The Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia is almost 72 square kilometers of protected lands. The ecology is unique — much of the area is between 2,000 and 4,000-foot elevation, and is filled with high-altitude marshy bogs, red spruce forests, and windswept boulders. But it did not look like this 100 years ago.
In the early 20th-century, loggers stripped the region so bare that the exposed humus eroded and massive fires demolished ancient forests (some trees had been 1,000 years old). The exposed boulders you see on this first image were likely uncovered during this time. In 1943 and 1944, the Dolly Sods was used by the U.S. Army as a practice artillery and mortar range — in fact, visitors to the area are still warned to be alert for remaining mortar shells (see second photo).
The Nature Conservancy proved a vital force in protecting this land and restoring its non-human ecology. Buying up coal mining rights in 1972 and thousands of acres of land owned by private corporations in 1993, the Nature Conservancy donated these purchases to the U.S. Forest Service. As recently as 2009, the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act added another 7,000 acres, bringing the total land acreage to 17,371. The amazing beauty of Dolly Sods today shows what can be achieved when environmentally minded people coordinate their efforts.
