State guide

West Virginia Nature Guide

West Virginia is the only state lying entirely within the Appalachian Mountains — a folded landscape of the high Allegheny Highlands in the east and the dissected Allegheny Plateau falling west toward the Ohio River. Its crowning natural feature is the cold, wind-scoured high country of Spruce Knob, Dolly Sods, and Cranberry Glades, where red spruce, sphagnum bogs, and boreal-relict plants make the mountaintops feel like a piece of Canada stranded in the mid-latitudes. Below them the New River Gorge plunges through ancient sandstone, the Allegheny Front funnels one of the East's great autumn hawk flights, and the state ranks among the country's strongholds for breeding Cerulean and Golden-winged Warblers. From USDA zone 5b on the frigid high ridges to 7a in the warm Ohio and Kanawha valleys, the seasons run cool, humid, and deeply forested.