USA West Virginia - The History : USA  

USA West Virginia - The History - Travel guide

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USA West Virginia - The History

The History

West Virginia’s earliest known inhabitants were the Mound Builders. However, the region was largely unpopulated when the first European explorers and fur traders penetrated the region in the 1670s. The western Virginian wilderness served as a common hunting ground and battleground for whites and Indians.

As settlers began crossing the mountains, they came into conflict with the French, igniting the French and Indian War (1754-63). During the war, most settlers fled the area. The British Proclamation of 1764 forbade settlement west of the Alleghenies in the hopes of avoiding conflict with Native Americans. But settlers returned after the French hold on the Ohio Valley was broken in 1758.

Native Americans resented this new invasion and were further angered by the unjust treatment settlers often meted out. The brutal murder of the family of chief James Logan provoked a series of attacks. This led to Lord Dunmore’s War, in which the Native Americans were decisively defeated on October 10, 1774.

Native American forces led by British officers invaded the area three times during the Revolutionary War. But the British and Native American threat was virtually removed when George Rogers Clark conquered the Northwest with an army consisting mostly of West Virginians.

The first European explorers and fur traders penetrated the region in the 1670s. Cut off from the eastern regions by rugged mountains, it remained uninhabited for more than a century after Virginia had thriving colonies.

West Virginia's first settlers were Germans and Scotch-Irish who traveled down the valleys from Pennsylvania to settle in what is now the Eastern Panhandle. The oldest town in the state is Sheperdstown, founded by German families as Mecklenburg about 1730.

The first settlers built their homes along rivers. Later settlers crossed the formidable Allegheny Plateau after the British government granted large tracts of land in the trans-Allegheny region to the Ohio Company in 1749. Conflicts with Native Americans slowed settlement before the end of the Revolutionary War.

The British and French flags both flew over western Virginia before it became the state of West Virginia.

Part of Virginia until statehood, West Virginia became the 35th State to Unite under America on June 20, 1863.