scurry, if your audience is businesses in the coal mining area of WV and KY then a good way to to describe the coal mining area of West Virginia and Kentucky is as "the coal mining area of West Virginia and Kentucky".

I thought "Carolina" meant North Carolina. As in "Carolina basketball".

Virginia is a southern state.

I am too lazy to read all the previous posts so has anyone mentioned that West Virginia became a state separate from Virginia because during the Civil War that part of Virginia was fighting with the north so it became a state.The state of West Virginia which I would consider Northern.:)Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

West Virginia and Kentucky are culturally southern. However, a large percentage of the people of each state have Scotch-Irish derivations giving those two states a different cultural feel than, say, South Carolina or Virginia. More of a helluva fella attitude combined with a more strident relgious outlook.

Coal mining in either state is no longer providing many jobs and the UAW is a shadow of the politically and economically powerful force it was from 1920-1980. Neither state looks north or east in its economic thinking much any longer. If you want to understand how West Virginia and Kentucky are trending, realize that both were stalwart Democratic states for a long time. Kentucky trends strongly to the Republicans today and West Virginia, though Democrats dominate locally, has voted for Bush in two straight elections. Hillary will have a difficult time winning West Virginia in 2008 and has almost no chance of winning Kentucky.

It's not necessary to be a southern state to be a part of Appalachia. An article on page 10-A of today’s Greenville(SC) News answers the question. Regions of thirteen states belong to the Appalachian Regional Commission. They are: Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, New York, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Maryland and Alabama. This is sure a surprise to me since I have never thought about most of these states as “Appalachia.” You can see a map showing the areas included in Appalachia at http://cass.etsu.edu/encyclo/region.htm.

I am not surprised that few people know the history of West Virginia. The State of West Virginia continues to this day to promote the idea of the "proud Mountaineer" because the truth is far less palatable. As a 5th generation West Virginian/Virginian I determined to find out for myself how the separation happened. Most histories of the Civil War will only have a few paragraphs on the formation of West Virginia, and usually they will start out by saying "in 1861 delegates from 32 counties assembled in Wheeling..."
The modern reader assumes the citizens of these counties wanted a new state and elected delegates to send to Wheeling. Not one of the "delegates" in Wheeling was elected to their position by the people of West Virginia. They were all chosen by local Unionist groups and were often unknown to most of the citizens of the counties they proposed to represent. After writing a State Constitution the Wheeling gang needed to have it publicly ratified, and they arranged for a referendum, excluding 16 counties totally from voting, and where voting was allowed the voters were faced with armed Union soldiers and were made to vote by voice, thus no paper trail. The turnout was about 19,000 votes, but West Virginia had about 49,000 voters at that time, some 30,000 voters are missing. Some people think that West Virginia was anti-slavery, but this was not so. There were about 20,000 slaves, and statehood was almost lost when some of the Wheeling gang realized that they would have to give up their slaves if they joined the Union. A compromise was reached with the Federal government, and they agreed to free some slaves after the approval of the Willey Ammendment in 1863. West Virginia joined the Union as a slave state. It is interesting to note that 20% of the "delegates" in Wheeling were Northeners, and the first three governors of West Virginia were from Pennsylvania and New York. Also the high number of West Virginia Union troops includes thousands of Ohioans and Pennsylvanians who were recruited in Wheeling and are counted to this day as "loyal West Virginians." At the end of the war the Wheeling gang realized that they were in deep trouble. When the Confederate veterans returned and assumed citizenship Wheeling would lose control, so they drafted a law depriving former Confederates and supporters of voting rights and positions in public office, including the practice of law. This continued until 1872, when the state constitution was rewritten and full rights restored to Confederates. The immediate response was the demotion of Wheeling as the state capital, which was moved south to Charleston, and in 1877 a former Confederate major, Henry Mathews, was elected governor. There is no election or referendum in West Virginia after the Ordinance of Secession in early 1861 until 1872 that truly reflects the wishes of all West Virginians. West Virginians lived approximately 10 years under what amounted to a military junta.
West Virginia Confederate history is often lost in the mix with Virginia, understandably. But West Virginia gave at least 8 generals to the Confederacy, they rode furthest north under General Jenkins to the outskirts of Harrisburg, and in 1864 they returned with Gen. McCausland of Mason County to burn down the town of Chambersburg, and in 1865 McNeill's Rangers of Hardy County rode into Union occupied Cumberland, MD, and kidnapped Generals Kelley and Crook and brought them as prisoners to Richmond. The only general history of the war that details the formation of West Virginia is J.G. Randall's "The Civil War and Reconstruction." Regarding your question, I would say that West Virginia is Southern.