Canaan Valley

Geobox|Valley
name = Canaan Valley
native_name =
other_name =
other_name1 =
category = National Natural Landmark
category_iucn = III

---

image_caption = Blackwater River near Canaan Valley Resort State Park
etymology_type =
etymology =
country = United States
country_

state = West Virginia
state_

region_type = County
region = Tucker
district_type =
district =
district1 =
district2 =
city =
city1 =
location =
lat_d = 39
lat_m = 07
lat_s = 36
lat_NS = N
long_d = 79
long_m = 22
long_s = 41
long_EW = W
elevation_imperial = 3200
elevation_round = 1
area_unit = acre
area_imperial = 25000
area_round = 1
area_note = approximately
area1_imperial =
area1_type =
length_imperial =
length_orientation =
width_imperial =
width_orientation =
highest =
highest_location =
highest_lat_d =
highest_lat_m =
highest_lat_s =
highest_lat_NS =
highest_long_d =
highest_long_m =
highest_long_s =
highest_long_EW =
highest_elevation_imperial =
lowest =
lowest_location =
lowest_lat_d =
lowest_lat_m =
lowest_lat_s =
lowest_lat_NS =
lowest_long_d =
lowest_long_m =
lowest_long_s =
lowest_long_EW =
lowest_elevation_imperial =
biome =
biome_share =
biome1 =
biome1_share =
geology =
geology1 =
plant =
plant1 =
animal =
animal1 =
established_type = Established
established = December 1974
established_note = cite web|url=http://www.nature.nps.gov/nnl/Registry/USA_Map/States/West%20Virginia/NNL/CV/index.cfm|title=Canaan Valley|publisher=National Park Service|accessdate=2008-04-20]
established1_type =
established1 =
established1_note =
owner = USDA Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and private owners
management_location =
management_lat_d =
management_lat_m =
management_lat_s =
management_lat_NS =
management_long_d =
management_long_m =
management_long_s =
management_long_EW =
management_elevation =
visitation =
visitation_year =
free_type = Nearest city
free_label = Nearest city
free = Davis, West Virginia
free1_type =
free1 =


map_caption = Location of Canaan Valley in West Virginia
map_locator = West Virginia
map_first =
website = [http://www.nature.nps.gov/nnl/Registry/USA_Map/States/West%20Virginia/NNL/CV/index.cfm Canaan Valley]

Canaan Valley, is an oval shaped, bowl-like valley in northeastern Tucker County, West Virginia, USA, containing extensive wetlands and the headwaters of the Blackwater River, which spills out of the valley at Blackwater Falls. It is a partially undeveloped and well-known scenic attraction and tourist draw, associated with the Canaan Valley Resort State Park and the Blackwater Falls State Park.

Canaan Valley was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974. The National Park Service citation indicates that the Valley is "a splendid 'museum' of Pleistocene habitats ... contain [ing] ... an aggregation of these habitats seldom found in the eastern United States. It is unique as a northern boreal relict community at this latitude by virtue of its size, elevation and diversity." Since 1994, about 60% of the Valley has become the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's 500th. [http://www.fws.gov/canaanvalley/CVNWR_Welcome.htm] .

The local pronunciation of "Canaan" is IPA|, rather than the conventional IPA| for the Biblical region from which the area takes its name.

Geography

The Valley, nestled among the higher ranges of the Allegheny Mountains, is about convert|13|mi|km long and convert|3|mi|km to convert|5|mi|km wide. It is defined by Canaan Mountain to the west and Cabin Mountain to the east. The Valley encompasses approximately 25,000 acres (although the greater Valley ecosystem is sometimes considered to consist of about 36,000 acres). The average valley floor elevation is convert|3200|ft|m above sea level, making it the highest sizable valley east of the Mississippi River. The surrounding mountains extend upward an additional 1000+ feet.

The Blackwater River originates in the southern part of the Valley. The Falls of the Blackwater represent part of a water gap through which the river exits the valley between Brown and Canaan Mountains before cascading through Blackwater Canyon.

Climate and meteorology

Because of its relatively high elevation, Canaan Valley has a climate more typical to Canada. The area has a unique, almost tundra-like, appearance.

Summers are cool and pleasant with temperatures usually topping out in the high 60s to low 70s °F, with nighttime lows in the lower 50s °F, although temperatures below freezing have been recorded in every month of the year. Winters are typically cold and snowy. Canaan Valley has a unique geographic position which allows it to receive lake effect snow regularly during the winter. Northwest winds pick up moisture from the Great Lakes and usually deposit that moisture as snow within convert|50|mi|km of the lakes, essentially "snowing themselves out". However, once this air reaches the mountains around Canaan Valley it is forced to rise. This wrings additional moisture out from the air, causing snow (Orographic lift). Geographically, the Valley is also many times near the southwestern extreme of Nor'easters, often getting significant snowfall from such storms. Annual snowfall averages 160 inches (4.1 m) with particularly snowy winters approaching 200 inches (5.1 m), most of which falls from October to April.

History

Prehistory and settlement

Canaan Valley and surrounding areas were strongly impacted by the southward advance of glaciers some 75,000 years ago. Although the glaciers themselves did not extend into the area, this climatic change resulted in a very cool, moist environment that was forest-unfriendly. Later, as the ice receded, many cold-adapted plant species remained behind and survived due to the high elevation. Soon, however, this tundra-like vegetation was largely crowded out by the growth of an extraordinarily dense climax red spruce forest, intermixed with balsam fir and hardwoods.

The first whites to see Canaan Valley were likely the surveyors of the famous Fairfax Line who crossed Canaan Mountain in 1746 under conditions of extreme difficulty [Lewis, Thomas, "The Fairfax Line: Thomas Lewis's Journal of 1746"; Footnotes and index by John Wayland, Newmarket, Virginia: The Henkel Press, Pg 32 of the 1925 reprint edition: “Our horses and often our Selves often fell into Clefts & Cavities without Seeing the danger Before we felt the Effects of it... for in Striving to Evade a Seen Dangerous or Bad place we often fell into a worse.”] . According to a local tradition, a German settler named Henry Fansler, who was migrating from the Shenandoah Valley, viewed Canaan Valley from Cabin Mountain in April of 1800 and exclaimed “Besiehe das Land Canaan” [“Behold the Land of Canaan”] [Fansler, Homer Floyd (1962), "History of Tucker County, West Virginia", Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, pg 593] . Fansler and his family hacked out a living on Freeman Creek in the Valley for three years before the harsh winters and poor farming potential forced them to move to the mouth of the Blackwater a few miles away. Fansler was the first Canaan settler whose name is known, although there is known to have been an earlier abortive homesteader in the 1770s or ‘80s who left descendents elsewhere in the county [cite book | author = Maxwell, Hu| title = History of Tucker County, West Virginia, From the Earliest Explorations and Settlement to the Present Time, etc... Journal Printing House, Kingwood, W.Va. (Reprinted, McClain Printing Company, Parsons, W.Va., 1971 and 1993)| year = 1884| pages = 378] .

The rugged and remote "High Allegheny" region (what is now east-central West Virginia), including the Valley, was bypassed by development for many decades. As large-scale settlement occurred to its north, south and west the region remained relatively wild. In the 19th Century, the Valley was a last refuge for many of the large mammal species that were being exterminated from the eastern United States. In about 1843, for example, three elk were killed in Canaan Valley by members of the Flanagan and Carr families, local settlers who habitually hunted there. These were likely the last elk found wild in the region that later became West Virginia [cite book | author = Maxwell, Hu| title = The History of Randolph County, West Virginia, From its Earliest Settlement to the Present, The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va. (Reprinted, McClain Printing Company, Parsons, W.Va., 1961)| year = 1898| pages = 300] .

The earliest settler to make a successful and permanent livelihood in the Valley came more than 60 years after Fansler when Solomon W. Cosner began living at Fansler’s old homestead in 1864 [Maxwell (1884), "Op. cit.", pg 378-9. The country was described at that time as one of “…original forests [which…] is swampy, but, as soon as the timber is removed, the water dries up… Water stands in horse tracks in the woods.”] . Cosner, a Civil War veteran known as the “Pioneer of Canaan”, was a noted bear hunter. He and his sons were said to have killed more than 500 bears in Canaan Valley (as well as countless deer, two panthers and a wolf). Other families arrived to settle in the Valley in the 1870s.

In 1883, a Virginia adventurer, former Texas cowboy and land speculator named Charles R. Ruffin bought convert|5000|acre|km2 of the Valley and organized the “Canaan Valley Blue Grass & Improvement Company”, but his scheme to create a vast and profitable cattle ranch came to nothing [Maxwell (1884), "Op. cit.", pg 488-9.] [Fansler, "Op. cit.", pg 595.] .

Logging and wildfires

Logging of the surrounding mountains was extensive in the 1880s and '90s, but impenetrable understories of rhododendron made passage through the Valley floor almost impossible until the advent of a logging railroad in 1915. The productivity of the timber stands extracted from the Valley floor between 1888 and 1922 (when the last virgin timber was removed) was twice that of similar stands within the state. Maurice Brooks described the ensuing environmental damage in his classic book on Appalachian natural history:

Canaan Valley had a tragic history, and its comeback has been a slow one. A hundred years ago valley and surrounding ridges were covered by red spruce forest of a density that is hard to imagine today. Under such a forest the sun never reached to ground level, humus accumulated through the ages, and fire was not a threat. The lumbermen came, ultimately, and if total and permanent destruction of the entire area had been an aim it could scarcely have been more fully realized. An official of the company boasted that in convert|100000|acre|km2 they had not left one stick of timber that would make a two-by-four. Log yields were fantastic; some acres on the valley floor scaled 80,000 to 100,000 board feet of lumber…. With all cover removed, organic material at ground level began to dry out; soon it was high-grade fuel, and the inevitable fires got started. There followed such a ground fire as this state has never seen before or since. For months this humus layer smoldered, and neither rains nor snows could stop the fire’s slow advance. The village of Davis was saved by a series of deep trenches around it, these kept filled with water carried from the Blackwater River. When the destruction was complete, all vegetable matter that wasn’t soaked had burned…. Bare rocks remained, and thin mineral soil, this often several feet lower than ground level in the original forest. Canaan and environs had become a desert. I have often wondered if the Pittsburgh company responsible for this has been proud of its job, and if it has enjoyed the resultant wealth. [ Brooks, Maurice (1965), "The Appalachians" (Series: The Naturalist's America), Illustrated by Lois Darling and Lo Brooks, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp 127-128.]

By the 1920s, the Babcock Lumber and Boom Company had virtually exhausted its commercial prospects in the Valley. In 1923, the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company (WVPTC, later called Allegheny Power Systems), bought convert|13230|acre|km2 in the northern half of the Valley from Babcock with a long-range plan to construct a hydroelectric power plant that would flood much of the Valley [Michael, Edwin Daryl (2002), "A Valley Called Canaan: 1885-2002", Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, pp 212.] The WVPTC was not, of course, motivated by any preservationist or environmental impulses, but this land purchase was decisive for the fate of the Valley and the power company proved an unwitting guardian of the natural wetlands against development. According to Michael -- a wildlife biologist with 30 years experience in the Valley -- had this purchase not occurred by a public utility at a time when the scientific and environmental value of wetland was not yet recognized, the northern Valley would undoubtedly have been drained and developed by commercial and private interests in the 1950s and ‘60s, as happened in the southern Valley.

Recovery and development

In 1920, the southern third of the Valley was included in the newly established Monongahela National Forest, the first attempt to redress the devastating environmental degradation that the area had suffered during the previous generation. The logging railroads in the Valley were abandoned, then the rails were pulled up in 1925. The outside world intruded again in 1932, however, in the form of State Route 32 which bisects the southern end of the Valley, connecting Davis to Harman. This is the only motor highway in the Valley and it was along this route that the later development of the 20th Century occurred. Electrification came to this part of the Valley in 1938 [Michael, "Op. cit.", pg 221,]

In the late 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps undertook as one of its projects the reforestation of Canaan Mountain. In areas where there was no soil at all to work with, trucks were run from the Valley continuously bringing dark muck soil to the mountaintop. Spruce seedlings were packed in, each requiring a bushel or two of soil, and by the 1940s a new spruce forest had been established on the slopes overlooking the Valley. [Brooks, "Op. cit.", pg 129.] In 1943 and '44, as part of the West Virginia Maneuver Area, the U.S. Army used the Canaan Valley area as a practice artillery and mortar range and maneuver area before troops were sent to European Theater of Operations to fight in World War II.

Beginning in 1950, the Washington Ski Club was developing ski slopes on the Valley side of Bald Knob of Cabin Mountain [Fansler, "Op. cit.", pp 595-6. Within the decade, a convert|3600|ft|m|sing=on slope on Cabin Mountain and a 3,900 slope on Weiss Knob had been developed.] . (Because of its protection from the sun, snow on that side of the mountain often remains until April or later.)

In the early 1970s, the Canaan Valley Resort State Park was created at the southern end of the Valley in an attempt to further develop a ski industry in the state. An 18 hole golf course was also constructed there at this time.

Controversy and preservation

In 1970, Allegheny Power Systems (APS) requested permits for the long-anticipated hydroelectric facility in the Valley. This power plant would have supplied electricity to major metropolitan areas of the northeastern United States. The proposal involved damming the Blackwater River with consequent flooding of about convert|8000|acre|km2, including all of the wetland acres — roughly 25% of the Valley floor. Predictably, public objections were raised and, in the midst of the furor, the Valley was designated a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in December 1974. In 1977, the Federal Power Commission issued a license to APS for construction of a pumped storage hydroelectric project, formally known as the Davis Power Project (DPP). Contentious public hearings ensued and the following year the DPP was denied a Clean Water Act (CWA) permit by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps' decision cited adverse impacts upon the Valley's wetlands, a relatively new concept at the time. APS appealed the Corps' decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that a CWA permit was in fact required for work to commence. The adverse ruling by the appeals court was itself appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which in 1988 declined to hear the case. This represented the final nail in the coffin of the DPP [Michael, "Op. cit.", pg 221-222,] .

In 1994, about 86 acres of the Valley were purchased by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to establish a National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's 500th. In 2002, APS — having kept development of most of the Valley at bay since its 1923 land purchase — finally sold its 12,000 acres (48 km²) to the USFWS to be added to the Refuge. With other additions, the present Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge is 15,245 acres (65 km²) in extent.

Ecology

Wetlands and boreal plants

Canaan Valley shares much of the plant and animal life characteristic of the rest of the state, but its botanical communities also include species otherwise found only in sub-arctic bogs and conifer forests much further north. It has been described by ecologists and conservationists as "a bit of Canada gone astray". The Valley includes several habitat types, but particularly noteworthy are its extensive wetlands, which are the largest in the entire central and southern Appalachian region. These 6,000 or so acres of shrub swamp and bog represent approximately 40% of the wetland found in the state of West Virginia.

Flora

Over 580 plant species have been documented in the Valley, notably various mosses, sedges and heathers, the large cranberry and the Canadian blueberry. Also present are the sundew, marsh marigold, jack-in-the-pulpit, starflower and Canadian lily-of-the-valley. Late August experiences impressive blooms of cotton grass, a sedge otherwise found mostly in Alaska and Canada.

Fauna

More than 280 species of animals and fish have been recorded in the Valley. The Valley and surrounding highlands provide some of the most southern pockets of snowshoe hare habitat. Other animals include beavers, muskrats, raccoons, opposums, and grey and red squirrels. Seen far less frequently are black bears, bobcats, coyotes, and red foxes. Of special note are large groups of deer which can be viewed from the main roads. The deer have become so conditioned to human presence that they are no longer frightened; feeding and interacting with the deer is strongly discouraged.

Birdlife is prolific, especially those species attracted by the Valley's wetlands. These include ducks (wood ducks, mallards, black ducks), Canada geese and the great blue heron. These wetlands are the southernmost nesting site for the American bittern. Raptors include red-tailed hawks, goshawks and the occasional peregrine falcon and bald eagle.

Smallmouth bass and various sunfish are found in the upper Blackwater River. Native brook trout and introduced rainbow trout are also found in some of the cold, clean streams of the area.

Tourism and recreation

The Valley's unique climatic and natural features attract a steady flow of outdoor recreationalists. Camping, hiking, fishing (brook trout, large-mouth bass), cross-country and downhill skiing, leaf-peeping, and wildlife viewing are popular outdoor activities. Upland game bird hunting (woodcock, ruffed grouse, common snipe, wild turkey) has long been popular in the Valley and is still permitted, even in the NWR, within season.

In addition to two state parks and one wildlife refuge, the valley is home to two Alpine ski resorts (Canaan Valley Ski Resort and Timberline Four Seasons Resort) and one Nordic ski area (White Grass Touring Center).

References

Citations

Other sources

*Kennedy, Philip Pendleton, "The Blackwater Chronicle, A Narrative of an Expedition into the Land of Canaan in Randolph County, Virginia", Redfield, New York, 1853.
*Strother, David Hunter, "The Virginia Canaan", "Harper's Magazine", 8:18-36, 1855.
*Fortney, Ronald H., “Canaan Valley – An Area of Special Interest within the Upland Forest Region”, Chapter 4 in: "Upland Forests of West Virginia", Stephen L. Stephenson, editor; Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 1993.
*Preble, Jack, "Land of Canaan, Plain Tales from the Mountains of West Virginia", Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 1st ed., 1960; 2nd ed., 1965, 3rd ed., 1971.
* [http://www.freshwaterinstitute.org Freshwater Institute] and West Virginia Audubon Council (n.d. [but 1980s] ), "The Canaan Valley: A National Treasure", 12 minute educational film.
*Ludlum, J.C., and Arkle, Jr., T. (1971), "Blackwater Falls State Park and Canaan Valley State Park: Resources, Geology and Recreation", West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, State Park Series Bulletin 6, 60 p.
*Matchen, D.L., Fedorko, N., and Blake, Jr., B.M. (1998), "Geology of Canaan Valley", 1:24,000 scale (Map, with explanation text).

ee also

*List of National Natural Landmarks

External links

* [http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/graphics/tucker.jpgMonongahela National Forest map of Canaan Valley Area]