geografia: Charleston, West Virginia

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Charleston () is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha rivers, it is the county seat of Kanawha County. The population was 48,864 at the 2020 census, with an estimated population of 46,482 in 2024. The Charleston metropolitan area has approximately 203,000 residents. Charleston was established in the late 18th century and formally incorporated in 1794, with the trustees being Daniel Boone, Leonard Morris, and William Morris. The city gained prominence in the 19th century with the growth of the salt industry and later expanded due to coal mining and the first natural gas well. After West Virginia separated from…

Evidence: 48 • authority: 72

The history of coal mining in the United States starts with the first commercial use in 1701, within the Manakin-Sabot area of Richmond, Virginia. Coal was the dominant power source in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, and although in rapid decline it remains a significant source of energy in 2025. Coal became the largest source of energy in the 1880s, when it overtook wood, and remained the largest source until the early 1950s, when coal was exceeded by petroleum. Coal provided more than half of the nation's energy from the 1880s to the 1940s, and from 1906 to 1920 provided more than three-quarters of US energy.

Evidence: 48 • authority: 72

The history of West Virginia stems from the 1861 Wheeling Convention, which was an assembly of northwestern Southern Unionists from northwestern counties of the state of Virginia. They formed the Restored Government of Virginia, which purported to represent the government of the entire state of Virginia but in fact only represented those areas controlled by the Union army. It was recognized as the official government of the state of Virginia by Congress, and it repealed the Ordinance of Secession that Virginia made at the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865). It created West Virginia from the western counties under Union Army control. The new state was formed and recognized by the U.…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 72

The Kanawha saltworks were an important 19th-century mineral resource of the United States. Originally known as Buffalo Salt Lick, in the early 19th century salt producers began creating brine wells, in the vicinity of the Great Kanawha River in what is now West Virginia, and building kettles and furnaces for boiling the brine down into salable crystal salt. The Kanawha is a tributary of the Ohio River and the watershed lies within what are now Fayette, Kanawha, Putnam, and Mason counties. The salt works, also known as the Kanawha Salines, ran for 10 mi (16 km) along the river.

Evidence: 24 • authority: 72

West Virginia is a mountainous, landlocked state in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania and Maryland to the northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with 1,778,373 residents. The capital and most populous city is Charleston, with 49,055 residents. West Virginia is dominated by mountainous terrain, shaped by the Allegheny and Cumberland ranges and cut by the Ohio, Kanawha, and Potomac river valleys. This geography isolated the region from the rest of Virginia. When Virginia seceded from the Union…