West Virginia is generally poor and almost entirely rural, it shares a similar history of exploitation by outside powers, with timber and coalmining 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 white-water rivers and most extensive wilderness areas in the eastern US.

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now makes the state a popular destination for hikers and outdoors enthusiasts, and the moonshiners of old have been replaced by ski instructors and mountain-bike guides.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 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.