Why did I, a Kentucky resident,create a West Virginia Highways Page? Well, there are severalreasons. First, there was no West Virginia Highways Page yet on theInternet. Second, I didn't do Kentucky because my home state has toomany unmarked routes, many of which don't even show up on the countymaps because they are city streets, and I wanted to make mycontribution to the growing amount of road-geek information availableon the Internet. Third, I have a working familiarity with WestVirginia highways. Fourth, my grandfather Elkins was from that state(Lincoln County, to be precise). And finally, it was pretty easy.There aren't that many numbered state highways in WestVirginia.

There are five separate pagescataloging West Virginia state-maintained highways, forInterstatehighways, U.S.highways, and statehighways 1-49,51-99,and three-digitroutes. The route number isin the left column, followed by starting point and ending point,based on the intersecting route number or where it enters WestVirginia, and the county where the route begins or ends, or enters orleaves the state. This site presumes use of the standard milepointnumbering system in that roads "begin" at their south or westterminus, and "end" at their north or east terminus. A few WestVirginia U.S. highways are signed in violation of the numberingconvention (even numbered routes are supposed to be east-west; oddnumbered routes are supposed to be north-south). These circumstancesare noted in the "Notes" column at the right. A listing of allcounties the highway passes through follows the ending point,followed by the "Notes" column, where various comments about selectedroads can be found. Not all highways have comments.

There appears to be no set patternto numbering West Virginia state highways, especially the three-digitroutes, such as may be found with interstate or US routes. They seemto have been scattered across the state. Reviews of old maps, whensome numbers were different from what they are today, show thatapparently no pattern was ever used. There have been severalrenumberings of West Virginia highways, but I don't have thehistorical information to post on this page.

For the most part, West Virginiaroutes are directionally signed the opposite of Interstate and U.S.routes. Odd state route numbers are generally east-west routes, andeven numbers are generally north-south routes. There areexceptions.

DISCLAIMER: This site is notaffiliated with the WestVirginia Department of Transportationor the WestVirginia Division of Highways.This site is a personal project of mine and the information iscompiled from first-hand knowledge, maps, and information provided bythe WVDOH. If you have comments, suggestions, corrections, orquestions, please feel free to E-mailme.

West Virginia Highway Information
Dave Cramer, an employee of the West Virginia Department of Highways, graciously provided lots of good information on West Virginia's highways. These documents are currently available in RTF format, which can be downloaded and read with practically any word processor in any format. PDF versions of these documents are now available.
"A Brief History of West Virginia's State Route System"
This document provides a history of West Virginia's state highway sytem.
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"West Virginia State and National Highways -- Related Milestones"
This document lists milestones of highway development in West Virginia and the United States.
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"West Virginia Highways Classification Systems, Characteristics and Usage"
This document contains facts on jurisdictions, classifications, federal aid highways, signage (including county and delta routes), ARC corridors, road surfaces, and other information.
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"West Virginia Highways Revenues and Expenditures"
This document contains information on expenditures and revenues.
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