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The westerners felt they were required to pay excessively-high taxes for transportation improvements that benefitted the eastern region, especially the Fall Line cities of Alexandria, Richmond, and Petersburg. Those living between the Allegheny Front and the Ohio River took advantage of the Civil War to secede from Virginia and establish the independent state of West Virginia. That ensured taxes from their region would be used for transportation improvements oriented towards shipping on the Ohio River, rather than spent primarily in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
— Charles A. Grymes, describing a 19th-century situation eerily similar to what’s going on now between Northern Virginia and the rest of Virginny.
