It is associated with joy, sunshine, and tropics.  Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.  To the human eyes, orange is seen as a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat.
West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana form the northern border  of Kentucky, along the Ohio River.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, based on the wording of the cessation of territory by Virginia (which at that time included what is now Kentucky and West Virginia), the boundary between Ohio and Kentucky (and, by implication, West Virginia) is the northern low-water mark of the river as it existed in 1792.