The West Virginia Field Guide Books Worth Owning

If you’ve ever stood at a patch of milkweed trying to name what just landed on it, this is the book. It’s part of the Pitt Series in Nature and Natural History and covers the caterpillars as well as the adult butterflies, which a lot of general guides treat as an afterthought. It’s the deepest cut of the week and it’s sold and shipped direct, so this is the one I’d grab first.

This guide ranks higher on the bestseller list than anything else I reviewed this week, which tells me plenty of people are out on the creek beds with a bucket. It covers both Virginias, with rocks, minerals, crystals and gemstones in one book. One caveat: it comes from a small publisher called Rock Chasing and ships from a third-party seller, so check the return terms before you order.

The Delorme Atlas and Gazetteer West Virginia is the paper map book that lives behind a lot of truck seats in this state. Once you lose signal past the paved road, a phone map goes blank and a gazetteer doesn’t. It’s among the best-selling books in this batch, and the discount is solid for a reference you’ll use for years.

Forty hikes in the Monongahela National Forest and the Allegheny Mountains, which is right where you want to be when the color peaks. It sticks to one forest, and that focus is why I prefer it to the broad regional hiking books. Order it now and you’ve got a couple of weeks to plan before leaf season.

This is the fifth edition of A Canoeing and Kayaking Guide to West Virginia, and a book that keeps getting new editions has kept its river info in use for a long time. Fall is a good paddling season here once the summer crowds clear off the flatwater. It doesn’t show a bestseller rank, so it’s a niche pick, but a fair markdown on a long-running title.

Rail-Trails Mid-Atlantic spreads across Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, D.C. and West Virginia, so our state is only one slice of it. If you ride the Greenbrier River Trail and also cross into Maryland for the weekend, the wider coverage is a plus. If you only ride in-state, I’d put the Monongahela book ahead of this one.

Thunder in the Mountains covers the West Virginia Mine War of 1920 and 1921, and it’s the best-selling history title in this batch. Early September marked 105 years since the fighting at Blair Mountain, so the timing feels right. The University of Pittsburgh Press does careful regional history, and this is a good entry point to the Mine Wars.

This is the academic pick. Transforming the Appalachian Countryside follows railroads, deforestation and social change in West Virginia from 1880 to 1920, the years when the timber boom cleared the mountains. It reads like a university press book because it is one, so it’s for readers who want the reasons behind the state’s economy.

An Appalachian New Deal comes from West Virginia University Press and covers the state during the Great Depression. The markdown is small and it sits well down the bestseller list, so it isn’t a hot seller. I included it because it’s a trusted in-state press on a period that shaped a lot of the towns we still live in.

Hippie Homesteaders is also from WVU Press, and it tells the story of the back-to-the-land folks who came here for arts, crafts, music and living on the land. It has the smallest discount on this list, so don’t buy it for the savings. Buy it if you liked our look at homestead skills books that earn shelf space and want the history of people who tried it here first.

Haunted Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia is part of the History Press Haunted America series, and it had one of the deeper markdowns this week. If you live in Jefferson or Berkeley County, this is local reading. It’s a good pick for the weeks leading up to Halloween.

The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales is a statewide collection from the University Press of Kentucky. The discount is modest and it ships through a third-party seller, but it ranks well among the regional titles. If you want Appalachian ghost stories to read out loud on a cabin weekend, I’d pick this one over the Panhandle book.