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The people of WEST VIRGINIA are only half joking when they call their state the Ireland of the US. 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now makes the state a popular destination for hikers and outdoors enthusiasts, and the moonshiners of old have been replaced by ski instructors and mountain-bike guides.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 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 1900, 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 exert immense power in West Virginia, but the real key to the state's future prosperity is tourism, which in places now accounts for over half 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.

With its many mountains and rivers making straight, flat roads virtually nonexistent, getting around West Virginia is as much a part of its attraction as is any specific destination - a bike and a stout pair of legs, or a motorcycle, would be ideal, but a car is pretty necessary if you really want to see the state. Greyhound is basically useless here, and Amtrak, apart from serving Harpers Ferry from Washington DC, has only one, albeit spectacular route, running through the New River Gorge to the capital, Charleston.

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