Did you know that Pittsburgh was once part of (West) Virginia?

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — Pittsburgh and West Virginia have a lot in common, but some of the first maps of the Monongahela Valley show that the two used to be even closer.

Before the American Revolution, borders in North America were not so cut and dry, especially as you went further west through the Appalachian Mountains. This led to land disputes as states would often proclaim what territory they owned without having any citizens actually living in it. This is seen in the Second Virginia Charter of 1609, where colonial Virginia was proclaimed to have ownership of land in North America that stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Present-day Pittsburgh—then just Fort Pitt—was at the forefront of one of these disputes. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, much of southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia was once a part of Virginia’s West Augusta District, which was established in 1774 and was made up of land that stretched from present-day Pittsburgh all the way down to parts of what is now Randolph County, West Virginia. Virginia claiming land this far north led to lengthy disputes with Pennsylvania, who held a claim to the territory that Virginia disregarded.

In 1776, the Virginia General Assembly elected to disband the district of West Augusta and divide its territory into three new counties named Ohio, Monongalia and Yohogania; the two former still exist today but have since been divided themselves. Yohogania was made up of present-day Hancock County, West Virginia and much of southwest Pennsylvania, including the site of present-day Pittsburgh.

Despite disputes with Pennsylvania, this land remained within Virginia’s jurisdiction until around a decade later when the survey of the Mason-Dixon Line was extended west and determined that Pennsylvania held the rights to it. This led Virginia to surrender Yohogania almost entirely and chop Monongalia and Ohio counties off at the newly established lines.

Had Pennsylvania decided to abandon the land to Virginia, Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania would likely have remained a part of Virginia into the Civil War, meaning that once the states split, Yohogania County and Pittsburgh would have been owned by West Virginia.

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