• West Virginia Tourism and Hotels Guide.
  
  The people of WEST VIRGINIA are only half joking when they call their state the Ireland of America. Generally poor and almost entirely rural, it shares a similar history of exploitation by outside powers, with timber and coal mining companies taking advantage of the rich natural resources while giving little in return. But, quite apart from the almost Third World deprivation which endures in some areas, West Virginia is also, in places at least, incredibly beautiful, and can boast the longest whitewater rivers and most extensive wilderness areas in the eastern USA. The extreme topography, which has historically isolated its inhabitants, now makes the state a popular destination for hikers and outdoors enthusiasts, and the moonshiners of old have been replaced by ski instructors and mountain-bike guides. Pioneer settlers started to cross the mountains of western Virginia in significant numbers during the middle of the seventeenth century. Farming small plots of land with their own labor, they came to have ever less in common with the slave holding plantation owners of old Virginia, and when the Civil War broke out, the area declined to secede from the Union. The Supreme Court never ruled whether West Virginia was legally entitled to declare itself a state, and Virginia itself has still not officially recognized the split. West Virginia has, however, developed a political and economic identity of its own. Around 1901, when railroads from the east coast first reached into the mountainous interior, timber companies clear cut stand after stand of forest, setting up a succession of mill towns, each dismantled in its turn when they moved on somewhere new. Cass, now preserved within the Allegheny National Forest, is one of the few that was left intact. Later on, coal mining conglomerates, especially in the south, perfected the company town approach, wherein workers were paid a little bit less each month than the amount they owed for their company provided food and lodging. Coal companies still wield enormous power in West Virginia, but the real key to the future of the prosperity of the state is tourism, which in some places now account for over half of its income.
  
  The state's most popular destination, the restored 1850s town of Harpers Ferry , is barely in West Virginia at all, standing just across the broad rivers which form its Maryland and Virginia borders. To the west, the Allegheny Mountains stretch for over 150 miles; more than a million acres of hardwood forest rival New England for brilliant autumnal color. West Virginia's oldest and most attractive town, Lewisburg , sits just off I-64 at the mountains' southern foot, while the capital, Charleston , lies in the comparatively flat Ohio River valley of the west.
  
  Charleston West Virginia Tourism
  After leaving the gorge, the New River flows west into the Ohio and eventually the Mississippi, but not before passing through CHARLESTON West Virginia the state capital and largest city. Charleston West Virginia is not a place many people set out to visit, mainly because there's not very much to see or do; the riverfront state capitol , designed by Lincoln Memorial architect Cass Gilbert and completed in 1932, is pleasant enough, with a small monument to black activist Booker T. Washington on its grounds, but nothing really grabs you. The West Virginia Cultural Center (Mon-Thurs 9am-8pm, Fri-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 12-6pm, ; free), in the same compound as the capitol, acts as the state museum with extensive displays in the basement on coalmining, forestry, wars and general social history. The main live showcase of traditional West Virginian culture takes place here during the annual Vandalia Festival , Appalachia's largest celebration of folk arts and crafts, held on Memorial Day weekend and featuring lively bluegrass music and tall-tale-telling contests. The annual Regatta on Labor Day weekend is one of the city's other big events.
  
  West Virginia Hotels
  There are 300 rooms at the very central Travelodge, 2 Kanawha Blvd E tel 304/343-4521 or 1-800/578-7878; $50-75, which also has a sauna and swimming pool; other motels abound along the interstates. General Seafood , 213 Broad St Tues-Sat; tel 304/343-5671, is a restaurant attached to a fish market, and Capitol Street downtown boasts a string of eateries such as the Mykonos Café at no. 218 (tel 304/347-9220), which does good Greek lunch specials. On the western edge of downtown, almost alongside I-64 between Lee and Quarrier streets, the gleaming new Charleston Civic Center mall is the liveliest area to while away a couple of hours.
  
  West Virginia Tourism and Hotels Guides
  West Virginia Tourism

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