West Virginia Maps
This entry was originally written by Johni Cerny, in Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
Maps of early Virginia are crucial when tracing colonial families on the frontier that would later become West Virginia. (See Virginia Maps for a selected bibliography.) See also Henry Gannett, A Gazetteer of Virginia and West Virginia, (1904, reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2002); Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer, 2d ed., Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme Publishing, 2002; and West Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer, 2d ed., Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme Publishing, 2001.
Present-day county road maps can be obtained from West Virginia Department of Highways, Map Sales, 1900 Washington St. East, Charleston, WV 25305. These maps show the location of many cemeteries.
The West Virginia Archives and History Library has a large collection of maps. These range from Sanborn maps, coal mines, timber, plat, highways and tax maps. There is a searchable database, which is continually being updated, at this link: http://www.wvculture.org/history/archives/maps.html
The West Virginia and Regional History Collection (see {{West Virginia Archives, Libraries, and Societies]]) and The Family History Library (FHL) have sizable collections of West Virginia maps, including nineteenth-century landownership maps. See Edgar Barr Sims, Making a State: Formation of West Virginia'¦(Charleston, W.Va.: E. B. Sims, 1956).
