West Virginia Lottery
When people talk about the West Virginia lottery, the name, Jack Whittaker, usually comes up. Whittaker was a businessman from Hurricane who had a very merry Christmas when he won the Christmas day lottery jackpot in 2002. This win came from the West Virginia Powerball and was worth more than $314 million. This wasn’t just the biggest win in the state, but it was also one of the biggest Powerball wins at the time.
West Virginia offers a myriad of lottery games, including Powerball, Mega Millions, and Lotto America. Each of these lotteries often offers life-changing jackpots, with many millions being won by West Virginia residents.
The state first offered Powerball, called Lotto America at the time, in 1988 but Mega Millions only arrived in West Virginia 22 years later in 2010.
WV Lottery has since experiments with several gambling options. In 1994, the state installed slot machines lottery terminals at racetracks and “gray” machines offered video poker in several convenience stores and bars. These were eventually outlawed in 2001.
