Narrator: As Davis went to Washington, West Virginia began a campaign to attract industry and new residents to the state.

Commissioner of Immigration Joseph Diss Debar, a French-born artist, designed the state seal showing a farmer and a miner with the motto "Montani Semper Liberi." "Mountaineers are always free." Debar posted advertisements in Europe promoting West Virginia as the "Switzerland of America," a place, he promised, where industry and independence would co-exist.

"That such a country, so full of the varied treasures of the forest, the mine, should lack inhabitants with the hum of industry or a show of wealth is an absurdity in the present and an impossibility in the future." —Joseph Diss Debar

Narrator: Yet, when Debar greeted boatloads of Europeans in New York, he discovered that immigration officials described West Virginia as a wasteland where prices were high and foreigners unwelcome.

Debar did manage to attract a group of Swiss immigrants who founded the community of Helvetia and joined other self-sufficient farmers in the sparsely settled mountains.