Spruce Mountain, located in eastern

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...

, is the highest

ridge A ridge or a mountain ridge is a geographical feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for an extended distance. The sides of the ridge slope away from the narrow top on either side. The line ...

of the

Allegheny Mountains The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), 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 devel ...

. The whale-backed ridge extends for only from northeast to southwest, but several of its peaks exceed in elevation. The summit, Spruce Knob (4863 ft; 1482 m), is the highest Allegheny Mountain point both in the state and the entire range, which spans four states.

Geography

Spruce Mountain lies mostly within the Spruce Knob–Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, a

U.S. National Recreation Area A national recreation area (NRA) is a protected area in the United States established by an Act of Congress to preserve enhanced recreational opportunities in places with significant natural and scenic resources. There are 40 NRAs, which emphasiz ...

(NRA) located within the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) in Pendleton County. It extends from the vicinity of Onego in the north to near Cherry Grove in the south. Brushy Run separates Timber Ridge — a spur of the main mountain — to the east. The ridgelines of Spruce Mountain and Timber Ridge continue to the north of

US Route 33 U.S. Route 33 (US 33) is a United States Numbered Highway that runs northwest–southeast for from northern Indiana to Richmond, Virginia, passing through Ohio and West Virginia en route. Although most odd-numbered U.S. routes are north–s ...

as Hoffman Ridge and Smith Mountain, respectively. To the south (south of West Virginia 28) the line continues as Big Mountain. Prominent peaks of Spruce Mountain, north to south, are Horse Rock (4536 ft; 1383 m), Spruce Mountain Peak (4586 ft; 1398 m), Picea Benchmark (4613 ft; 1406 m), and Spruce Knob itself. Spruce Knob is the highest point in the eastern United States between the

Adirondacks The Adirondack Mountains (; a-də-RÄN-dak) form a massif in northeastern New York with boundaries that correspond roughly to those of Adirondack Park. They cover about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2). The mountains form a roughly circular d ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and

Mount Rogers Mount Rogers is the highest natural point in Virginia, United States, with a summit elevation of above mean sea level. The summit straddles the border of Grayson and Smyth Counties, Virginia, about WSW of Troutdale, Virginia. Most of the mo ...

(part of the

Blue Ridge Mountains The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virg ...

) in southern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

. The summit of Spruce Knob has a definite

alpine Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National P ...

feel, much more so than most other mountains of the southern

Appalachians The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...

. The upper few hundred feet are covered in a dense

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfam ...

forest, a relic

boreal forest Taiga (; rus, тайга́, p=tɐjˈɡa; relates to Mongolic and Turkic languages), generally referred to in North America as a boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruc ...

environment similar to those found in northern

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

. The summit is accessible both via trails and a paved Forest Service road, and is crowned with a stone lookout tower amid a mixture of boulder fields, meadows and trees. A handicap-accessible nature trail half a mile (0.8 km) long circles the topmost part of the mountain. High west winds near the summit have gnarled the spruce there like

Krummholz ''Krummholz'' (german: krumm, "crooked, bent, twisted" and ''Holz'', "wood") — also called ''knieholz'' ("knee timber") — is a type of stunted, deformed vegetation encountered in the subarctic and subalpine tree line landscapes, shaped b ...

, flagged with limbs only on their leeward (eastward) side. As is typical in the southern Appalachians, the highest point on a ridge is frequently referred to as a knob or dome. Spruce Knob is the highest point along a ridge known as the

Allegheny Front 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, USA. The Allegheny Front forms the boundary between the ...

. Dropping steeply to the east, it offers views of the Germany Valley and North Fork Mountain; to the west is the

Allegheny Plateau The Allegheny Plateau , in the United States, is a large dissected plateau area of the Appalachian Mountains in western and central New York (state), New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Oh ...

. It also is the highest point in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Geology

Like the rest of this part of the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. The ...

, Spruce Knob began to form with the breakup of

Pangea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million y ...

I between 570 and 500 mya. The African Plate separated from the North American Plate opening the Proto-Atlantic Ocean. The North American Plate stretched and thinned, allowing it to backfill with a shallow inland sea. About 50 million years later, with the

Taconic Orogeny The Taconic orogeny was a mountain building period that ended 440 million years ago and affected most of modern-day New England. A great mountain chain formed from eastern Canada down through what is now the Piedmont of the East coast of the Unit ...

, the two plates reversed course and began to move towards each other. Mid-ocean subduction created a volcanic arc (now known as the

) which eventually collided with the North American Plate. The arc fused onto the continent and the land to the west was uplifted. Observation_tower_atop_Spruce_Knob

The accumulation of shells and other hard parts of marine organisms (made of CaCO₃, calcium carbonate) at the bottom of the shallow inland sea cemented into a layer of Greenbrier Limestone. The shallow inland sea began to retreat with the uplift. This caused fine grains of mud and silt to settle out and lithify into a layer of Mauch Chunk Shale on top of the Greenbrier Limestone. As the Blue Ridge eroded, rivers carried sediment down to the low-lying areas that formed a layer of Pottsville Conglomerate on top of the shale. The large boulders on the summit are remnants of this layer, and outcrops of both Mauch Chunk Shale and Greenbrier Limestone can be found lower on the mountain. When the North American and African Plates finally collided around 250 mya, it caused a massive uplift that folded and faulted these layers of sedimentary rock. Spruce Knob was originally in the bottom (syncline) of one of these folds, but over time cracks in the Pottsville Conglomerate in the higher elevations allowed it to erode quickly, and the softer layers of shale and limestone were quick to follow. This left Spruce Knob as the highest point in the landscape. Spruce Knob (Spruce Mountain) is the westernmost extent of this intense folding and faulting. To the west, the

is composed of more gently sloping hills and dendritic drainages.

Climate

Spruce Knob's climate can be classified as cold continental or

highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally speaking, upland (or uplands) refers to ranges of hills, typically from up to while highland (or highlands) is ...

. Summers are cool and often damp, with thunderstorms common both in spring and summer. Winters are cold and snowy, with an average of around of annual snowfall leaving the summit access road often impassible between October and April. Blizzard conditions can develop in minutes behind cold frontal passages and last days with upslope snowfall continuing with northwest winds, making travel on the mountain dangerous during the colder months. This mountain can receive high winds year-round; red spruce deformed by constant exposure to strong westerly winds are scattered across its rocky ridges.

Ecology

Flora

As with almost the entirety of the MNF, most of the original Spruce Mountain upland forest was completely denuded by logging around the turn of the 20th century and now consists of second- or third-growth forest. (The only documented exception to this on the Mountain is the North Spruce Mountain Old Growth Site. ) The present

second-growth forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a logging, timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the Disturbance (ecology), dist ...

of Spruce Mountain is characterized by a dominance of

sugar maple ''Acer saccharum'', the sugar maple, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada and eastern United States. Sugar maple is best known for being the prim ...

(''Acer saccharum''),

American beech ''Fagus grandifolia'', the American beech or North American beech, is a species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast of Canada. Description ''Fagus grandifolia'' is a large deciduous tree growing to tall, w ...

(''Fagus grandifolia''), and

yellow birch ''Betula alleghaniensis'', the yellow birch, golden birch, or swamp birch, is a large tree and an important lumber species of birch native to northeastern North America. Its vernacular names refer to the golden color of the tree's bark. In the pa ...

(''Betula lutea''). Other characteristic species of the mixed mesophytic forest region are also present: tuliptree (''Liriodendron tulipifera''),

basswood ''Tilia americana'' is a species of tree in the family Malvaceae, native to eastern North America, from southeast Manitoba east to New Brunswick, southwest to northeast Oklahoma, southeast to South Carolina, and west along the Niobrara River ...

(''Tilia heterophylla'', ''T.floridana'', ''T. neglecta''),

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrel ...

(''Castanea dentata''),

yellow buckeye ''Aesculus flava'', the yellow buckeye, common buckeye, or sweet buckeye, is a species of deciduous tree. It is native to the Ohio Valley and Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States. It grows in mesophytic forest or floodplains, genera ...

(''Aesculus flava''), red oak (''Quercus borealis''),

white oak The genus ''Quercus'' contains about 500 species, some of which are listed here. The genus, as is the case with many large genera, is divided into subgenera and sections. Traditionally, the genus ''Quercus'' was divided into the two subgenera ''C ...

(''Q. alba''), and

eastern hemlock ''Tsuga canadensis'', also known as eastern hemlock, eastern hemlock-spruce, or Canadian hemlock, and in the French-speaking regions of Canada as ''pruche du Canada'', is a coniferous tree native to eastern North America. It is the state tree of ...

(''Tsuga canadensis''). The upper reaches of Spruce Mountain also include areas termed northern hardwood and northern evergreen forest types. The former is typified by red oak, white ash (''Fraxinus americana''),

(''Tilia'' spp.), red maple (''Acer rubrum''), and

cherry A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet ''Prunus avium'' and the sour '' Prunus cerasus''. The n ...

(''Prunus'' spp.). The latter is dominated by the Mountain's

eponymous An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

red spruce (''Picea rubens''). While not extending above the timberline, the stunted tree growth high on this windy mountaintop is relatively open. The summit was named for the spruce trees which grow there. Red spruce (''

Picea rubens ''Picea rubens'', commonly known as red spruce, is a species of spruce native to eastern North America, ranging from eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia, west to the Adirondack Mountains and south through New England along the Appalachians to western ...

'') is the most common tree species on the summit. The lower altitudes are populated by oak,

hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mex ...

birch A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech- oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' cont ...

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engl ...

and

maple ''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since h ...

Fauna

Bald eagles The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche a ...

hawks Hawks are birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. They are widely distributed and are found on all continents except Antarctica. * The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks and others. This subfamily ...

and peregrine falcons have been seen on the mountain. Mammals such as black bear,

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

weasel Weasels are mammals of the genus ''Mustela'' of the family Mustelidae. The genus ''Mustela'' includes the least weasels, polecats, stoats, ferrets and European mink. Members of this genus are small, active predators, with long and slend ...

porcupine Porcupines are large rodents with coats of sharp spines, or quills, that protect them against predation. The term covers two families of animals: the Old World porcupines of family Hystricidae, and the New World porcupines of family, Erethiz ...

skunk Skunks are mammals in the family Mephitidae. They are known for their ability to spray a liquid with a strong, unpleasant scent from their anal glands. Different species of skunk vary in appearance from black-and-white to brown, cream or gin ...

and

rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit sp ...

are also found. The important presence of

ruffed grouse The ruffed grouse (''Bonasa umbellus'') is a medium-sized grouse occurring in forests from the Appalachian Mountains across Canada to Alaska. It is the most widely distributed game bird in North America. It is non-migratory. It is the only specie ...

(''Bonasa umbellus'') on the Mountain has been acknowledged by the establishment of the Spruce Mountain Grouse Management Area by the MNF Forest Service,

U.S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...

(September 2006)
''Monongahela National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan''
Chapter III, pg 66.

Recreation

Spruce Knob is within the Spruce Knob–Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, which in turn is part of Monongahela National Forest. Established in 1965, it was the first National Recreation Area designated by the

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

and includes more than . There are over of hiking trails around the mountain and a small lake well stocked with trout on the west side of the mountain. Two campgrounds are also on the mountain.Spruce Knob Lake Campground
/ref> Hiking trails — Huckleberry Trail, Lumberjack Trail, Spruce Mountain Trail — extend the length of the ridge. There are over 75 miles (121 km) of trails around the Mountain and a small 25 acre (10 ha) lake well stocked with trout on the west side. There are also two campgrounds on the Mountain; the larger (43 sites) is nearest the lake.

Access

FR_112_approaching_Spruce_Knob,_West_Virginia

Paved access is from U.S. Route 33/ West Virginia Route 28 about south of Riverton. Briery Gap Road (County Route 33/4), Forest Road 112 and Forest Road 104 have been reconstructed and paved to provide a hard-surfaced road to the summit. Forest Roads 104 and 112 are not maintained in the winter. Impassable conditions can be expected any time from mid-October to mid-April.

References

Citations

Other sources

* Core, Earl L. (1928), "Ecological Studies on Spruce Mountain", '' Proc. W.Va. Acad. Sci.'' 2:36-39. *Core, Earl L. (1929), "The Plant Ecology of Spruce Mountain, West Virginia", ''Ecology'', 10:1-13. *Robison, William C. (1960)
“Spruce Knob Revisited: A Half-Century of Vegetation Change”
''Castanea'', Vol. 25, No. 1 (March issue), pp 53–61.

External links

Spruce Mountain page at ''Peakbagger.com''Spruce Knob–Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area
{{Mountains of West Virginia Ridges of West Virginia Landforms of Pendleton County, West Virginia Allegheny Mountains Monongahela National Forest Protected areas of Pendleton County, West Virginia