West Virginia was the only state in the Union to separate from a Confederate state (Virginia) during the American Civil War. It was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key border state during the war.

In the wake of Virginia's secession, a convention of delegates from western Virginia met in Wheeling in 1861 for the purpose of forming the "State of Kanawha". The name honored a Native American tribe and a major state river of the same name. When the constitution for the proposed state was finalized in 1862, however, the name had changed to West Virginia.

In 1870, Mordecai Levi had an idea to improve the hard-packed dirt streets of Charleston. He began laying the nation's first brick street on October 23, 1870. He finished the block in 1873.

During the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government collaborated with the Greenbrier resort to create a secret underground bunker to house Congress in the event of an emergency. Although the bunker was kept stocked for 30 years, it was never actually used as an emergency location, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the Washington Post revealed the existence of Project Greek Island in 1992, the bunker was decommissioned and is now open for public tours.

In 1796, Colonel John Stuart sent soon-to-be vice president Thomas Jefferson some fossils his soldiers had discovered in a cave in Greenbrier County, Virginia (present-day West Virginia). Jefferson mistook the bones for a very large lion, which he called "Great Claw" or "Megalonyx". Believing the animal might still be in existence, he told Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out during their journey westward. Scientists would later credit Jefferson with discovering the giant sloth, and even named the species after him: Megalonyx jeffersonii.

For several years, the West Virginia capital intermittently traveled between Wheeling and Charleston. In 1877, citizens voted on a permanent location. Charleston received 41,243 votes, Clarksburg received 29,442 and Martinsburg received 8,046. Wheeling was not considered.

West Virginia is called the Mountain State because it's the only state completely within the Appalachian Mountain region, and its average elevation is higher than any other state east of the Mississippi River.

The first state sales tax in the United States went into effect in West Virginia on July 1, 1921.

The first women's federal prison opened in Alderson, West Virginia on April 30, 1927. One judge described the prison as a "fashionable boarding school". The overriding purpose of the prison was to reform the inmates, not punish them. Prisoners farmed the land and performed office work in order to learn how to type and file. They also cooked and canned vegetables and fruits.

The rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) was designated the official state flower of West Virginia in 1903 after beating honeysuckle and wild rose by more than 15,000 votes in a poll of public schoolchildren from across the state.