W. Va. Code R. § 189-3-3
County tax maps were originally created on linen or mylar sheets in the 1960' s by the Department of Revenue to aid the assessor in the location and assessment of real estate. Legislation in 1990 created an eleven-member Property Valuation Training and Procedures Commission whose duties included establishing standardized mapping procedures for the county assessors. Later that same year the commission approved procedural rules for the manual maintenance of surface tax maps. In 1995, as part of the Mineral Parcel Mapping Project, the Department of Revenue began the digital compilation of surface parcel boundaries to create mineral parcel maps for all coal bearing lands. Consequently, some county assessors utilized the surface tax parcels from this project to transition their county from a manual to computerized tax mapping system. By 2007, over half of the counties in West Virginia had transitioned to a computerized mapping system, with several counties utilizing geographic information systems to link parcel geometry to assessment databases. During the past decade, three counties chose to re-map their respective counties and create a new parcel identification system to resolve problems arising from extensive development
W. Va. Code R. § 189-3-3