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How big is West Virginia?

427 kilómetros!

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West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the eastern United States, in the Appalachian Highlands. At its widest, from its western border to the tip of its Eastern Panhandle near Harpers Ferry, it measures about 430 kilometers (265 miles) from west to east.

Size

The US Census Bureau's boundary data place West Virginia between longitudes 82.64° and 77.72° west and latitudes 37.20° and 40.64° north. Across the middle of the state, that span of longitude is about 427 kilometers (265 miles). From its southern tip to the top of its Northern Panhandle, the state is about 382 kilometers (237 miles) long.

The state covers 62,755 square kilometers (24,230 square miles), including 489 square kilometers (189 square miles) of water. Its highest point is Spruce Knob, 1,482 meters (4,863 feet) above sea level. Its lowest is on the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, only about 75 meters (240–250 feet) above sea level.

Size comparisons

  • West Virginia is a little less than twice as wide as Rwanda, which measures about 230 kilometers (140 miles) from west to east.
  • By area, West Virginia is about 2.4 times the size of Rwanda.
  • The Grand Canyon, about 450 kilometers long when measured along its river, is only slightly longer than West Virginia is wide.
  • West Virginia is about 10 marathons wide, at 42.195 kilometers (26.2 miles) each.
  • Spruce Knob's summit is about one-sixth as high above sea level as the summit of Mount Everest, which reaches 8,849 meters (29,032 feet).

An irregular shape

West Virginia has an irregular outline. Its border is about 1,880 kilometers (1,170 miles) long. About half of it follows rivers, nearly a third follows the crests of mountain ridges, and the rest is straight lines drawn by people.

Two narrow arms, called panhandles, stick out from the main body of the state. The Northern Panhandle runs about 103 kilometers (64 miles) north between the Ohio River and Pennsylvania, and in places it is only 6 kilometers (4 miles) wide. The Eastern Panhandle extends about 177 kilometers (110 miles) to Harpers Ferry. Where Morgan and Hampshire counties meet, the state is only 11 kilometers (7 miles) wide.

How West Virginia became a state

West Virginia was part of Virginia until the Civil War. In April 1861 a Virginia convention voted to leave the Union. Leaders in western Virginia who wanted to stay in the Union met in Wheeling and began forming a new state.

Congress approved the new state after its constitutional convention took steps to abolish slavery there, and President Abraham Lincoln decided in favor of statehood on December 31, 1862. West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863. It was the only permanent change to a state's borders to come out of the Civil War.

The new state was built from whole counties. It kept Virginia's old borders with Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and its new border with Virginia followed existing county lines, in many places cutting across ridges and valleys. Three of the Eastern Panhandle's counties were included so that the Union could control the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Sources

La Escala del Universo > West Virginia
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