Bear Rocks Preserve

Last updated
Bear Rocks Preserve
IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape) [1]
View From Dolly Sods.JPG
View from Bear Rocks
USA West Virginia relief location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location of Bear Rocks Preserve in West Virginia
Location Grant County & Tucker County, West Virginia, United States
Coordinates 39°04′23″N79°17′53″W / 39.07306°N 79.29806°W / 39.07306; -79.29806
Area477 acres (193 ha) [2]
Elevation3,999 ft (1,219 m) [3]
Website Bear Rocks Preserve

Bear Rocks is a widely recognized symbol of West Virginia wilderness and among the most frequently photographed places in the state. It is a well-known landmark on the eastern edge of the plateau that includes the Dolly Sods Wilderness. It sits in a high-elevation heathland punctuated with wind-carved sandstone outcrops and is home to more than a dozen rare plant and animal species. Situated on the crest of the Allegheny Front, Bear Rocks afford vistas over the South Branch Potomac River. Visibility can extend eastward to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Contents

The Bear Rocks Preserve is a 477-acre (1.93 km2) tract owned and preserved by The Nature Conservancy.

Location

Aerial Photo of Bear Rocks at Dolly Sods. AIMG 4119dollysods-10-2011.jpg
Aerial Photo of Bear Rocks at Dolly Sods.

Bear Rocks consists of a group of rock outcroppings on the Allegheny Front, an escarpment that in this area provides about two thousand feet of vertical relief and forms the Eastern Continental Divide. To the east, looking out over the South Branch of the Potomac River, which drains into the Atlantic Ocean via the Chesapeake Bay, there are breathtaking 35-mile (56 km) views where seven mountain ridges are visible on a clear day extending into Virginia. On the clearest days you can see Hawksbill Mountain and Stony Man, the highest peaks in Shenandoah National Park. To the west, water drains into Dolly Sods towards Red Creek, which eventually flows to the Gulf of Mexico via the Dry Fork River, Black Fork, Cheat, Mongahela, Ohio and Mississippi River. Farther north along the ridge of the Front are two more salients, Stack Rocks and Haystack Rocks.

Climate

Bear Rocks is known for its cool climate, alpine appearance and northern wildlife. Strong prevailing winds bring clouds from the west. While rising to clear the ridge of the Allegheny Front they cool, causing mist and rain totaling more than 60 inches (1,500 mm) per year. During the winter of 2003, 290 inches (7.4 m) of snow fell in the area, although 160 inches (4.1 m) is more typical. The trees and shrubs become broken downward and gnarled along the ridge from the drying winds, the chilling rime frost and the heavy ice glazing and snow. Along the rim are stunted red spruce trees with flag-formed limbs pointing to the east a result of the almost constant and often high-velocity winds.

Ecology

One-quarter to one-half (400 to 800 m) a mile below the ridge lies a moist forest of red spruce and hemlock, with a floor blanketed in ferns, mountain laurel and rhododendron thickets. But on the broad ridge top where the climate is the most severe, the lush vegetation gives way to stunted, scattered trees, open heath land, and tundra plants left over from the ice ages.

Many of the plants and animals here are typically found in the North, such as snowshoe hare, saw-whet owls, boreal red-backed voles, and fisher. It is also a prime raptor and warbler-watching site during autumn migration and a popular berry-picking spot in midsummer.

The area around Bear Rocks supports subalpine heathlands dominated by shrubs such as blueberries, huckleberries, mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron. Groves of stunted red spruce, flagged by ice and wind, outcrops of the Pottsville conglomerate, grassy meadows, and cranberry bogs also occur. There are stunted small groves of red spruce trying to make a tortured comeback here and there in the wind and coldheath barrens of huckleberries, blueberries, mountain laurel, mountain holly, speckled alder and other waist-high plants. In several places the heath barrens, also called "huckleberry plains" or "roaring plains", give way to natural balds of mountain oat grass that predate the devastation wrought by logging and fires during the late 19th century.

Geology

Large, striking and uniquely shaped white sandstone and quartz rocks are found throughout the Bear Rocks Preserve area. Erosion has carved bowl-shaped cavities in many of these wind- and rain-sculpted sandstone boulders and these cavities are often filled with water (or ice) and algae. In addition to the sculpted boulders are "rock streams" formed during glacial periods. The freeze-thaw cycles heaved and split rock, creating rock streams up to 50 feet (15 m) wide and hundreds of feet long. Other rock patterns include polygons and circles.

Other information

Informal trails weave across the Bear Rocks Preserve. An extensive trail system occurs on the adjacent national forest lands, including the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

Bear Rocks' natural heathlands and open grass balds were originally recorded in 1746 by a survey party that included Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas Jefferson.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allegheny Mountains</span> Mountain range in the northeastern United States

The Allegheny Mountain Range, informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less developed eras. The Allegheny Mountains have a northeast–southwest orientation, running for about 300 miles (480 km) from north-central Pennsylvania, southward through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monongahela National Forest</span> National forest in West Virginia, United States

The Monongahela National Forest is a national forest located in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. It protects over 921,000 acres of federally managed land within a 1,700,000 acres proclamation boundary that includes much of the Potomac Highlands Region and portions of 10 counties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allegheny Front</span> Major escarpment in the Allegheny Mountains

The Allegheny Front is the major southeast- or east-facing escarpment in the Allegheny Mountains in southern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, eastern West Virginia, and western Virginia. The Allegheny Front forms the boundary between the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians to its east and the Appalachian Plateau to its west. The Front is closely associated with the Appalachian Mountains' Eastern Continental Divide, which in this area divides the waters of the Ohio/Mississippi river system, flowing to the Gulf of Mexico, from rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay and from there into the Atlantic Ocean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolly Sods Wilderness</span> U.S. wilderness area in West Virginia

The Dolly Sods Wilderness is a U.S. Wilderness Area in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia and is part of the Monongahela National Forest of the U.S. Forest Service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern California coastal forests</span> Temperate coniferous forests ecoregion in northern California and southwestern Oregon

The Northern California coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of coastal Northern California and southwestern Oregon.

The Potomac Highlands of West Virginia centers on five West Virginian counties in the upper Potomac River watershed in the western portion of the state's Eastern Panhandle, bordering Maryland and Virginia. Because of geographical proximity, similar topography and landscapes, and shared culture and history, the Potomac Highlands region also includes Pocahontas, Randolph, and Tucker counties, even though they are in the Monongahela River or New River watersheds and not that of the Potomac River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Porte Crayon</span>

Mount Porte Crayon is a mountain in the Roaring Plains Wilderness of the Monongahela National Forest in the northeastern corner of Randolph County, West Virginia, USA. It rises to an elevation of 4,770 feet (1,450 m), the elevational climax of the Allegheny Front. The mountain is named for 19th century writer and illustrator David Hunter Strother (1816–88), known as "Porte Crayon", who produced a wide array of early West Virginia landscapes in his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests</span> Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion of the United States

The Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests is an ecoregion of the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It consists of mesophytic plants west of the Appalachian Mountains in the Southeastern United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian–Blue Ridge forests</span> Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion of the United States

The Appalachian–Blue Ridge forests are an ecoregion in the Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests Biome, in the Eastern United States. The ecoregion is located in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, including the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It covers an area of about 61,500 square miles (159,000 km2) in: northeast Alabama and Georgia, northwest South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and central West Virginia and Pennsylvania; and small extensions into Kentucky, New Jersey, and New York.

Ice Mountain is a mountain ridge and algific talus slope that is part of a 149-acre (60 ha) preserve near the community of North River Mills in Hampshire County, West Virginia, United States. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Fork Mountain</span>

North Fork Mountain is a quartzite-capped mountain ridge in the Ridge and Valley physiographic province of the Allegheny Mountains, also known as the High Alleghenies or Potomac Highlands, of eastern West Virginia. Kile Knob, at 4,588 feet, is the mountain's highest point, and Panther Knob and Pike Knob are nearly as high.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tuscarora Sandstone</span> Bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, US

The Silurian Tuscarora Formation — also known as Tuscarora Sandstone or Tuscarora Quartzite — is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woody's Knob</span>

Woody's Knob, at an elevation of 4,170 feet, is a summit or "knob" in the Blue Ridge Mountains and one of the highest points in the unincorporated village of Little Switzerland and in Mitchell County, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pottsville Formation</span>

The Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and Alabama. It is a major ridge-former in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States. The Pottsville Formation is conspicuous at many sites along the Allegheny Front, the eastern escarpment of the Allegheny or Appalachian Plateau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coast Range (EPA ecoregion)</span> Coastal ecoregion in the Western United States

The Coast Range ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and California. It stretches along the Pacific Coast from the tip of the Olympic Peninsula in the north to the San Francisco Bay in the south, including Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay, and the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington, the entire length of the Oregon Coast, and the Northern California Coast. Named for the Coast Range mountains, it encompasses the lower elevations of the Olympic Mountains, the Oregon Coast Range, the Californian North Coast Ranges, and surrounding lowlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurel Hill (Pennsylvania)</span> Mountain in Pennsylvania, United States

Laurel Hill, also known as Laurel Ridge or Laurel Mountain, is a 70-mile-long (110 km) mountain that is located in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains. This ridge is flanked by Negro Mountain to its east and Chestnut Ridge to its west. The mountain is home to six state parks: Laurel Ridge State Park, Laurel Mountain State Park, Linn Run State Park, Kooser State Park, Laurel Hill State Park, and Ohiopyle State Park. The 70-mile-long (110 km) Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail runs the length of the ridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roaring Plains West Wilderness</span>

The Roaring Plains West Wilderness is a U.S. Wilderness Area in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA. It is part of the Monongahela National Forest and includes Mount Porte Crayon, the sixth highest point in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spruce Mountain (West Virginia)</span> Highest point in the state of West Virginia

Spruce Mountain, located in eastern West Virginia, is the highest ridge of the Allegheny Mountains. The whale-backed ridge extends for only 16 miles (26 km) from northeast to southwest, but several of its peaks exceed 4,500 feet (1,400 m) in elevation. The summit, Spruce Knob, is the highest Allegheny Mountain point both in the state and the entire range, which spans four states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurel Fork (North Fork South Branch Potomac River tributary)</span> River in West Virginia, United States

The Laurel Fork is a 15.7-mile-long (25.3 km) stream in Virginia and West Virginia, United States. The stream flows north from Highland County, Virginia, where its source and the majority of its length is located, to its mouth in Pendleton County, West Virginia. Laurel Fork is a tributary to the North Fork South Branch Potomac River, making it a part of the Potomac River watershed. The area surrounding Laurel Fork is home to several plant and animal species found nowhere else in Virginia, and is a prime example of a northern boreal forest in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appalachian bogs</span> Ecosystems in the Appalachian Mountains

Appalachian bogs are boreal or hemiboreal ecosystems, which occur in many places in the Appalachian Mountains, particularly the Allegheny and Blue Ridge subranges. Though popularly called bogs, many of them are technically fens.

References

  1. "Bear Rocks Preserve". Protected Planet. IUCN. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  2. "Bear Rocks Preserve". The Nature Conservancy. Archived from the original on 7 December 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  3. "Bear Rocks". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. 1980-06-27. Retrieved 2009-11-13.