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Dolly Sods Wilderness

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The Dolly Sods Wilderness — originally simply Dolly Sods — is a U.S. Wilderness Area in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA, and is part of the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). It is a rocky, high-altitude plateau with sweeping vistas and lifeforms normally found much farther north in Canada. The distinctive landscape of Dolly Sods is characterized by stunted (“flagged”) trees, wind-carved boulders, heath barrens, grassy meadows created in the last century by logging and fires, and sphagnum bogs that are much older.

The name derives from an 18th century German homesteading family — the Dahles — and a local term for an open mountaintop meadow — a "sods".

Geography

Rock formation in Dolly Sods
A rock formation on Bear Rocks showing ventifact etching due to the high winds present.

Topography

Dolly Sods is the highest plateau of its type east of the Mississippi River with altitude ranging from around 4,000 feet (1,200 m) at the top of a mountain ridge on the Allegheny Front to about 2,700 feet (820 m) at the outlet of Red Creek. Prominent summits within the Wilderness are Coal Knob, Breathed Mountain and Blackbird Knob (3,960 feet). The highest point in the immediate area (just outside the Dolly Sods Wilderness area in the Roaring Plains West Wilderness) is Mount Porte Crayon at 4,770 feet (1,454 m).

Drainage

Dolly Sods is on a ridge crest that forms part of the Eastern Continental Divide. Most of its area is drained by the North Fork of Red Creek, which is a tributary of the Dry Fork River. Via the Dry Fork, Black Fork, Cheat, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed. South of Forest Service Route 19 is the adjoining Red Creek/Flatrock/Roaring Plains area, which is drained by the South Fork of Red Creek. Drainage on the east side of the ridge crest flows into the headwaters of the South Branch of the Potomac River, which is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Boundaries

The original "Dolly Sods" was a mountaintop meadow of about 650 acres (3 km2) at the southern end of Rohrbaugh Plains, near the present Dolly Sods Picnic Area.[1] The present-day Dolly Sods Wilderness (DSW) encompasses some 17,371-acre (70 km2) of USFS land and is itself only part of a larger 32,000-acre (129 km2) area now known as "Dolly Sods"[2][3]. The DSW is bordered by Forest Service Routes 75 and 19 on the east and south sides, respectively. (Since the early 1970s is has been common practice to include the Red Creek Plains, Flatrock Plains and Roaring Plains areas to the south as part of the "greater" Dolly Sods area. Formerly, the area encompassed by these three "Plains" — all south of FS Rt 19 — was known locally and collectively as "Huckleberry Plains".[4])

To the northeast, DSW is bordered by the Bear Rocks Nature Preserve, owned by The Nature Conservancy. The surrounding area was recently added to the Wilderness and is known as Dolly Sods North (the "High Sods"). North of Dolly Sods North (and just outside the present DSW) is an area known as Dobbins Slashings — a sub-arctic bog forming the headwaters of Red Creek on Cabin Mountain. Dobbins Slashings has also been proposed for wilderness preservation. In the Canaan Valley to the west, the Wilderness is adjoined by the 16,000-acre (65 km2) Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Almost all of DSW is in the southeast corner of Tucker County with only very small sections extending into Randolph and Grant Counties.

Other features

There are some 47 miles of hiking trials within the DSW, many situated along the courses of abandoned railroad grades and logging roads. The primier viewpoint within the Wilderness, affording a vista of the entire Red Creek drainage, is at a set of rocky crags known as Lion’s Head Rock. It is reached by an almost three mile climb from the nearest road. The last quarter mile is an eight foot wide bench (an old railroad grade) in the side of an otherwise steep slope. Like the cliffs constituting the eastern edge of the Sods at Rohrbaugh Plains, Lion's Head Rock consists of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate. The Northland Loop Trail is a 0.3 mile interpretive trail just south of Red Creek Campground on FS Rt 75 which accesses Alder Run Bog a typical, and much studied, "northern bog" or "southern muskeg".[5]

History

Pre-logging

The Dolly Sods area was first encountered by whites when Peter Jefferson, Thomas Lewis and others surveyed in 1746 to find the limits of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron’s land grant from the British Crown. The famous Fairfax Line grazes the northern margin of the Wilderness near Bear Rocks. This area was generally avoided as too impenetrable to easily traverse until the late 19th century. David Hunter Strother wrote an early description of the area, published in Harper's Monthly magazine in 1852:

"In Randolph County, Virginia, is a tract of country containing from seven to nine hundred square miles, entirely uninhabited, and so savage and inaccessible that it has rarely been penetrated even by the most adventurous. The settlers on its borders speak of it with a sort of dread, and regard it as an ill-omened region, filled with bears, panthers, impassable laurel-brakes, and dangerous precipices. Stories are told of hunters having ventured too far, becoming entangled, and perishing in its intricate labyrinths. The desire of daring the unknown dangers of this mysterious region, stimulated a party of gentlemen . . . to undertake it in June, 1851. They did actually penetrate the country as far as the Falls of the Blackwater, and returned with marvelous accounts of its savage grandeur, and the quantities of game and fish to be found there."
File:Dollysodsflagspruce.jpg
Windblown spruce trees near Bear Rocks in northern Dolly Sods.

The extensive high areas in Dolly Sods and Flatrock-Roaring Plains were once mostly covered by dense, ancient Red Spruce and hemlock forest. The trees were 60 to 90 feet (27 m) tall (18–27 m) and some measured at least 12 feet (370 cm) in diameter. The greatest stand of red spruce in the world, in terms of size and quality, could be found along the upper Red Creek. The largest recorded tree ever cut in West Virginia was a white oak, harvested in this region. Nearly as large as a Giant Sequoia, it was probably well over 1,000 years old and measured 13 feet (4 m) in diameter at a height of 16 feet (5 m), and 10 feet (3 m) in diameter 31 feet (9.4 m) above the base. We will probably never know how large the biggest trees in West Virginia were because the cuttings were not documented. Centuries of accumulated needles from these trees created a blanket of humus (soil) seven to nine feet deep.

The name Dolly Sods derives from the family name of Johann Dahle (1749-1847), a German immigrant who homestead nearby. Burning the logged areas produced good grass cover for grazing sheep, and these open fields were known as "sods". Locals changed the spelling to "Dolly" and thus the area became known as the Dolly Sods. Repeated burning killed the grass and left only bracken fern, which was useless as fodder. The Dahle family eventually moved on, leaving behind only the Americanized version of their name.

Who was Johann Dahle?

Johann Dahle (John Dolly) was born on 6 September 1749 in Hesse, Germany, and came to America as a Hessian soldier in the service of the British army then fighting against General George Washington’s Continental Army. Serving under General Cornwallis, he was captured at Yorktown (1781), the battle which effectively ended the war, and was imprisoned for a time at Winchester, Virginia. In the 1780s he settled on the west side of North Fork Mountain in what later became Pendleton County. (A family tradition maintains that he was advised by Washington himself to remain in Virginia.) There he purchased land, married (for a second time) and began a family (9 children in all). He was a farmer and a miller and went by the nicknames of "Cornyackle" and "Barleycorn". Eventually the family land holdings in Pendleton and the surrounding area grew to several hundred acres which may have included what later became known as scenic "Dolly Sods". It is said that Dolly and his descendants grazed their cattle and sheep in these high grassland patches. Certainly they harvested blueberries at the southern end of the flats known as Rohrbaugh Plains. John Dolly continued to live in his adopted home until his death, at nearly 100 years of age, in August 1847. He left many descendents, none of whom remain, however, near the old homestead.[6]

The logging era

Dolly Sods and the surrounding area was formerly described as the best spruce-hemlock-black cherry forest in the world, with some enormous trees up to 12 feet in diameter. The huge spruce and hemlock became accessible in 1884 when the B & O Railroad first arrived at nearby Davis. In 1899, the Parsons Pulp and Lumber Company (PPLC) established a sawmill at Dobbin on the North Branch Potomac River in Grant County. This was the mill into which most of the magnificant forest of the northern half of the watershed of the North Fork Red Creek disappeared. In 1902, the PPLC installed a new band saw mill on the main stem of Red Creek. The lumber boom town of Laneville soon sprang up around it with a population that peaked at over 300 people.[7]Shay locomotives climbed the temporary railroads into the mountains and backcountry logging camps sprang up throughout the Sods, clearing away the virgin forest to feed the hungry mills. Teams of draft horses dragged all the commercial timber to the nearest tracks. When the timber was exhausted in the sector around one camp, the rails were taken up and reused elsewhere. It was into the mill at Laneville that most of the timber of the southern two thirds of the Sods disappeared.

Unfortunately, however, the humus covering the ground dried up when the protective tree cover was removed. Sparks from the locomotives, saw mills and logger's warming fires easily ignited this humus layer and the extensive slash — wood too small to be marketable, such as branches and tree crowns — left behind by loggers. Fires repeatedly ravaged the area in the 1910s, scorching everything right down to the underlying rocks. All insects, worms, salamanders, mice and other burrowing forms of life perished and the area became a desert. The destruction was extraordinary.[8]The complete clearcut of this ecologically fragile area, followed by extensive wildfires and overgrazing, exacerbated by the ecological stresses of the elevation, have prevented quick regeneration of the forest which has taken decades to recover. The Monongahela National Forest was created in 1915, largely motivated by a desire to mitigate the sort of wholesale destruction that had swept over the Sods. In 1916 most of Dolly Sods was purchased by the federal government for the MNF from the Bridges Estate. Mineral rights remained in private ownership.[9]

The Laneville mill closed in 1920 after almost all the timber had been cut and the local population dwindled. The last timber was felled in the Dolly Sods area in 1924. A particularly ferocious fire raged in late July 1930 in the northernmost Red Creek and southernmost Stony River watersheds (along the Grant/Tucker County line). This conflagration — known as the Dobbin Slashings Fire — consumed 24,800 acres and killed many trees left alone as non-commercial by the loggers. An eerie landscape persisted here for years, with the stumps of these trees perched high upon jumbles of boulders.

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps made some modest attempts to remediate the damage to Dolly Sods by re-planting stands of red spruce there.

Neglect, threat and recovery

In 1943 and '44, as part of the West Virginia Maneuver Area, the U.S. Army used the area as a practice artillery and mortar range and maneuver area before troops were sent to Europe to fight in World War II. Cabin Mountain and Blackbird Knob served as designated targets. Some of the artillery and mortar shells (60 mm and 81 mm rounds) shot into the area still exist there. (In 1997, a work crew extensively surveyed trail locations and known campsites for shells.[10] Workers made 32,594 excavations along the trails and discovered and detonated 14 live mortar shells, most along the Fisher Spring Run Trail. All were exploded on site. Two others were inert. They also found numerous railroad spikes, iron tools and horseshoes. Off-trail searches proved to be impossible.[11] See this link for a photo of two shells found in July 2006.)

Dolly Sods became popular with recreationalists and conservationists in the mid-1960s at which time political agitation began to set it aside as a preserve. The area was threatened by at least four potential developments: (1) sub-divisions for summer homes on Cabin Mountain, (2) as a route for a proposed federal expressway (Corridor H) linking Washington, DC with the highlands, (3) strip-mining of as many as six coal seams, which was already occurring within 3.5 miles of the Sods in the north and (4) flooding by a huge reservoir as part of the proposed Davis Power Project just to the west. The Nature Conservancy played a major role in preserving the area. By 1972, it had purchased the coal rights under the future federal wilderness (15,558 acres of the Sods and Roaring Plains, itself now a designated Wilderness) for $15 million. Dolly Sods finally became a federally-designated wilderness area in 1975 which resulted in greatly increased numbers of visitors. The area had only an estimated 500 visitors in 1965; by 1997 there were 7,499 registered (and many more unregistered) users annually.

In the 1970s and '80s, it was not possible to propose Dolly Sods North for wilderness classification as it was all privately owned — by the Western Maryland Railway Company and the Virginia Electric and Power Company — and was largely outside the Proclamation Boundary of the MNF. Public acquisition could not go forward as the companies long refused to consider selling. In the 1990s, however, the the Nature Conservancy paid another $6 million to acquire 6,100 acres in Dolly Sods North (of the total of 7,215 acres) from the then-owner, the Texas-based Quintana Corporation. This land was then donated to the Forest Service. Most recently, the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 added 7,156 acres (29 km2) of Dolly Sods North to the original 10,215 acres (41 km2) of the Wilderness to make the present total of 17,371 acres (70 km2).[3]

Climate and weather

The explosive collision of air masses attendant upon the Allegheny Front dumps many tons of snow on Dolly Sods each winter. The Sods average more than 100 inches (2,500 mm) of snow each winter season, although 160 inches (4,100 mm) is not unusual. During the winter of 2003, however, 290 inches (7.3 m) of snow fell in the area. Humid and warmer air from the Potomac River Valley to the east and south meets colder Canadian air blowing off the Great Lakes. This churns and produces the locally severe weather that can sometimes rival that of Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

This section of the Allegheny Front is one of the windiest spots east of the Mississippi, a fact responsible for the wind farming that is now so highly visible just north of Bear Rocks. Wind recorders in the Wilderness have been known to blow away in the gusts that can exceed 100 miles per hour. Just to the west in Canaan Valley temperatures of 40 degrees below zero have been recorded. One of the effects of this extreme weather is the highly visible "flagged" trees that have been sculpted by the wind – strong winds blowing continuously from the west have caused them to bear branches only on the east side.

Ecology

Flora

Dolly Sods is well known for its open expanses of sphagnum bog, heath shrubs and scattered and stunted red spruce — all creating impressions of areas much farther north. Many plant communities are indeed similar to those of sea-level eastern Canada. But the ecosystems within the Sods are remarkably varied. In recent decades, the many stages of ecologic succession throughout the Sods have made the region one of enduring interest to botanists.

Heath barrens
The extensive views across the tundra-like windswept open meadows in the northern section of Dolly Sods are reminiscent of Alaskan landscapes. "Heath barrens" is a botanical term, but the traditional local name for these unusual expanses was "huckleberry plains". These upper reaches have been extensively colonized by various Ericaceae (heaths): blueberry and cranberry (Vaccinium), huckleberry (Gaylussacia), rose azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) and rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum), mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), and teaberry (or wintergreen, Gaultheria). Members of Rosaceae (the rose family) also abound: Allegheny menziesia (Menziesia pilosa), chokeberry, mountain ash, serviceberry, and pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica). Boulder fields left by the denuding topsoil fires of 80 years ago are extensive here.

Southern muskeg/Cranberry bogs
The local term "sods" is a traditional name referring to several high elevation, open, boggy areas created by abundant precipitation. These spruce-edged sphagnum bogs are found in the upper sections of Red Creek and its tributaries, often in association with thickets of speckled alder. The largest is about a mile long and half a mile wide. The thick carpet of sphagnum moss and the polytrichum moss hummocks also sustain cotton grass, sundew and the lichen known as reindeer moss. In addition to the spruce, the bog margins are frequented by ferns, sedges and the occasional balsam fir. The three-toothed cinquefoil (Sibbaldiopsis tridentate) is often abundant and orchids — for example the pink lady's slipper — are sometimes seen.[12]

Hardwood forests
The more southerly section of the Dolly Sods Wilderness includes maturing spruce copses, rhododendron thickets, northern hardwoods on the ridges and cove hardwoods in the deep tributaries of Red Creek. All of the original old-growth forest was removed a century ago, followed by fires that burned, then smoldered, for months. Much of the deep topsoil was lost forever. Today, there are patches of recovering native red spruce forest plus twisted yellow birch, sugar and red maple, eastern hemlock, and black cherry. American beech, pine and hickory can also be found. The wild onion known as the ramp (Allium tricoccum) is also present in the deeper forests.

Fauna

The larger megafauna which once inhabited the High Alleghenies — elk, bison, mountain lion — were all exterminated during the 19th century. They survived longer in this area, however, than in other parts of the eastern United States. Because of the high altitude the climate is cool and some animals are more similar to ones found about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) farther north in Canada. Many species found here are near their southernmost range. For example, the snowshoe hare found in Dolly Sods is usually found in Canada and Alaska and is adapted to snow conditions, with its large, hairy feet which allow it to run on the snow surface. Beaver continually create and refurbish their beaver ponds in these high elevation watersheds. Other animals include red and gray foxes, bobcats, black bears, groundhog, timber rattlers, wild turkey, grouse, and white-tailed deer. The Cheat Mountain salamander, listed since 1989 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened, is also present.

Recreation

Camping is allowed in Dolly Sods, but visitors are cautioned to "leave no trace". All off-road motorized vehicles and any cutting of live vegetation or camping near roads (aside from Red Creek Campground) are forbidden. Hunting and fishing within state law are permitted. Dolly Sods is particularly popular during mid-summer with people who go there to pick blueberries and huckleberries. From May through late June, extensive and spectacular displays of mountain laurel in flower may be viewed.

There is an extensive network of hiking trails in the Wilderness totalling 47 miles. Some follow old logging railroad grades, and occasionally you see some remnants of railroad ties and metal equipment. Until a 2004 remapping, the USGS and US Forest Service maps of the trails were inaccurate so a mapping site provides good maps with GPS data. Trails include:

The Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area is adjacent to Dolly Sods-Flatrock-Roaring Plains on the east and the south.

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Wilderness Committee, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, The Dolly Sods Area — 32,000 Acres in and Adjacent to the Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, 4th edition; Revised Sept 1973, pg 7.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference MNF was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b "Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
  4. ^ Brooks, Maurice (1965), The Appalachians (Series: The Naturalist's America), Illustrated by Lois Darling and Lo Brooks, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp 187-188.
  5. ^ Gibson, Joan R. (1970), "The Flora of Alder Run Bog, Tucker County, West Virginia", Castanea; 35(1):81-98.
  6. ^ Imhoff, Ernest F (1998), "Land of Spruce and Mortar Shells", The Baltimore Sun: Sun Journal, March 17 issue. Dolly and his wife are buried at Dolly Hills, near Mouth of Seneca, in Pendleton, County, West Virginia (Landis-Dolly Cemetery #50, Pendleton County. Grave Register II.).
  7. ^ Wilderness Committee, Op. cit., pg 5.
  8. ^ More than one-tenth of the area of the state of West Virginia was burned over in this way, including one-fifth of the forest areas.
  9. ^ Wilderness Committee, Op. cit., pg 7.
  10. ^ On 3 December 1951, 17 year old Wally Dean and a companion chanced upon a mortar round while hiking in the Sods. Upon dropping it, Dean was blown into a tree and suffered nine shrapnel wounds to his legs. This necessitated the surgical placement of metal wires and plates. In 1997, Dean, by then an environmental projects engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, directed the cleanup of some of the treacherous rounds.
  11. ^ Imhoff, Op. cit.
  12. ^ Brooks, Op. cit., pp 187-188.

Other sources

  • Brooks, Maurice, "Remarkable Dolly Sods" (1969–70), Outdoor West Virginia [Title changed to Wonderful West Virginia, 1970]; Nov 1969, pp 10–13; Jan 1970, pp 10–13; Feb 1970, pp 10–13.
  • Hall, George A. (1985), "The Birds of the Dolly Sods Area Sortie, 1984", The Redstart, Wheeling, West Virginia, October issue.
  • Hutton, Eugene E. (1988), "Periglacial Features of Dolly Sods,", The Redstart, Wheeling, West Virginia, July issue.
  • Hutton, Eugene E. (1985), "Plant Description of Dolly Sods,", The Redstart, Wheeling, West Virginia, October issue.
  • Pyle, Ann H. (1985), "Ferns and Fern Allies at Dolly Sods,", The Redstart, Wheeling, West Virginia, October issue.
  • Venable, Norma Jean (1996), Dolly Sods, West Virginia Renewable Resources Unique Areas Series 813, West Virginia University Extension Service, Morgantown, West Virginia.
  • U.S. Forest Service (1988), Dolly Sods Wilderness and Surrounding Area, pamphlet.
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