Virginia

I

Introduction

Virginia, in full Commonwealth of Virginia, one of the southern Atlantic states of the United States, bordered on the north by West Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.; on the east by Maryland and the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by North Carolina and Tennessee; and on the west by Kentucky. The Potomac River forms the north-eastern boundary. Chesapeake Bay separates the Eastern Shore area, located in the southern part of the Delmarva Peninsula, from the rest of the state.

Virginia entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the tenth of the original 13 states. One of the first English communities in North America was established at Jamestown in 1607, and Virginia subsequently became a leading colony. Major battles of the American War of Independence (1775-1783) and American Civil War (1861-1865) were fought in the state. Virginia’s economy was chiefly agricultural until the 20th century, when manufacturing became the principal goods-producing industry. In the late 1990s farming, mining, tourism, and trade were also important sectors of the state’s economy, and numerous Virginians were employed by the federal government. Virginia is famous as the birthplace of many notable Americans, including eight presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. The state is probably named after Elizabeth I of England, known as the “Virgin Queen”; the name may also be derived from that of a Native American community in the area of the original colony. Virginia is known as the “Old Dominion”.

II

Land and Resources

Virginia has an area of 109,624 sq km (42,326 sq mi) and is roughly triangular in shape; its extreme dimensions are 755 km (469 mi) from east to west and 323 km (201 mi) from north to south. Elevations range from sea level, along the Atlantic Ocean, to 1,746 m (5,729 ft), from the top of Mount Rogers, in the south-west. Virginia has a coastline of about 180 km (112 mi), and its tidal shoreline, which includes land bordering inlets and coasts of islands, measures some 5,335 km (3,315 mi).

A

Physical Geography

Virginia can be divided into five geographical regions: the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Piedmont Plateau, the Blue Ridge region, the Ridge and Valley region, and the Cumberland Mountains region. About one fifth of the state forms part of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The eastern portion consists of the Eastern Shore, the southern part of the Delmarva Peninsula. Soils of the Coastal Plain, which is also known as the Tidewater region, are generally infertile. The region has many marshes and swamps, including a section of Great Dismal Swamp in the south-east.

About one third of Virginia is part of the Piedmont Plateau. The eastern edge of the region is marked by the fall line, at which rivers flowing east to the lower-lying Coastal Plain form rapids and waterfalls.

The Blue Ridge region is made up of a narrow belt of metamorphic rocks forming a complex upland with the highest peaks in the state, Mount Rogers and White Top Mountain. The region is very narrow in the north and includes a wider plateau south of Roanoke.

The Ridge and Valley Region consists of sandstone ridges as high as 455 m (1,500 ft) above the adjacent valleys developed on limestones and shales. The region includes the Valley of Virginia, or Great Valley. The Cumberland Mountains region, part of the Allegheny Mountains, resembles the Ridge and Valley Region, except that the uplands are more extensive than the valleys. Soils in the Ridge and Valley and Cumberland Mountain regions are shallow and infertile, except where they have developed on limestones.

Principal rivers are the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, James, Roanoke (Staunton), Shenandoah (one of the tributaries of the Potomac), New, Tennessee, Clinch, and Holston.

The state’s largest body of water is Chesapeake Bay, with an area in Virginia of some 3,915 sq km (1,510 sq mi). Virginia has few big natural freshwater lakes; Lake Drummond, the biggest, lies at the centre of Great Dismal Swamp in the south-eastern Atlantic Coastal Plain.

B

Climate

Virginia has a humid subtropical climate, except in the north-west, where the climate is humid temperate. The climate varies from area to area, but average temperatures generally decrease from south-east to north-west. Norfolk, in the south-eastern Atlantic Coastal Plain, has an average January temperature of about 4.7° C (40.5° F) and an average July temperature of about 25.8° C (78.5° F); Pennington Gap, in the mountainous south-west, has a mean January temperature of 2.2° C (36° F) and a mean July temperature of about 23.1° C (73.5° F). The recorded temperature in Virginia has ranged from -34.4° C (-30° F), in 1985 at Mountain Lake Biological Station in the south-west, to 43.3 ° C (110° F), in 1900 at Columbia and in 1954 at Balcony Falls. The state is rarely struck by damaging tornadoes or hurricanes.