We Chose To Live In West Virginia!

Photo taken by me of a sunrise over the mountains near Elkins, WV.

My wife and I moved to the Charleston, WV area about 3-1/2 years ago (to the suburb of Cross Lanes, to be exact). We moved here by choice and we love it. Why? Well let me tell you a little story about how we came to be here.

I was born and raised in San Francisco. My wife was born and raised in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. We have both lived all over the world. I have worked and lived in both Europe and the Middle East. My wife has also lived in Europe and the Middle East. In the United States, we’ve lived in California, Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and now West Virginia. My business travels have also taken me to practically all of the 50 states, as well as to two different countries in Europe.

Before moving to West Virginia, my wife and I lived in New Jersey for 18 years. In fact, that was the longest either of us had lived continuously in the same place. We lived in a small beach community and our house was just three blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. The town we lived in was very quiet for 8 months of the year, and then pretty crazy during the summer beach holiday season. The “craziness” kept getting worse and worse and for a variety of reasons we felt it was time to make a move to a nicer place.

Now my current profession is that of an Information Technology Enterprise Architect, working for an IT consulting organization that is part of a very large high-tech firm. Most of my work involves travel to the NYC or Philadelphia metropolitan areas and working with large pharmaceutical firms, or working out of my home office. So, I can live just about anywhere in the East where there is a decent airport. After deciding to move from NJ, we began an Internet-based research project to find a nice place for us to live. We put together a set of requirements and started searching for areas in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the US. Our requirements were as follows:

1. Ability to live within 30 minutes of an airport offering decent flights to Philadelphia and/or Newark airports
2. Low cost of living
3. Scenic beauty
4. Nearby outdoor activities
5. Good health care
6. City amenities like museums, neat bookstores, live theater, live classical music, good restaurants, etc.
7. Low congestion (no more endless traffic jams!!!)
8. Low crime
9. Reputation for friendly people
10. Moderate climate

Well, to make a long and very involved process short and to the point, Charleston, WV and Charlottesville, VA scored tops in meeting our search criteria. Pittsburgh was the closest big city to meeting our requirements. Since I had lived near Charlottesville and felt familiar with that area, and was frankly surprised that a city in West Virginia (of all places!) would pop to the top of our list, we decided to take a week’s vacation of visit Charleston and see what it was really like.

After just 2 days in Charleston, we were at a realtor’s office asking to see homes. Yes, we were sold.

Charleston is simply an amazing place. It’s the largest city in WV – with a population of around 53,000 people. That’s right, the largest city in the entire state has only 53,000 people! Yet, since it’s the state capitol and has three universities close by (University of Charleston, West Virginia State University, and the Marshall University Graduate College), this tiny city has some amazing big-city amenities. Lots of live theater, the coolest combination bookstore/art gallery/coffee house I’ve ever been in (Taylor Books), very good restaurants (for example, my favorite Indian restaurant in the US is the Sitar of India in Charleston), a symphony, a ballet, an amazing arts and science museum complex (the Clay Center), four major hospitals (including a cardiac care hospital scoring top-10 in the US: CAMC Memorial), amazing scenic beauty and a multitude of close-by outdoor recreation activities, and NO APPRECIABLE TRAFFIC! What people call a traffic jam around here would make any big-city dweller laugh hysterically. Crime is very low, and the people are among the friendliest I’ve ever met anywhere. The climate is milder than New Jersey’s and the cost of living is a fraction of New Jersey’s. We bought a beautiful new home here for about 1/4 the cost of a similar house in NJ, and our property taxes are a tiny fraction of NJ property taxes. Automobile insurance is less than 1/2 the cost we were paying in NJ.

By the way, we are not the only ones to recognize that Charleston, WV is an amazing place to live. Last year, Kiplinger magazine ranked it as one of the top-five places for “empty-nester” couples to live, along with Seattle, Boulder, Madison, and San Francisco! Here’s a brief quote from their article: “Charleston has an interesting combination of a low cost of living with a relatively strong creative class. The city is surprisingly cosmopolitan, with fine restaurants, art galleries, specialty shops and cafés along its tree-lined downtown streets.” Yes, I can hear you now: “West Virginia, cosmopolitan?!” It’s true!

I’d extend their recommendation to include families too – although we’re actually empty-nesters ourselves, I think this area would be a great place to raise kids. Regardless, given my experience in living in so many different places I can safely say that this is one of the nicest places in the world to live!

So the next time you’re considering a life-changing big move, don’t forget to consider the Charleston, WV area!

This posting was directly inspired by the work of Jason Keeling, who has created the “a Better West Virginia Blog”. Jason challenged WV bloggers to redefine the stereotypes many people have about our beautiful state. This is my very small contribution to this effort. You can see more such postings by visiting Jason’s Web site.