat acre in it. The land is a jumble of forested ridges, deep hollows, and twisting river valleys, with the highest average elevation of any state east of the Mississippi. Its odd shape, with two narrow panhandles reaching north and east, traces the mountain ridges and river valleys that set it apart from Virginia when it broke away during the Civil War.

The mountains made the state and its hardships. Beneath the ridges lie the coal seams that drove its economy and history — above them, the New River Gorge — paradoxically among the oldest rivers on the continent — cuts a dramatic canyon now protected as a national park. Spruce Knob, the high point at 4,863 feet (1,482 m), rises in the cool eastern highlands. Whitewater rivers, dense hardwood forest, and rugged terrain define a thinly populated state where the Appalachians are not a feature but the whole of it.