Proximity to Eastern Cities Keeps ‘Panhandle’ of West Virginia Growing : Economics: An exodus from the nation’s capital to the country brings boom times to one corner of a poor state.

From the Eastern Panhandle, that arm of West Virginia between Virginia and Maryland, the problems of the rest of the state seem distant and irrelevant.

West Virginia is losing population faster than any other state, yet its easternmost counties are scrambling to keep up with an influx of newcomers, most of whom commute to jobs in metropolitan Washington.

“As much as we try to become philosophically enjoined with the rest of the state, I don’t think we really do,” said Tony Senecal, mayor of Martinsburg, a thriving community that has become an economic hub of the Eastern Panhandle.

In this part of the state, where about 25% of the work force commutes by car or train to Washington, retail sales are booming and local officials worry about whether they can build roads and sewers fast enough.

Meanwhile, unemployment among fellow West Virginians across the Allegheny Mountains is the worst in the nation, and officials are trying to develop strategies to keep the state’s most precious resource, its young people, from leaving.

“Our problems are so vastly different from the balance of the state,” said Ken Green, executive director of the Eastern Panhandle Regional Planning and Development Council. “It’s hard for the employees of the state government in Charleston to comprehend or even consider growth as a problem when they’re considering problems of high unemployment and declining population.”

That a part of West Virginia is booming while the rest of the state bleeds was underscored recently with the release of 1990 census figures, showing that the state lost 7.6% of its people over the last 10 years.

West Virginia’s population has fallen in three of the last four decades, from a peak of slightly more than 2 million in 1950 to 1.8 million in 1990. Only three other states lost population during the 1980s--Iowa, Wyoming and North Dakota--and no state has suffered a loss comparable to West Virginia’s.

Piedmont, in the mountainous central crook along the Maryland border, is typical of towns across most of the state. Both its schools have been closed. The main street is lined with empty buildings and the population has fallen, to about 900 from 2,300, in the last 30 years.

“It was a real lively town when I was growing up,” said Wanda Stewart, 37, who was born in Piedmont and is rearing her own three children there. “We used to have a skating rink where all the kids hung out. Our school was here. It’s gone now. The stores are gone. It’s like a ghost town.”

Now, young people congregate in the afternoons around two pinball machines and video games at Tri-town News, a family-owned shop that still does its best business in cigarettes and tobacco.

Meanwhile, preliminary census figures show dramatic population increases in the Eastern Panhandle: 26% in Berkeley County, 18% in Jefferson County and 12% in Morgan County.

To a large extent, that growth is the outermost ripple of the Washington’s economic and residential expansion. Construction workers and accountants alike trek the 80 miles or so from communities such as Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg to work in the District of Columbia.

The draw in the Eastern Panhandle, officials said, is both quality of life and lower prices: The average home price is $75,434, compared to $167,000 in Montgomery County, Md., and $170,800 in Loudoun County, Va., according to the Eastern Panhandle Regional Economic and Development Council.

In the last few years, Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties also have attracted an array of new employers, from Arcata Graphics, a national publishing company, to discount outlet centers and the U.S. Coast Guard’s computer center. State figures show that in Berkeley County alone, the civilian labor force has grown, to 25,000 from 19,860 a decade ago.

For those who have spent their lives in the area, the change is stunning but welcome.

“Before, you could walk the street and you knew everybody. You knew everybody’s business,” said George Karos, owner of Patterson’s Drug Store in Martinsburg and a member of the City Council.

Now, new customers come in daily and marvel at the antique soda fountain and green marble lunch counter. Karos still serves “Jo-Jo’s Sundaes,” famous here for decades. Still, he said, “it’s no longer the sleepy little town it used to be.”

Martinsburg Mayor Senecal said that the Panhandle’s proximity to Baltimore, Washington and a number of major highways means that “growth is going to come here in spite of anything we do.” He also cited some problems that come with growth, from crime to traffic congestion along Rte. 9.

West Virginia broke away from the rest of Virginia when the latter seceded from the Union in 1861.

The Eastern Panhandle, created for its strategic military value, is a day’s drive and a stretch of mountains and valleys away from the state’s political and geographic center.

People here remark often that the Eastern Panhandle is closer to at least five other capitals than it is to Charleston.

“You look at the weather map on Charleston’s (local television), and the Eastern Panhandle doesn’t even show,” said Senecal. “They cut us right off.”

The distance, both physical and psychological, is felt going both ways.

“There’s a schizophrenia,” said Joe Bob Goodwin, an attorney in Charleston and a former state Democratic Party chairman. “There are regional differences, and it’s been difficult to bring the state together. It’s a long way from here in southern West Virginia to the Eastern Panhandle.”

The problems in the southern and western reaches of the state are not new, nor are they easily solved. The elimination of more than 34,000 mining jobs over the last decade has cut deeply into an economy that depended heavily on mining.

The public schools have lost nearly 56,000 students since 1979. And as young people continue to move away to find jobs, the proportion of elderly has grown to nearly 15%, among the highest in the nation.

“West Virginians are professionals in dealing with hard times,” said Goodwin. “We’ve been doing it since the Civil War.”

Charleston Gazette editor Don March said that in the 1950s, Rte. 21, the highway that took young people from West Virginia to industrial jobs in Akron, Ohio, became known as one of the three Rs: “Reading, ‘riting and Rte. 21” was a sad statement of the formula for success.

Now, Marsh said, the pathway of choice has become Interstate 77, known as “hillbilly highway,” to Charlotte, N. C. It is the route to low-wage service jobs in the South.

“Everything is just kind of deadened around here,” Marsh said. “We’re a Third-World state, a Third-World economy.”

For as long as the state has been hurting its political leaders have been promoting its virtues--rural beauty, a friendly, proud populace and a relatively low cost of living--and predicting recovery.