West Virginia
- West Virginia was once part of Virginia. It was separated because of local support for the Union during the Civil War, while Virginia joined the confederacy.
- In 2002 inhabitants of the western part of Mingo County petitioned the county to allow it to break off and join Kentucky on the other side of the Tug River. Neither state has seriously considered the request.
- The southern areas of the state have grumbled about the lack of representation and respect from the state capital in Charleston. Some southern counties, such as McDowell, Mercer, Raleigh and Monroe, have rhetorically raised the idea of joining rural counties in southwestern Virginia (which feel equally disenfranchised from their state government in Richmond) to form a new state. No serious proposals have ever made it to the state capital for debate, however.
Read more about this topic: List Of U.S. State Partition Proposals
Famous quotes containing the words west and/or virginia:
“When choosing between two evils, I always like to pick the one I never tried before.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)