Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
Long wings, wards, grounds, and archives support guided tours of a psychiatric hospital that operated from the Civil War era into the late twentieth century.
Places and wildlife — page 63
Browse Explore’s field guide to destinations, wildlife, art, and the natural world. Open a discovery for practical details and background.
West Virginia Penitentiary
Cellblocks, yards, work areas, execution spaces, and interpretation confront the systems and people behind one of America’s most imposing former prisons.
Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex
The conical mound, archaeology exhibits, and research center interpret Indigenous engineering, burial practice, nineteenth-century excavation, and preservation.
Cass Scenic Railroad State Park
Company houses, shops, mill traces, museum exhibits, and operating Shay locomotives connect mountain rail engineering to industrial logging and community life.
Matewan Historic District
Brick storefronts, the rail corridor, floodwall, depot landscape, and markers situate the 1920 confrontation within the longer Mine Wars.
New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
Overlooks, trails, historic districts, climbing walls, and one of America’s great whitewater rivers reveal both Appalachian ecology and industrial transformation.
Blackwater Falls State Park
A 57-foot waterfall, canyon overlooks, wooded trails, winter recreation, and dark tannin-stained water make this one of West Virginia’s clearest landscape signatures.
Coopers Rock State Forest
The main overlook, Raven Rock, historic CCC structures, climbing areas, and rock-strewn trails combine broad geology with close forest detail.
Babcock State Park
Glade Creek Grist Mill is the famous image, but more than twenty miles of trails reveal rugged New River Gorge plateau terrain.
Seneca Rocks
A steep summit trail, technical climbing routes, historic homestead, and valley-floor discovery center make folded Appalachian geology unusually visible.
Dolly Sods Wilderness
A high plateau above the Allegheny Front supports exposed heath barrens, red spruce, wetlands, rocky overlooks, and a dense network of unblazed wilderness routes.
Spruce Knob
A short loop, observation tower, boulder-strewn meadow, and nearby trails provide an accessible introduction to the state’s highest highland ecosystem.
Cranberry Glades Botanical Area
A half-mile boardwalk enters an acidic wetland complex more typical of northern latitudes, surrounded by red spruce and Allegheny hardwoods.
Lost World Caverns
A self-guided commercial cave route descends through flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and the immense Snowy Chandelier formation.
Greenbrier River Trail
Crushed-stone grades, bridges, two tunnels, riverside campsites, and gentle elevation make a long Appalachian corridor approachable by bicycle or on foot.
Hatfield-McCoy Trails
Distinct systems offer signed ATV, UTV, motorcycle, and selected 4x4 routes across steep southern West Virginia terrain, with difficulty ratings and town access.
West Virginia Botanic Garden
Designed beds, woodland trails, wetlands, seasonal flowers, and remnants of a historic reservoir create a botanical garden where ecology and civic infrastructure overlap.
Oglebay Good Zoo
Red pandas, snow leopards, cheetahs, lemurs, native species, a veterinary hospital, and seasonal experiences occupy a walkable Oglebay hillside.
West Virginia State Wildlife Center
A 1.25-mile interpretive trail passes black bear, elk, bison, mountain lion, wolf, otter, owls, and other regional wildlife managed by WVDNR.
Cheat Mountain Salamander
This small, dark woodland salamander has a brassy-flecked back, straight-edged tail, and one of the narrowest vertebrate ranges in the central Appalachians.
West Virginia Spring Salamander
Pale pink-orange skin, reduced eyes, and an elongated body distinguish this exceptionally localized salamander of underground Greenbrier karst waters.
Candy Darter
Orange-red bars, blue-green flanks, and a low perching posture identify a small fish threatened by habitat stress and hybridization with introduced variegate darters.
Guyandotte River Crayfish
Robust claws, a compact body, and life under large flat stones suit this endemic crustacean to swift upper Guyandotte tributaries.
West Virginia Northern Flying Squirrel
Large dark eyes, dense brown fur, and a furred membrane between limbs distinguish this uncommon squirrel of cool Appalachian mountaintops.
Virginia Big-eared Bat
This medium-sized brown bat roosts in a small number of Appalachian caves and forages over forest and field edges, detecting moths with sensitive echolocation.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Five millennia of art, major Fabergé holdings, African and South Asian galleries, modern work, and a sculpture garden make VMFA a rare all-day state museum.
Chrysler Museum of Art
An encyclopedic collection, exceptional glass holdings, photography, European and American painting, and a working glass studio occupy a gracious waterside campus.
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
Two immense hangars place the Space Shuttle Discovery, an SR-71, Concorde, Enola Gay, satellites, engines, and restoration work at full physical scale.
The Mariners’ Museum and Park
The USS Monitor’s turret, conservation laboratories, small craft, naval paintings, and a five-mile lakeside trail connect maritime technology to lived experience.
Virginia Museum of History & Culture
Statewide galleries connect Indigenous homelands, colonization, slavery, revolution, migration, industry, civil rights, politics, and contemporary community life.
Science Museum of Virginia
Interactive galleries on health, computation, energy, climate, engineering, and space occupy Richmond’s spectacular former Broad Street Station.
National Museum of the Marine Corps
Immersive galleries follow Marines from 1775 to the present through aircraft, weapons, uniforms, oral histories, battlefield environments, and home-front experience.
American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar
Artifacts, documents, and testimony place military conflict beside slavery, emancipation, politics, industry, civilian survival, and contested memory at Tredegar Iron Works.
Frontier Culture Museum
Reconstructed and relocated farms from West Africa, Europe, and North America use buildings, crops, livestock, and interpreters to examine migration and cultural exchange.
Museum of the Shenandoah Valley
Regional galleries, miniature houses, the Glen Burnie historic house, formal gardens, outdoor sculpture, and miles of trails connect collecting to Shenandoah landscapes.
Birthplace of Country Music Museum
Recordings, instruments, oral histories, radio, and interactive studios explain how the Bristol Sessions transformed regional music into a national industry.
Virginia Museum of Transportation
Norfolk & Western steam giants, diesel locomotives, cars, aviation objects, and a historic freight station explain transportation as an interdependent system.
The Poe Museum
Manuscripts, first editions, personal objects, portraits, and the Enchanted Garden connect Edgar Allan Poe’s Richmond years to his restless literary reputation.
Colonial Williamsburg
Original and reconstructed buildings, trades, archaeology, performance, and two art museums animate Virginia’s eighteenth-century capital without making its conflicts tidy.
Monticello
Thomas Jefferson’s house, plantation landscape, workspaces, gardens, and archaeology place celebrated design beside the lives of hundreds of enslaved people.
George Washington’s Mount Vernon
The mansion, outbuildings, farm, tomb, museum, Potomac landscape, and memorial to the enslaved reveal an estate that was political symbol and working plantation.
James Madison’s Montpelier
Madison’s restored house, archaeology, descendant interpretation, enslaved community sites, forests, and cemetery place constitutional history inside a working plantation.
Jamestown Settlement
Galleries, a Paspahegh town, 1610–14 fort, and full-size ships interpret Powhatan peoples, English colonists, and West Central Africans in seventeenth-century Virginia.
Historic Jamestowne
The original 1607 fort site, church tower, active excavations, artifacts, and island landscape expose survival, violence, diplomacy, hunger, and colonial expansion.
Yorktown Battlefield
Earthworks, fields, roads, artillery positions, Moore House, and Surrender Field preserve the landscape of the 1781 Franco-American siege and British capitulation.
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial
The Custis-Lee mansion, enslaved quarters, gardens, and cemetery setting trace family privilege, emancipation, Civil War occupation, and national commemoration.
Manassas National Battlefield Park
Henry Hill, Stone Bridge, Brawner Farm, unfinished railroad, woods, and monuments preserve terrain from the First and Second Battles of Manassas.
Appomattox Court House National Historical Park
The reconstructed McLean House, courthouse village, roads, fields, and military camps interpret the April 1865 surrender and the uncertain transition from war.