9 Arguments Virginia and West Virginia Have Never Settled
West Virginia didn’t finish paying off its share of Virginia’s Civil War-era debt until 1939, according to West Virginia’s state encyclopedia.
That’s 76 years of unfinished business.
These are the arguments Virginia and West Virginia have never settled.
1. Statehood’s Legal Cloud
Virginia and West Virginia’s 1863 split still bothers anyone who reads the fine print of the Constitution’s Article IV, the clause that decides how a new state can form.
That article requires the existing state’s legislature to approve losing part of its territory.
Virginia’s seated government in Richmond had already left the Union by then.
So the approval for West Virginia’s statehood came from a rival government based in Wheeling, a government that spoke for only the state’s northwestern counties.
A legal shortcut.
Legal historians still argue about whether that consent ever held up, since it never came from the government Virginians had elected in the first place.
Virginia has never taken West Virginia back to court over it, and the two states have simply left the question unresolved.
How West Virginia Got Its Consent
West Virginia’s paperwork came from something called the Restored Government of Virginia.
Unionist Virginians set up that small emergency government in Wheeling in 1861, right after Virginia’s elected government sided with the Confederacy.
That Restored Government then approved splitting off the new state, technically satisfying Article IV’s consent requirement.
President Lincoln signed the statehood bill on December 31, 1862.
Lincoln’s written opinion still called dividing a state a troubling precedent, one he excused only because the war made it necessary.
2. Debt Nobody Forgot
Virginia sent West Virginia a bill for part of its Civil War-era debt almost as soon as the two states split.
The dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court before the amount owed was ever settled.
West Virginia owed close to $12.4 million by 1915, and interest kept adding to the balance for years after that.
Nobody forgot the bill.
West Virginia’s legislature set up a dedicated fund and a special property tax in 1919 just to chip away at the balance.
The debt wasn’t gone until 1939, according to West Virginia’s state encyclopedia.
It’s the kind of parting bill that’s hard to call fair, arriving from a government West Virginia had already broken away from.
3. West Virginia’s Standing Offer
West Virginia lawmakers have proposed annexing Southwest Virginia counties more than once, and the latest push came through a resolution a West Virginia state senator introduced in November 2025.
That resolution names 21 Virginia counties West Virginia would welcome, from Wise and Buchanan in the far southwest to Frederick and Clarke near the Shenandoah Valley.
West Virginia’s governor made a similar pitch back in 2020, after Virginia’s legislature passed a wave of new gun laws.
He meant it.
Not one Virginia county has taken the offer, and Virginia lawmakers keep calling the whole idea a stunt.
West Virginia keeps making it anyway.
4. Wrong State’s Song
West Virginia’s official state song describes Blue Ridge Mountains and a Shenandoah River that mostly belong to Virginia, not West Virginia.
The two songwriters behind “Country Roads” had never set foot in West Virginia when they picked the state for the rhyme.
Neither had John Denver.
The mountains and river they pictured sat along Interstate 81 near Roanoke, deep inside Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
West Virginia’s legislature made the song official in 2014, geography and all.
Virginians have been needling West Virginians about the mix-up for years, and West Virginians mostly just keep singing.
5. Rivalry on Pause
Virginia Tech and West Virginia University played every year from 1973 to 2005, back when both schools shared the Big East.
Virginia Tech’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2003 broke up the scheduling deal that kept the series annual, and the two sides went twelve years without meeting.
They met again at FedEx Field on September 3, 2017, when Virginia Tech won 31-24.
The teams also played in 2021 and in 2022, when West Virginia held onto the Black Diamond Trophy with a 33-10 win.
Three games in seventeen years.
Neither school’s future schedule lists the other again.
A conference realignment, not a lack of interest, is what keeps the series off the field, and fans on both sides still ask when it comes back.
6. Claiming Stonewall Jackson
Stonewall Jackson was born in Clarksburg, in territory that belonged to Virginia at the time and became part of West Virginia nearly four decades later.
He spent his career teaching at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, led Confederate troops mostly across Virginia soil, and is buried there today.
West Virginia claims his birthplace.
Virginia claims practically everything that came after it, from his classroom to his grave.
Neither side is wrong.
Both states still put his name on schools and historical markers, West Virginia for the birthplace and Virginia for the life that came after it.
7. Union Myth
West Virginia built its founding story on Union loyalty, splitting from Virginia in order to stay with the United States during the Civil War.
The numbers complicate that story.
About 32,000 men from West Virginia’s counties fought for the Union, but 16,000 to 18,000 more fought for the Confederacy.
That’s not the clean split the founding story suggests.
It’s a contradiction Virginia is quick to point out whenever West Virginia leans on its Union credentials.
8. Appalachian Claim
West Virginia is the only state where every county sits inside the federally designated Appalachian region, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Virginia only partly qualifies.
The rest of the state, from Richmond to the Northern Virginia suburbs, sits outside that boundary.
Only Virginia’s southwestern counties count.
West Virginians take that as their best evidence for being the mountain state.
Southwest Virginians will tell you their mountains, hollows, and accents are every bit as Appalachian as anything across the state line.
Psst! How much do you know about Virginia and West Virginia’s shared history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Old Dominion vs. Mountain State
Answer these questions on Virginia and West Virginia history and geography. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Which state has the higher mountain peak?
9. Counties Virginia Sued Over
Virginia took West Virginia to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1871, demanding Berkeley and Jefferson counties back.
Voters in both counties had chosen to join West Virginia in May 1863, right after statehood, and West Virginia's government certified the elections as valid.
Virginia's legislature called the vote rigged and refused to recognize it.
The Court disagreed.
Justices ruled 6 to 3 for West Virginia, finding the certified election results good enough and rejecting Virginia's fraud claims.
Berkeley and Jefferson have stayed part of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle ever since.
8 Virginia Roadside Markers Hiding a Story Nobody Stops to Learn
Virginia has more than 2,600 official historical markers scattered along its roads, part of the oldest state marker program in the country.
A quick glance at a marker lasts about as long as a red light, just enough time to catch two or three sentences and miss the rest of the story.
8 Virginia Roadside Markers Hiding a Story Nobody Stops to Learn
9 Things Virginians Never Do at a Rest Stop on I-95
Virginia keeps its rest stop rules short, but breaking one of them is a misdemeanor that can cost $5 to $100 a violation.
Regulars on I-95 know exactly which habits to avoid before they ever pull off the highway.
