Dolly Sods Wilderness
The Dolly Sods Wilderness (DSW, originally simply Dolly Sods) 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.
| Dolly Sods Wilderness | |
|---|---|
IUCN category Ib (wilderness area) | |
Location of Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia | |
| Location | West Virginia, United States |
| Coordinates | 38°59′45″N 79°22′05″W |
| Area | 17,776 acres (71.94 km2) |
| Elevation | 2,500 to 4,700 ft (760 to 1,430 m) |
| Established | January 3, 1975 |
| Operator | Monongahela National Forest |
| Website | Dolly Sods Wilderness |
Dolly Sods is a rocky, high-altitude plateau with sweeping vistas and lifeforms normally found much farther north in Canada. To the north, the distinctive landscape of "the Sods" is characterized by stunted ("flagged") trees, wind-carved boulders, heath barrens, grassy meadows created in the last century by logging and fires, and sphagnum bogs that are much older. To the south, a dense cove forest occupies the branched canyon incised by the North Fork of Red Creek.
The name derives from an 18th-century German homesteading family, the Dahles, and a local term for an open mountaintop meadow, a "sods".