West Virginia | America's Heartland (2024)

FAQs

What are the top 10 commodities in West Virginia? ›

West Virginia's leading farm commodities include beef cattle, broiler chickens, hay, dairy products, apples, corn, and turkeys. Broilers are the top agricultural commodity produced. About 10 million chickens are raised annually along the border.

It was approximately a 2,000 mile trip. In good weather, a wagon train would complete the journey in five months. However, heavy rains were known to make the typical trip last around six months.

A National Railroad

Once through the mountains, track-laying accelerates from 25cm to nearly 10km a day. Each spike is hit three times. Ten spikes to a rail, 250 rails a km, making 21 million hammer swings.

In just one year, 40, 000 settlers move to Nebraska, fanning out across the frontier in wagon trains. When in the mid-19th century to the late 19th century, they went out and settled some hostile territory known to mankind.

Created in West Virginia by Italian immigrants needing a hearty, delicious and, most importantly, non-perishable lunch to take underground while working the coal mines, pepperoni rolls are now the state's official food.

Other top manufacturing exports are transportation equipment ($1.4 billion), machinery, except electrical ($367 million), primary metal manufacturing ($285 million), and petroleum and coal products ($123 million).

The Sharps Carbine was the weapon of choice for many outlaws and cowboys in the Wild West. It was used by some of the most famous figures of the era, such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid.

From Independence, Missouri, the trail folowed the Little Blue, Platte, Sweetwater, Snake, and Columbia Rivers through Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon. Emigrants typically traveled 12 to 15 miles per day and it took 4 to 6 months to travel the 2,000 miles.

Death on the Trail

Death was an ever-present companion. It is estimated that as many as 1 in 10 emigrants died on the trail—between 20,000 and 30,000 people. The majority of deaths occurred because of diseases caused by poor sanitation.

Approximately 1,200 died while building the Transcontinental Railroad. Over a thousand Chinese had their bones shipped back to China to be buried.

What insect would devour half of the crops in the West in 1874? ›

The Locust Plague of 1874, or the Grasshopper Plague of 1874, occurred when hordes of Rocky Mountain locusts invaded the Great Plains in the United States and Canada. The locust hordes covered about 2,000,000 square miles (5,200,000 km²) and caused millions of dollars' worth of damage.

Builders of the transcontinental railroad faced geographical obstacles across the entire line. But none were quite as formidable as the snowy granite mountain range rising east of Sacramento. Getting through the Sierra Nevada would require fortitude, technology -- and the sacrifice of many workers' lives.

The history of the U.S. state of Nebraska dates back to its formation as a territory by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, passed by the United States Congress on May 30, 1854.

There were many legislators who argued that Nebraska simply did not need a law because slavery did not exist "in any practical form" in the state. The 1860 census showed that of the 82 blacks in Nebraska, 67 were free and 15 were enslaved, including 5 in Kearney County and 10 in Otoe County.

Warren Buffet

Warren Buffet is likely the most famous person from Nebraska. He is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Warren is one of the most influential investors in the world today, with a net worth of $120 billion as of 2023.

West Virginia has an abundance and variety of natural resources, although bituminous coal is the most important. The state's recoverable coal reserves are estimated varyingly at 2 to 50 billion tons, and deposits are located in all but a handful of the counties.

Overview of the West Virginia Economy

The top three sectors by total employment are Mining, Healthcare and Social Assistance, Manufacturing, while the unemployment rate across the state in 2022 was 4.0%.

The 10 largest sources of cash receipts from the sale of U.S.-produced farm commodities in calendar year 2022 are (in descending order): corn, cattle/calves, soybeans, dairy products/milk, broilers, hogs, miscellaneous crops, chicken eggs, wheat, and hay.