It’d have to be MIGHTY crinkly.
Another info source for the slope of the land is the NRCS’s soil surveys. Included in those surveys of soil types is land slope. Linky: http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/WebSoilSurvey.aspx
I don’t think this dog will hunt. 
OK, but my point is that the line of reasoning that models West Virginia as a collection of smooth slopes which are therefore equivalent in area to a sloping, flat West Virginia, is wrong. West Virginia would be more accurately modelled as a collection of crinkly cones. Crinkly cones can have any area you like, depending on how crinkly they are.
Of course, when you get down to that level, Texas is not perfectly smooth either, even if you disregard the hills and mountains that I’m sure Texas has, so I suppose the point is moot.
Topography is scale-invariant. Mandelbrot proved that they both have infinite surface area if you view it at a fine-enough scale.
WV is going to start out behind because at the simple flat-map view it’s ~10% the size of TX. As you re-evaluate the surface area of the topography on an ever-finer scale WV begins to catch up to TX.
Eventually they’re tied, at least if you take the naive vew that infinities are algebraically comparable. It may be that the scale needed to get to the tie is down near the molecular; I don’t have the mad math skillz to answer that one.
It’s the OP again. Following first usram’s then LSLGuy’s line of thought: ‘Mandelbrot proved that they both have infinite surface area if you view it at a fine-enough scale.’, which infinity would be bigger, Texas’ or WV’s?
Silly question – even infinity is bigger in Texas.
And to the OP: I was born and raised in WV, and I don’t remember anyone seriously claiming that a flattened-out WV would be bigger than Texas.
Fractals aside, I’d find the results mildly interesting if somebody were to to sum up surface areas based on a reasonable sized grid imposed on the topographic data.
I remember reading this about Idaho, which is a bot more believable. It was in one of those US trivia books I had as a kid.
Dunno if it was right, but Idaho does have some pretty big mountains.
Byrd supposedly said this in a speech in the Senate in 1983. It appears on his own official website on a page about WV, although he doesn’t attribute it to himself or anyone else.
Notice he says it would reach to Texas, not be larger than Texas. I’m not saying Sen. Byrd has any decent grasp of topography or geography, but if this quote is the original source of the idea the OP has heard, then we should be analyzing the right concept.
The prboem is, that doesn’t mean much. Obviously, if you allow the state to get long and skinny as you flatten it, you could easily stretch it to Texas. But if it keeps a reasonable width normal to the TX-WV line, like applying a titanic rolling pin to the state’s contours, there’s no way it would stretch past Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
[Obligatory WV thread interjection]
LET’S GOOOOOO MOUNTAINEERS!!
[/OWVTI]
Well “The Plateau State” is a more distinctive nickname than “The Mountain State” anyhow. In fact, it’s a butte …
Does that mean we Montanans don’t need to keep Butte any more?
Never trust a city whose primary tourist attraction is a Superfund site.
National Geographic had a map of Central America a couple of months ago. They made the claim that if Mexico was flattened, it would beat either Russia or Asia, can’t recall. I thought about posting a GQ about this; it sounds suspect, but one would think NG would get geography facts right.
Yes, coming from a long time resident of both states, that comment was intended to fly through the same mechanism as the lifting of an eyebrow, duplicating that generated by the assertion of the OP.
As my grandmother’s story goes…Texas is upset that Alaska gets the recognition as being the largest state in the US.
Texas: It’s not fair! The entire state is nothing but ice. Nobody lives there!
Alaska: Shut up or we’ll split in half and make you the THIRD largest state.
Or whose leading citizen is a guy who whose claim to fame is jumping motorcycles over various large obstacles.
Since they bill themselves as “Butte, America”, maybe you can consider them already disowned.
