Which States Border West Virginia?

Virginia is among the original 13 colonies in America. Virginia borders five states: Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The state's capital is Richmond. The state was named after Queen Elizabeth I.

Establishing Virginia’s Borders

The colony of Virginia was the first to be founded and settled among the original thirteen states. It was created as a large geographic entity, a strategy that was used by the British to establish a maximum legal claim to a territory. With increases in the number of settlers, the territory would then be divided into smaller manageable units. Reasons for further division of territory was mainly to satisfy the needs of the residents as was the case with Delaware, Connecticut, Plymouth, and Rhode Island while in other cases it involved selling vast tracts of land to fund colonial efforts. Among the first settlements to be established on the eastern seaboard was on Roanoke Island by Sir Walter Raleigh. The British later gradually settled Newfoundland before the island was given a charter as a colony in 1585. Raleigh renamed the vast unsettled territory between Newfoundland and Spanish Florida as Virginia to please the Monarch Queen and get favors. The failure of Roanoke Island discouraged Queen Elizabeth from further investment in colonial enterprises in the area.