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| Red Spruce and Blueberry |
The Appalachian Highlands region covers portions of nine Eastern U.S. States and is described as one of the wildest and most biodiverse mountain regions in the world. Embedded within the Appalachian Highlands region are some really interesting places that, like most of the Appalachian Mountain range are unique chapters in the ongoing story of industrial exploitation and ecological recovery of the last two centuries. I'm on my annual pilgrimage into the Pleistocene and have landed in the Monoghela National Forest to see what stories I can dig up. Yes, I have my Woolly Mammoth, Woolsey, in my backpack.
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| Sandstone cliffs of the Allegheny Front |
The Bear Rocks Preserve is part of a 17,500 acre conservation area that contains a high altitude heathland, wetlands, and remnant Red Spruce forest known as the Dolly (Dahle) Sods. It is a remarkable sub-alpine landscape, part of a larger complex defined by cold winters, a very short growing season, and plant communities that resemble the upper boreal of Canada. To stand at the top of the sandstone block cliffs, weathered by water and ice, one stands on the edge of the Allegheny Front facing east looking into the Ridge and Valley Province. The Allegheny Front was one of the most serious impediments to westward expansion of the 1700s but once the fortress-like wall of the mountain was breached by roads through and over the steep water and wind gaps, settlers did come but they did not stay long.
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| Frost-nipped fern frond |
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| Red Spruce |
Ancient Red Spruce and Hemlosk forests once covered the vast heathlands but industrial logging operations eliminated these highland forests in the late 1800s and early 1900s leaving tons of volatile slash behind. Lightening strike fires and careless fires started with railroad equipment ignited the mountain tops and several major wildfires burned hot and uncontrolled with a most historic wildfire-firestorm consuming most of the 650-acre Dolly Sods area in 1930. With repeated burns that spanned three decades, this scenic area now afire with the red blaze of blueberry heath, was nothing more than a high altitude desert. At an altitude of 4,800 feet, Dolly Sods was biologically dead.
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| Water-worn sandstone |
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| "A River Ran Through It" sculpted stone |
To add insult to injury, the area was used during WWII as an artillery testing ground and firing range. The expansive desert-like plains exploded with shelling from 1943 to 1944 as mountain artillery divisions practiced for warfare in the Italian Alps. It is hard to imagine a place so beautiful now, laid to waste after fires and being fired upon. What makes it even more remarkable is that it even became a conservation area at all, given that private landowners that included the Western Maryland Railroad and Virginia Electric and Power refused to sell the land for decades even as the Monongahela National Forest was enveloping the mountains all around in protected land. It wasn't until 1993 that the Dolly Sods came under conservation management with large purchases made by the Nature Conservancy and designations made during the Obama Administration under the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009.
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| Flagged tree shaped by ice and wind |
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| Flag trees at 4,800' |
While exposed rock and vast plains of low growing heath plants mark the present character of the Dolly Sods plateau now, it is even harder to imagine a dense old-growth forest composed of ancient conifers that averaged ten to twelve feet in diameter. These relic forests existed here for millions of years before the logging industry destroyed them in less than fifty. These conifer communities with understories of fern and dense, peaty soils tens of feet thick contained untold numbers of peat community species including boreal bird species, salamanders, mammals, and insects. These relic communities originated during the Pleistocene Epoch when glaciers covered much of the Northeast and bitterly cold climates prevailed southward into Georgia in the Appalachian Mountains though no ice sheets extended beyond northeastern Pennsylvania into these parts.
The Pleistocene woodlands of the ancient Dolly Sods were rainforests, dependent upon ample rain and snowfall and thick blankets of fog that still blanket the mountains in fall and spring, sometimes for days on end. The forested plateau now devoid of any of its rich peat beds due to 20th century fires, held vast amounts of water that ran beneath the cover of peat and humus as hidden rivers into the western basin of the present Canaan Valley. What we see today across this vast low plain of heath is a tiny fraction of the ecological wealth that once existed here. Whether we will live long enough to see those old Spruce forests return is unknown but efforts are underway by both the National Forest Service and the West Virginia Nature Conservancy to re-establish Red Spruce forests across the Dolly Sods conservation area and throughout historic high altitude and valley glade sites of the Monongahela.
Notes:
West Virginia Nature Conservancy https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/west-virginia-dolly-sods-and-canaan-valley/
Forensics Guide for Unexploded Ordinance in Dolly Sods, Amy Richmond Aylor (2008) https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3608&context=etd
Monongahela National Forest (NFS) https://www.fs.usda.gov/mnf
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