Thanks, Connie... For anyone interested, there is an excellent treatment of this topic at Wikipedia under Yohogania County that details the development of the Virginia counties in the area. An old timer friend of mine, who was a West Virginia highway engineer, and a student of history and state boundaries told me two stories that I have never found documented anywhere. One is about the southern Maryland border - the Potomac - according to this tale, the boundary river was supposed to have been the south branch, which would have places several present WVA counties in Maryland. The other is that when the Mason-Dixon line was extended west to form the south-west boundary of PA. the surveyor misread the direction at one point - to go west to the Ohio River, and instead went NORTH to the Ohio river, creating the long spike of western WVA west of PA. I would like to know if anyone else ever heard these stories... Vince ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.