Description
The mountaintop can be reached by hiking but is more commonly reached by riding the Cass Scenic Railroad, which transports visitors via old logging railroads to a 4,730 feet (1,440 m) sub-peak approximately 1/4 mile north of Bald Knob. Its lofty elevation (only 21 feet (6.4 m) lower than the highest point in the Alleghenies, Spruce Knob), gives Bald Knob a unique hemiboreal ecosystem. While the lower and middle elevations of the mountain are populated by oak, hickory, birch, beech and maple, the summit dome is dominated by red spruce. Rowan, eastern hemlock, and balsam fir also occur above 4,000 feet (1,200 m), though they are not as common as the spruce. The region was extensively logged from 1900 to 1960. Red spruce, being a valuable natural resource, lured timber companies into the area. By 1940, the mountain had been stripped of nearly all virgin red spruce. The last harvest of red spruce and eastern hemlock on Bald Knob was in 1960. The summit was one of the last places logged by the Mower Lumber Company. Today, red spruce and other high elevation flora are making a comeback on the mountain; however, it will take many years for the area to fully recover. This era of West Virginia logging has been well documented in books such as Tumult on the Mountain and On Beyond Leatherbark: The Cass Saga.
Read more about this topic: Bald Knob
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)